Termyn8or
Posts: 18681
Joined: 11/12/2005
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GT, my browser probably wouldn't like that site, but let me say a few things.
Storms on other planets are nothing new. But remember, unlike here they involve methane or ammonia gases condensing and evaporating and all that, rather than water. It is a very different world, literally.
I read this encyclopedia when I was a kid and got ahold of a slightly newer version of it, and when I crash I read a little a but almost every night. I just want to. I know the inforation is out of date but so what ? I ignored parts of it the first time, and now I discover more. Win win.
Well recently I ran across an entry on silicon based life. I know that it was in scifi and probably what prompted the inclusion of the entry in the encyclopedia, but they treated the subject very rationally and made a good case, but not for or against the possibility, but it did come out in the final analysis as against the probablility.
What they said is that because of the properties of silicon the enviroment would have to vastly different, and not only that, but unusual, I THINK, in the universe almost. They went through many of the things that happen in the carbon cycle, which is us. How diffwerent species have a symbiotic relationship. They expounded on how plant and animal life exist in a symbiotic relationship, one needing oxygen and the other needing carbon dioxide.
They the explored the differences in the physical properties of carbon and silicon. Silicon dioxide is a solid at any temperature in which we can survive, and they went into why it is highly unlikely that anything would survive in any environment that would change that. Additionally that this life would be unable to develop into a sentient state, because just surviving would be such a bitch.
But they went on anyway. Their conclusions were that if it were to happen, animals would have to piss out salicitic acid or something like that, and that the only circumstances under which life could be supported would be those in which some sort of oxidation and un-oxidation would be able to take place.
They then postulated what such an environment would be. It would have to be a planet with many times the density of Earth, and that makes it a foregone conclusion that we could never survive there. It would have to maintain an atmospheric pressure many times that of ours and therefore the gravity would have to be so strong that we would not be able to move, even if we could survive in such an atmosphere. They also said that the sunlight would have to be many times, I mean MANY, like hundreds of times the solar radiation. It would have to be more in the first place, but the density of the atmosphere would block most of it, meaning their sun would have to be extremely powerful.
However they never dismissed the possibility, just as those on a planet with silicon based life should not dismiss the possibility of life on our type of planet. I found the entry very refreshing and interesting. They kept an open mind. They used what the understood about physics to explain something that is only a theory at best. But they ruled out nothing. I will be reading more.
I am sure that many orgasnisms could live in environments that would blow our mind, but I accept that they will probably be microorganisms or something like that. And even if they were sentient, we would probably never have any means of communicating with them.
Actually just now I thought of scifi, ST TOS. The Horta. Moves through rock like we move through air, uses a strong acid. Kinda sounds like what these people said. I can get the bibliography if you like, but does it matter ? I the book, the idea was not discarded as impossible, but they seem to have proven it improbable.
But why silicon ? There are other elements that have dioxides that are gaseous in an environment like ours. In the 1950s. a nitrogen cycle life form was postulated in scifi. From what I could glean from this entry in ( the encyclopedia YPSE. I'm sure noone has heard of it) , a nitrogen cycle is alot more likely than a silicon cycle. I will have to look that up and see what they have to say about that.
I find it all fascinating.
T^T
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