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For the First Time, Living Cells Have Formed Carbon-Silicon Bonds (sciencealert.com)
From a ScienceDaily alert: Scientists have managed to coax living cells into making carbon-silicon bonds, demonstrating for the first time that nature can incorporate silicon -- one of the most abundant elements on Earth -- into the building blocks of life. While chemists have achieved carbon-silicon bonds before -- they're found in everything from paints and semiconductors to computer and TV screens -- they've so far never been found in nature, and these new cells could help us understand more about the possibility of silicon-based life elsewhere in the Universe. After oxygen, silicon is the second most abundant element in Earth's crust, and yet it has nothing to do with biological life. Why silicon has never be incorporated into any kind of biochemistry on Earth has been a long-standing puzzle for scientists, because, in theory, it would have been just as easy for silicon-based lifeforms to have evolved on our planet as the carbon-based ones we know and love. Not only are carbon and silicon both extremely abundant in Earth's crust - they're also very similar in their chemical make-up.
If I learnt anything from Master of Orion as a kid, it's that Silicoids are bastards. They have no compassion, and you might as well conquer them and then use them to colonise inhospitable planets.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
The joke is on you, our overlords are already silicon-based.
CLI paste? paste.pr0.tips!
Not only are carbon and silicon both extremely abundant in Earth's crust - they're also very similar in their chemical make-up.
But for a cosmic flip of the coin, we could all be silicon-based beings, and our women could have carbon implants.
- First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then ???, then profit.