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If a set of robots could, on their own, heal themselves of certain amounts of damage, maintain internal order, as well as reproduce by mining and purifying sili
by dheera 6y ago
If a set of robots could, on their own, heal themselves of certain amounts of damage, maintain internal order, as well as reproduce by mining and purifying silicon and assembling it into new robots, without aid from anything else but raw materials and, say, solar energy, as well as evolve their own design as they assemble new robots, I would claim that that also qualifies as silicon-based life.
To be able to mine for materials and manufacture new copies of itself is a more macroscopic way of creating those complex molecules than the smaller-scale processes used in Earth life, but I don't think that should be the differentiating qualifier for what constitutes life. It's rather just a different reproduction process than mitosis and meiosis but is a valid reproduction process.
To some extent I think we will invent silicon-based life or some other life to carry on our legacy after the solar system dies. Carbon-based Earth life is far too sensitive to environmental conditions, and what I envision of silicon-based life is something that can handle a much wider variety of temperatures, pressures, radiation, and gases, which would be much more suitable for a spacefaring continuation of humanity.
- adrian_b 6y agoYou are right that self-reproducing automata can be designed and built using silicon and/or many other chemical elements besides those used in living beings. However we do not know any mechanism that would allow the spontaneous apparition of such living beings by natural processes, like those that exist for H, C, N, O and S as the main bioelements. After some life forms appear spontaneously using a set of chemical elements very similar to that used on Earth, it might be possible at some point to transition to the use of other chemical elements, because the original constraints to start from substances that can be generated in abiotic conditions no longer apply. So I agree that silicon-based life can exist, but there is no known process that could make silicon-based life forms appear spontaneously from non-living matter, unlike the case for carbon-based life. Actually carbon-based life is a misnomer, because there are several other chemical elements that are strictly required for various reasons, so there is a minimum set of about 8 to 12 chemical elements that are needed for life, not only carbon. While H, C, N, O and S are needed to build the minimal set of organic molecules and several transition metals are needed as catalysts, there are also a few other irreplaceable elements, e.g. potassium is needed to neutralize the excess negative charge of the organic acids over the positive charge of ammonium derivatives. (Other elements cannot replace potassium because they would form insoluble compounds).
- dheera 6y ago> However we do not know any mechanism that would allow the spontaneous apparition of such living beings by natural processes, like those that exist for H, C, N, O and S as the main bioelements. Side point: One could also say that if we create silicon-based life forms to carry on our legacy, those life forms did in fact spontaneously appear, and "bacteria" and "dinosaurs" and "humans" were all part of that long but spontaneous process. Such a process could happen elsewhere in the universe as well, but yes, that then requires C, N, O, S, H, etc. to exist for at least a few billion years.