Devs finnaly explained The Void

[Nicco (The singing Neco Arc)]

So Aurora crushed on the edge of ancient vulcanic crater. That means that Subnautica's ocean is more then 10000 meters deep ! ( I wanted arctic biome as border of the world but ok)

[Zemecon]

You know you can swim under the entire game world at 3100 feet, right? There is nothing below it. Yeah, I realize a lot of it has to do with game restrictions and that you aren't supposed to go down there butthis is just a heads-up that it possible.

EDIT: Also, "arctic" conditions are not really possible on a planet that is covered entirely by water and that has surface conditions which can sustain carbon-based life, but whatever.

[BlackWater]

I figure the Arctic biome is deep underground perhaps? or Precursor-Artificially generated? explanations I assume forthcoming in the Expansion.

[Zemecon]

If we are talking about underwater arctic then there won't be very much difference except for maybe a temperature drop in the water. Ice needs much colder conditions in order to form underwater and ice does not form underwater locally. The entire body of water would need to freeze. It is a different story if you are only talking about the surface of the water in said underground area but I don't see that happening when the numerous caves we already see in the game world don't contain any ice, presumably because they aren't cold enough.

The temperature of the water itself would need to be below 0 degrees celsius and in order to get that you would either need colder conditions on the surface or some form of albedo to block any external heat or a heat sink to get rid of any heat that is trapped in the surrounding water. Water is a temperature moderator and it moderates temperature by trapping heat from the sun or from some other heat source and that keeps the water from freezing. Remember that the current game world sits on top of a dormant volcano that is still active inside, as seen in the Active Lava Zone.

If this were an artificially-generated biome created by the Precursors then I would forst want to know how they are lowering the temperature in an underground area to such an extreme that liquid water naturally turns to ice, and then I would want to know why they were doing this.

[KoolSkeleton82]

THEY SERIOUSLY NEED TO EXPAND THE VOID!!!!! AN ARCTIC BIOME WOULD DO NICELY
DOWN IN THE VOID, ITS THE PERFECT TEMPARETURE TO SUPPORT AN ICY WORLD. THE FURTHER UNDERGROUND, THE COLDER IT IS.

[Zemecon]

That isn't really how water works, though. Water is a liquid. It needs to condense in order to form ice and for that you either need a heat sink of some sort or you need so much pressure that it would be impossible for life to exist down there. No one really even knows what the bottom of Planet 4546B is like but if water exists all the way down to within a few thousand meters of the core then it probably won't be able to support life at all. The pressure would just be too high.

[seronis]

Deep sea = high pressure. High pressure = ice doesnt form.

Water needs to be able to EXPAND in size in order for ice to form. This is why ice floats; its less dense.

[Zemecon]

Part of the reason water needs to expand in order to freeze is because it needs a heat sink to suck any heat out of it and the relatively empty space around it will do that. But Chemistry 101 basically states that solid matter is more closely condensed than liquid and gaseous matter is. Also, temperature fluctuates more readily and more widely in air than in water.

Pressure can condense water into ice, though. The dynamics of that are just different. For instance, it is proposed that the cores of some planets like Uranus may be made entirely by water ice. It is still technically a liquid because the planet's rotation retains its viscosity but it is so dense that matter cannot travel through it.

[Agarillobob]

and remember the anomaly of water and that 4°C water is the heaviest so it will sink on the ground while everything colder will rise to the top

and yea there is salt in the water and salt prevents water from freezing so there could be -20°C water and it is not frozen and that water would rise to the top while 4°C cold water would sink to the ground

so an arctic biome under water would not work

[TheGraveDigger]

Originally posted by Agarillobob:

and remember the anomaly of water and that 4°C water is the heaviest so it will sink on the ground while everything colder will rise to the top

and yea there is salt in the water and salt prevents water from freezing so there could be -20°C water and it is not frozen and that water would rise to the top while 4°C cold water would sink to the ground

so an arctic biome under water would not work

Too bad the devs are doing one anyways

[Zemecon]

Originally posted by TemmieTheGraveDigger:

Originally posted by Agarillobob:

and remember the anomaly of water and that 4°C water is the heaviest so it will sink on the ground while everything colder will rise to the top

and yea there is salt in the water and salt prevents water from freezing so there could be -20°C water and it is not frozen and that water would rise to the top while 4°C cold water would sink to the ground

so an arctic biome under water would not work

Too bad the devs are doing one anyways

Well, I don't think anyone knows that for sure. Unless you see a Trello card maked as "Doing" or "Done" there is always the chance they will change their minds.

I personally cannot see any possibility of an "arctic" biome ever happening on a planet covered entirely by ocean, free of ice, that can support life anywhere near the surface. And, believe me, there are times when I want to. I could run you by over a dozen possible scenarios that might say otherwise and it would still always seem like a stretch.

Of course you could always excuse it as being just a game (I.e. "It doesn't need to berealistic!"). However, when you try to bend any set of rules - made-up or not - to a certain extent where it just raises more questions than answers wherever you go with it, that goes nowhere. After a while it becomes difficult to take seriously by anyone. How far do you go? That is what I mean - I keep wanting to know why and the game won't give me the means to find out why, meanwhile at the same time I have more things telling me why not. It makes the game and whatever happens in it more difficult to understand and just kinda ruins the experience.

That's my take on it, anyway. That is what I think.

EDIT: Fixed an issue with the quote.

[Tewa]

There are many forms of ice. Cold, solid ice that we know is only one variety.

Other types of ice have been created in the lab and have also been tentatively identified on other planets by astronomers.

"Hot ice" is formed when (a) pressure is high, turning water solid, and (b) temperatures are also high.

This article does a fair job of explaining it:
https://www.space.com/3813-exotic-world-harbor-hot-ice.html

"Water has more than a dozen solid states, only one of which is our familiar ice," said study team member Frederic Pont of the University of Geneva in Switzerland.

In the same way that carbon can transform into diamonds under extreme pressures, water turns into other solid states denser than both liquid and ice under very high pressures. Physicists call these alternative forms of water Ice VII and Ice X.

"If Earth's oceans were much deeper, there would be such exotic forms of solid water at the bottom," Pont said.

[Zemecon]

Of course water needs to be a certain temperature and a certain pressure in order to sustain life as we know it, and in order to have life on the surface - especially complex multicellular life - the surface needs to have liquid water.

I have no doubt at all that Planet 4546B could have a solid ice core or atleast a very slushy core made up of water that has become almost solid but the question is 1) could life live there at that depth, with that amount of pressure bearing down on it, and with water in that particular state, and 2) if that were the case, would the surface have liquid water on it?

And don't forget, when we read "Arctic Biome," we think of something near enough to the surface that humans like the player's character can survive there as well as other forms of multicellular life being native to it. Are we really going to send the player thousands of meters down toward Planet 4546B's core, to a pitch black environment so alien and so sclerophillic, and call that an "Arctic Biome?"

Again, it would be a stretch. A big stretch.

I liked the article. It was very interesting. But you are making a lot of unlikely and far-flung correlations here.

Namely:

Semi-solid water deep down near the core of a planet made up almost entirely of water

=

ice on the surface of a planet that is otherwise completely liquid and both warm enough and devoid of enough pressure to keep it liquid.

Remember what is being asked for here and what our own planet is telling us before jumping to conclusions about a planet that behaves so differently we still don't completely know what is on it.

EDIT: Spaced out first paragraph.

[primobrainlet]

I would actually really like to see the arctic biome take a chunk out of the void at least, maybe have new fauna there?

whale like creatures that are peacful, and give you insulation (otherwise you take more damage on being hit because its cold and your suits torn), maybe a leviathan that feeds through breach feeding and poses as a constant threat. There is alot of potential there, and you could say something along the lines of "this biome has no water in it, vents below seem to pump out a lighter than water solution with a much higher freezing point, causing an ice sheet to form and the water beneath to recieve less sun and be much colder. The fauna here seem to be all carnivorous or filter feeders. no flora is present here"

[Tewa]

Originally posted by Salinité:

Are we really going to send the player thousands of meters down toward Planet 4546B's core, to a pitch black environment so alien and so sclerophillic, and call that an "Arctic Biome?"

The "Lost River" is in a cave at the bottom of the ocean.

So... yeah, why not?

[primobrainlet]

Originally posted by Tewa:

Originally posted by Salinité:

Are we really going to send the player thousands of meters down toward Planet 4546B's core, to a pitch black environment so alien and so sclerophillic, and call that an "Arctic Biome?"

The "Lost River" is in a cave at the bottom of the ocean.

So... yeah, why not?

hell the lava biome is basically the edge of the planet's mantle so

eh why not