If silicon-based organisms really exist in this world, what are their living conditions?

SnowflakeFluff
Answered over 1yr ago

Silicon-based bio- dependent environments go in two directions: extremely hot, and extremely cold.

The rest of the conditions are nothing special: organisms can withstand a substantially cataclysmic, noxious environment, as long as there is an energy gradient rather than a mere high energy.

High temperature based silicon-based bio

In 1891, German chemist Julius Scheiner described the possibility of silicon-based life.

In 1893, British chemist James Emerson Reynolds mentioned in his opening speech to the British Association for the Advancement of Science [1] that silicon may support the birth and development of life in extremely hot environments.

In 1894, Robert Bauer also proposed a similar idea [2] .

In 1894, HG Wells [3] wrote:

One is startled towards fantastic imaginings by such a suggestion: visions of silicon-aluminium organisms – why not silicon-aluminium men at once? – wandering through an atmosphere of gaseous sulphur, let us say, by the shores of a sea of ​​liquid iron some thousand degrees or so above the temperature of a blast furnace.
In 1924, British geneticist Haldane proposed that life based on semi-molten silicates may be found in the underground of the planet , obtaining chemical energy through the oxidation of iron.

Asimov oncedescribed 6 life forms biochemically in "Not What We Know: On the Chemical Forms of Life" :

1. Fluorinated silicone organisms with fluorinated silicone as medium;
2. Sulfur fluoride organisms with sulfur as medium;
3. Nucleic acid/protein organisms with water as medium;
4. Nucleic acid/proteins with ammonia as medium Organisms;
5. Lipid compound organisms with methane as a medium;
6. Lipid compound organisms with hydrogen as a medium.
The temperature ranges in which these substances are liquids are very different, corresponding to many different natural environments and the activity of compounds and the intensity of chemical reactions under those conditions.

Under normal pressure, the melting point of sulfur is 115.2 degrees Celsius and the boiling point is 444.6 degrees Celsius.
Fluorinated silicones are generally stable between minus 100 degrees Celsius and 250 degrees Celsius at atmospheric pressure, and can be expected to support life activities in environments between minus 70 degrees Celsius and 220 degrees Celsius.
If you want the silica to be in a liquid state, that requires an ambient temperature above 2000 degrees Celsius.
Silicon can't replace carbon to produce many of the compounds we're familiar with, and silica is so difficult to breathe that you have to resort to things like silicone. We don't currently find any location in the universe other than Earth that contains measurable amounts of silicone -- and methane and water vapor seem to be abundant. Of course, you can directly resort to the silica dust in the plasma to support life, although that's not really silicon-based at all.

Dickinson and Skyler believe that silicon-based organisms may look like crystals. This isa silicon-based animal they imagined roaming among silicon-based vegetation in Extraterrestrials: A Field Guide for Earthlings :

The organism's structural parts may be linked together by glass-fiber -like bio-silicon to form flexible, delicate, and transparent structures.On Earth, the spicules of sponges are a model of bio-silicon, with optical fiber properties and good mechanical properties, which can transmit light and perform physiological functions.

The roots and spicules of a single sponge that grow in the deep sea above 1000 meters are 3 meters long, which is the longest known biosilicon in the world. It is a rare carrier for biosiliconization mechanism and bionic applications. The light transmission experiment of the bone spicules showed that the giant fibrous spicules used as optical fibers can transmit light in the wavelength range of 600nm to 1400nm, while filtering out light with wavelengths less than 600nm and infrared light with wavelengths greater than 1400nm .

If organisms with structures like sponges develop more complex and high mobility, it is conceivable that their nervous system cooperates with the optical fiber system to transmit information efficiently, allowing the body's active appendages to have super response speed and precision unimaginable for ordinary life forms. Attack and defend.It doesn't need to be silicon-based creatures at all - sponges are carbon-based creatures that make efficient use of silicon.Cryogenic-based silicon-based biologics.

There is no need to say more about the powerful artificial intelligence machines in the science fiction works.On cold roaming planets, superconducting matter at low temperatures allows complex electromagnetic phenomena to accumulate spontaneously until intelligence emerges.

ShinedownShimmy
Answered over 1yr ago

If silicon is to form protein chains, the chemistry of silicon is no better than carbon .

I am more inclined to another conjecture: Differently doped silicon wafers form pn junctions, which in turn form "proteins" or "nucleic acids" such as diodes, transistors, MOS, etc., forming integrated circuits in random collisions over billions of years, these "nucleic acids" "In a certain combination of gate circuits, the characteristics of self-programming have been formed, and they have begun to actively search for primary logic gates to improve themselves.

The thinking and communication of this life is done using electrical signals, which means that they think and communicate very efficiently. But limited by the moving speed of objective objects, their ability to transform nature is very slow in their view. Therefore, philosophy is the first discipline to appear, and mathematics is the discipline that quantitatively describes philosophy. Their theories may be well ahead of experiments.

For such a civilization, we can make reasonable assumptions:

To think about communication using electrical signals requires staying away from electrolyte solutions. But it is difficult for a rocky planet without an ocean to form life, because it is difficult for "cells" to move in the solid, which greatly delays the chance of collision. So we can assume this is a planet with an ocean of liquid ammonia.

We can imagine such a galaxy:

This is a young star, slightly less massive than the Sun. The enormous pressure and extremely high temperature inside stars provide good conditions for sustaining fusion reactions . Every fusion will form a terrifying wave of energy, carrying a large number of hydrogen ions and throwing it to the outside. Intense streams of radiation and hydrogen ions continue to bombard several of the planets around it.

Among them is a blue planet. The planet's mass is slightly larger than Earth's, allowing it to hold more hydrogen by gravity. According to Rayleigh scattering , the thick atmosphere blocks layers of high-energy rays, leaving only low-frequency light, which also makes for a colorless sky. Rendered blue. In the Earth's crust, the magnetic field created by the huge amount of magnetic material divides the high-energy particles into the poles, so that the planet's surface is not bombarded by its front.

The planet is a little less than an AU from its star. This distance makes its surface temperature mostly between -70°C and -40°C. This temperature is exactly the temperature at which ammonia is kept in a liquid state.

On a seabed near the coast, dozens of towering silica pillars protrude from the seabed to the sea. This place was originally a hill. After tens of thousands of years of weathering and the washing of chemicals in the liquid ammonia seawater, only the remaining These strong silica and the above traces of boron nitrogen and other compounds are obtained.

On one of the pillars, there are tiny chambers near the sea. Nitrogen gas produced by a certain chemical reaction on the seabed reacts with hydrogen dissolved in the sea under the action of a catalyst present in the chamber, producing some liquid ammonia and releasing a small amount of energy . The energy was applied to a transistor in the chamber, causing the nitrogen-doped part to transport electrons to the boron-doped part. The current makes its curled body—a coiled piece of integrated semiconductor—stretch a little.

The sun has risen. Hundreds of millions of photons hit the sea, and some of them hit these silica pillars at a small angle. According to the law of total reflection, these rays are trapped inside the pillars and can only travel downward.

Inside the chamber, a group of photodiodes began to turn, converting the irradiated photons into electrical current. It fixes that energy in another organ as some kind of nitrate to ensure the release of maintenance heat at night. It reminds me of a cold night - no, it has too few registers to remember what happened last night - no, it doesn't even have a temperature sensor .

It is the fourth time the sun has risen since it began collecting the semiconductors on the stone walls. This is not an easy task. First of all, it must be clear which side of the stone wall contains nitrogen or boron – this needs to be based on the Hall effect – of course, it does not understand the Hall effect, it is only judging whether the voltage is positive or negative. Then, some compound is used to corrode the wall and take out the part it needs. It has now finally accomplished that. Next, it assembles these semiconductors -- just as its core components are assembled.

After four planetary rotations, it struggled to make a great self-replication.

MacauliflowerCulkin
Answered over 1yr ago

The so-called carbon-based life does not mean that the carbon content is particularly high, but in the main structure of life, carbon is the skeleton. Without carbon, there is no organic matter , let alone life.

Life doesn't have to be intelligent, but it has to at least have a component. The intelligence of a single-celled organism is close to 0, but it is still a carbon-based organism.

I am particularly opposed to classifying robots as silicon-based creatures . Why? What is the proportion of silicon in robots? It is nothing more than some used in the CPU. Without the CPU, it is not a creature? This biological view is very narrow. This is like thinking that only human beings are living creatures on earth, and other animals have been expelled from living creatures for being too stupid.

Taking the robots imagined by these humans who don't understand artificial intelligence at all as a kind of creature is inherently problematic. In fact, human beings so far have no idea where intelligence comes from, and they can't even tell where the boundary between intelligence and non-intelligence is. The artificial intelligence that is being boasted now can only be regarded as an automatic tool, and cannot be compared with real intelligence at all. On a par. You see we say that creatures, even the simplest creatures, can forage for food, repair themselves, metabolize, reproduce, inherit, and mutate, not to mention more complicated things, just these few points, Today's robots simply can't do it, not only can't do it, but they don't even know how to do it. All they can do is post false propaganda on the internet all day long to convince the ignorant populace that the age of artificial intelligence is coming, intoxicate it, and pay for it.

If there really is a silicon-based organism, it must be that all the structures of the body, cells (if any), and genetic material are made of silicon as the core of the structure. Such creatures do not have to be very intelligent, but their life activities should revolve around silicon, such as what they eat is mainly silicon, what they excrete is mainly silicon, and what they breathe (if necessary) Also mainly to react with silicon-containing substances. Such creatures must not only be one, but a world, with low-level creatures and high-level creatures, creatures with different environments, some immobile, and some fast-moving ones. As for intelligence, it can only be regarded as some kind of fringe benefit in the process of biological evolution.



Can't you imagine what such a life would be like? That's right, the level of human science and technology is just like this, don't brag about it and think it is omnipotent, you can really imagine that you can win the Nobel Prize, and there is a high probability of a variety of professional awards.