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What Silicon-Based Life Might Be Like
Nancy_A writes "While the world as we know it runs on carbon, science fiction's long flirtation with silicon-based life has spawned a familiar catchphrase: 'It's life, but not as we know it.' Although non-carbon based life is a very long shot, this Q&A with one of the U.S.'s top astrochemists — Max Bernstein, the Research Lead of the Science Mission Directorate at NASA headquarters in Washington,D.C. — discusses what silicon life might be like."
We have a lot of divergent lifeforms from what was taught when I was little.
They used to say nothing could survive in the vacuum of space, the bottom of the ocean, in geysers, highly acidic conditions and so many other places. If they knew about the oceanic geothermal vents (like the black smokers) back then, they'd have sworn they would be lifeless.
Now of course, we have the entire category of Extremophiles that live in those very places and conditions.
Additionally, we have lifeforms that have copper based blood instead of iron, ones that respire sulfur instead oxygen, and diatoms build their skeletons/shells/cell walls out of silica. And now they may have found one that exchanges its phospates for deadly arsenic and lives.
All in all, there are significant portions of life on this world that was considered science fiction several decades ago. Does that mean it's possible that life in other parts of the universe can be very different than ours? Sort of. It means that our understanding of what is necessary for life is incomplete due to our exposure to only our own type of biology. There may be very strange biochemistry out there, but most of it that we might recognize as life will probably be similar to ours. (That's the biochemistry, not the form, or if intelligent, culture.)