So whenever the topic of extra terrestrial life comes around people always mention how they could be way more different than we could predict and rather than being carbon based they could be silicon based. My question is why silicon? What makes it possible to sustain life?
In: Biology
It’s more of a scifi thought experiment than it is anything grounded in actual data or observations. The premise is described in the other comment however there are A LOT of immediate pitfalls beyond “it can make 4 bonds”. Nearly everything else about silicon is grossly different from carbon that you can’t actually substitute silicon into any real molecules where you’d find carbon and get similar functioning compounds. The bond lengths are longer and weaker which is biggest limiting factor. This ends up making most of the compounds fall apart at lower temperatures or not even be stable period.
Silicon cannot make lipid chains, it cannot make the same carbon ring shapes, the list goes on. There’s an excellent video by Angela Collier on YouTube on the subject if you’d like far more examples and more technical details
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