Swammerdami
Squadron Leader
Whenever I see this thread title, I think of Exolife — life on other planets.
I think Nick Lane may well be correct, that our life based on water, peptide chains and some variant of nucleic acid chains is "perfect" and that no other biochemistry is plausible. In this view, if life is ever discovered on another planet the basic building-blocks will be similar to Earth's life.
But, if only to develop into a science fiction novel, it would be interesting to explore the possibility of very different biochemistry. Are there any chemists here? One possibility I see mention of is complex molecules with a silicone backbone ( -Si-O-Si-O- ) in an ocean of sulfuric acid. Although the backbone of the complex molecule might be based on silicon. side chains might be mostly ordinary organics — perhaps similar to amino acids, sugars or nucleotides — but with occasional silicons substituted for carbon.
I think Nick Lane may well be correct, that our life based on water, peptide chains and some variant of nucleic acid chains is "perfect" and that no other biochemistry is plausible. In this view, if life is ever discovered on another planet the basic building-blocks will be similar to Earth's life.
But, if only to develop into a science fiction novel, it would be interesting to explore the possibility of very different biochemistry. Are there any chemists here? One possibility I see mention of is complex molecules with a silicone backbone ( -Si-O-Si-O- ) in an ocean of sulfuric acid. Although the backbone of the complex molecule might be based on silicon. side chains might be mostly ordinary organics — perhaps similar to amino acids, sugars or nucleotides — but with occasional silicons substituted for carbon.