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None. The life on earth as we know it in a traditional sense is based on carbon-based compounds. You can use anything else that forms polymers essentially, but
by fijal 14y ago
None. The life on earth as we know it in a traditional sense is based on carbon-based compounds. You can use anything else that forms polymers essentially, but carbon happened to happen.
- InclinedPlane 14y agoCarbon is not just a little bit better than other elements at forming polymers and complex molecules it is many orders of magnitude better, and it's hugely abundant. Many complex carbon-based molecules are even formed in entirely non-biological processes in significant quantities. Ethanol, ribose, glycine, adenine, and others, for example. The overall nature of life in the Universe may prove to be quite a surprise to us humans but for now the overwhelming scientific consensus is that carbon based chemistry is by far the most likely route for life to develop anywhere.
- fijal 14y agothere are lots of technical reasons that are perfectly valid, true, but it's not absolutely necessary.
- oozcitak 14y agoIt is safer to be a carbon chauvinist if you accept that ancient Mars was covered with oceans. A silicon-based microbe would be hard pressed to explain its distaste for water to its carbon-based neighbor.