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[MuonDecay]

But you forget that Dwarves don't need sunlight.  They would just live underground and consume Towercaps and Towercap wine until other life arose again.

Actually, sunlight is the source of all earth's energy, ultimately.  As far as life is concerned, anyway.  You can't just recycle crap, dead bodies, and food trimmings as fertilizer forever.

Not strictly true. As demonstrated in the video fungi are capable of extracting nutrients from any number of sources.

Some fungi  actually draw energy from the earth's existing mineral wealth independently of the sun. They are a very small minority, but they are there. Most of them do thrive on decaying plant or animal matter, though, which does eventually trace back to sunlight.

[LegoLord]

Yes, but the sun is the only thing that can give us a near infinite source of energy.  Without out it, Earth would eventually be reduced to a cold ball of incredibly stable, unreactive material (and therefore unusable for energy).

Thermodynamics, people.  Just because there's energy in the ground doesn't mean there will always be energy in the ground, especially if stuff is growing in it.  Part of the reason for crop rotation.

[SolarShado]

I'm no scientist, certainly not a fungi-specialist, but fungi don't consume as much nutrients as photosynthesising plants do, right? Include the fact that they're living deep underground, surrounded by a wealth of minerals (for nutrients, not money ) and they should be able to live for a very long time.

On a totally stupid note: Perhaps long enough to become sentient, cover the globe and... something... We'd all be dead in this hypothetical scenario, right? So it wouldn't be terrorizing us... What's a planet-sized sentient fungus to do?

[LegoLord]

While its true that there's a lot of mineral nutrients underground, those nutrients are fairly stable ionic compounds, which take a lot of energy to seperate.  This means it would take a renewable external energy source to break them down into other materials.  Fungus needs some sort of energy source to function. 

A common misconception is that fungus is the first thing to start growing on a barren rock.  This is only half true.  It is actually lichen that is first to grow on a barren rock.  Lichen is a fungus and an algae living in a symbiotic relationship.  The fungus converts the minerals into useful materials, and the algae uses photosynthesis to supply energy for this process.  When the lichen dies, for one reason or another, it decays into soil, in which new plants can grow.  This process continues until there is sufficient soil mass for a typical large scale ecosystem to live.

[Zironic]

It makes me wonder what the core of Jupiter is like - gravity wise and chemically wise. A super hot
, but super pressure environment, with a core of supercritical fluids, it would be interesting.-Especially when on other planets like Neptune things like this happen commonely- conversion of methane under high pressure into hydrogen, diamond and longer hydrocarbons (the hydrogen and diamond would then rise and sink, respectively, releasing gravitational potential energy),[84][83]

[LegoLord]

There would probably be no noticeable gravity in Jupiters core.  However, there would definitely be some noticeable pressure.  Although maybe not.  It might kill you too fast.

[Zironic]

Sounds like vanilla df on 100000 temp maps!

[Protactinium]

Argh, all these terrible puns that don't even work.
1) Fungi isn't pronounced "fun guy"
Learn your classifications, folks.

...You'd make a better teacher if you told us how it IS pronounced... Seriously, I thought it was "fun guy" too, and now I don't know what the correct pronunciation is...

Fungus is like "Fun Gus", the G being a hard sound like saying "Fun Gas!"
Fungi is like "Fun Jie", the G being a soft sound like saying "Fun Jive!"

[Randominality]

meh ive always thought it was fungus (hard g not a j - that sounds too american) and fungae (fun guy) as the plural and fungi (fun gee - hard g) as the kingdom
but then im british so maybe you americans say it your own special way

[LegoLord]

You don't have to be polite about it.  Most of us Americans know we're crazy.  The ones that don't aren't smart enough for DF.

[Maggarg - Eater of chicke]

You don't have to be polite about it.  Most of us Americans know we're crazy.  The ones that don't aren't smart enough for DF.

Yes we do, we're British.

[Shad0wyone]

We really are making beds out of shrooms.

[Eagleon]

Either is correct. I've only ever heard fungi as fun-guy, and for that matter, fun guhcidal, not fun jahcidal, etc, but apparently the soft G is more common in medicine (although still not exclusive)

[Strife26]

You can get away without using the sun as a energy source, it's just much tougher. You've got geothermal and sulfur reactoions for example.

[LegoLord]

You can get away without using the sun as a energy source, it's just much tougher. You've got geothermal and sulfur reactoions for example.

Those won't last forever, as I've been trying to say.  If they did, thermodynamics would be broken.