I have a fun hypothetical question for all you freethinkers out there — especially the hard scientific-positivist atheist types. 😉 Here it is:
In another solar system, there is a thick cloud-covered planet (picture Jupiter), such that the sun never penetrates to the surface, which is an ocean of opaque muddy colloid. Below the depths of this opaque ocean is a solid crust and core, much like ours, that generates heat. From this heat flux, a breed of large complex thermophilic worms evolve, along with millions of other species. Primary production is chemoautotrophic. After evolving transmorphic prolegs, with which they can build tools, they develop complex acoustic communication. Their acoustic perception is as keen as our sight, yet, with no evolutionary need to sense light, they are completely blind. These worms eventually develop mathematics, science, and complex technology.
Question: Could this species ever "discover" the spectrum of electromagnetic radiation (light)?
For those who cite our discovery of radiation wavelengths outside our perception as analogy, I’m not sure that’s right. UV, infrared, or gamma radiations are simply extensions of a dimension (light) that we already perceive. The problem of heat might be more significant, but heat transfer through a solid or colloidal medium is almost exclusively through conduction, not radiation. So it’s not essential for a high-tech worm to know anything about warm body radiation. To the suggestion that some forms of radiation pass through clouds and liquid, the attenuation is great enough (even on portions of the earth’s crust — deep caves) that again, it may become an insignificant footnote to their reality.
So here’s another question…without an incling about light radiation, would they ever conceive an equivalent to the theory of relativity? And what dimension are we as humans utterly lacking? Perhaps in that dimension — that thing we can never imagine — is the key to the universe.
