Alien life may not be carbon-based, new study suggests::Self-sustaining chemical reactions that could support biology radically different from life as we know it might exist on many different planets, a new study finds.
… how is this a new theory? The movie evolution made this a central point of the story
Head and shoulders for the win
Have you read Sphere?
Not yet
How’d it go?
It’s in the backlog, I have some manga I’m reading and a bookclub book first
I mean, I can agree that simple autocatalytic reactions can occur with chemistry based on other elements… but it’s a stretch to say that suggests “alien life might not be carbon-based”. Maybe very, very simple, life-like chemical systems, but life as we know it is defined by large, many-atom molecules, and no other element can do this the the way carbon can (not even silicon, whose bond energy decreases with catentation of more silicon atoms link, which, combined with it’s poor ability to form multiple bonds ruins the possibility of silicon-based life). Anything that we can conceivably think of as “life” beyond simple self-reproducing chemical, or bizzare Boltzmann brain-esque systems will have carbon-based chemicals in it.
Thank you! I was going to make this exact point. Autocatalytic reactions are assumed with good reason to be a necessary step on the way from non-life chemicals to life, but they are only one step. Carbon is the only element that can form the basis of the huge variety of chemicals needed for the simplest of life to evolve.
When I was an undergrad, I had professors who made completing arguments that live on other planets would not only be carbon-based, but that it likely would closely resemble life on Earth on molecular, microscopic, and macroscopic levels. Survival of the fit certainly depends upon the environment, but it also must comply with chemistry and physics. I am no expert in theoretical xenobiology, but it provides a strong and fact-based counter to the idea that alien life would by default be wildly different from life on Earth.
A new study of alien life that we have no idea about? Gotcha.
If you want to find alien life you need to know what to look for. If life can exist outside of what we have observed in nature. Then investigating these possibilities will increase the number of markers we have to search for life.
I’m pretty sure every 6th grader has this hypothesis when they first hear “carbon based life form”.
okay bruh, how else you gonna synthesize megadalton structures?