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Reply With QuoteNasa must be going before a budget review committee?
Once again the media had to throw a "extraterrestrial life" moniker on the findings.
Of course, it had nothing to do with extraterrestrials and in reallity, was quite "intra-terrestrial".
The microbes they found had RNA, DNA, cell walls, in fact it was fairly typical of life on earth, except it could metabolize arsenic instead of phosphorous.
Nasa must be going before a budget review committee?
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Statistically, if you wait long enough, everything will happen!
I want to see them find the other lifeforms that substitute...
Silicon for Carbon
Yes I am an agent of Satan, but my duties are largely ceremonial.
Haven't researched this at all.. but isn't carbon really strong and silicon weak as piss?Originally Posted by trash
C based life-forms rule!
Silicon Carbide. It's soft
There isn't a lot of difference between silicon and carbon. Carbon tends to be a little more brittle.
But there are a lot of similarities.
Like diamonds and silicon crystal used to make chips. They form strong tetrahedral structures.
Or, Silicon Grease and Graphite Grease. Where the molecules form flat plates which easily slide past each other.
Now comes the hard part. If we think of a planet where the lifeforms either incorporate or metabolise silicon with or instead of carbon.
The carbon base life forms inhale oxygen, burn carbohydrates and exhale carbon dioxide and water.
The silicon based life form will also metabolise oxygen, and it's food will be other silicon base life, so siliconhydrides or siliconhydrates, and it exhales .... errr.. solid silicon dioxide. Ouch ! It exhales asbestos
Silicon base plant life forms have even a harder job. They have to take up the silicon dioxide. Probably as a fine dust in the alien atmosphere or floating in the alien sea. Combines it with water and light from it's star(s) to produce siliconhydrides. (Silicon Sugars) and Oxygen.
It's a bit of a screwed up planet compared to our concepts of life
Yes I am an agent of Satan, but my duties are largely ceremonial.
Onefella (07-12-10)
Hard to imagine complex organisms made of silicon.
I'm picturing things like sponges or jellyfish in a liquid, or maybe flexible 'parachutes' blowing around in a gas giant.
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