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so do you think interacting with aliens is possible given the chemistry side of things? The more I think about it the more concerned I am that that will end bad
by snapplebobapple 2y ago
so do you think interacting with aliens is possible given the chemistry side of things? The more I think about it the more concerned I am that that will end badly because our microbiology will act benign until it figures a way to use the foreign life as a food source and then boom one of us dies off.
- jaggederest 2y agoWell, if they evolved differently then maybe not. But they'll have the same fundamental building blocks in terms of atoms, and there's a limited amount of energetically favorable ways to slice that particular bread. I would be surprised if we ran into any extraterrestrial life that wasn't carbon based. They may choose a different chirality but there's very little chemically as versatile as carbon carbon bonds. And based on just prevalence levels in the universe carbon-hydrogen-oxygen-nitrogen is a pretty solid bet evolutionarily.
- snapplebobapple 2y agowe aren't made of carbon directly though, we are made of amino acids that are made from carbon and a few other things (plus polysacharides and a bunch of fatty acids), so I wouldn't exactly say we are made of the same fundamental building blocks, as I expect there is way more than just our set of amino acids that will work (I would expect a number of different grouping of amino acids to work as separate groups and how the first proto amino acids happen to be put to use by chance to determine which grouping then goes on to evolve further and dominate because if you have to break something down and rebuild it as what you need it is way costlier than just dissasembling to aminos and reassembling so given enough time one should becomethe monopoly)