Silicon-based lifeforms

The Nomad · Post by **The Nomad** » 2003-07-12 09:38am

I'd like to introduce a silicon-based lifeform in my sci-fi, but I don't know exactly what the properties and requirements of a silicon-based lifeform would be ( I don't know jack about silicon-based chemistry ).
Is is that plausible in the first place ? I've heard that the molecular bounds of silicon would be unfit for what we would call "life" ( compared to carbon ).
Would it use a genetic material comparable to DNA ? What kind of temperature/radiation exposure would it like/withstand ? What kind of gravity/atmosphere/pressure would be convenient ?
What could it use as a nutrient ? Would "M-class planet" chemicals as commonplace as dioxygen, water, nitrogen etc. be harmful to it ?

I know it is a bit dodgy to care about the plausibility of such a lifeform in a scifiverse that uses neutronium/quarkonium or black holes as fuel, gravity-based as well as inertia/reaction-less sublight drives and at least four different kinds of FTL ( tachyon-transition, wormhole gates related to a spacefolding propulsion, a warp drive comparable to the Dahakverse's Enchanach Drive, and finally an extra-dimensional hyperdrive )... but I'd like to hear your opinion and advice about it.

Admiral Valdemar · Post by **Admiral Valdemar** » 2003-07-12 11:56am

As plausible as flying into and then out of a black hole's "crack".

Montcalm · Post by **Montcalm** » 2003-07-12 12:25pm

Admiral Valdemar wrote:As plausible as flying into and then out of a black hole's "crack".

You know there is a silicon based lifeform here on Earth,and "She`s not that innocent"

SirNitram · Post by **SirNitram** » 2003-07-12 12:26pm

Well, it's probably best not to pry too hard at the exacts of a silicon lifeform(It's my old thing about wanting to keep away from details to avoid Treknobabble). Regardless of someone's comment.. Silicon based lifeforms are quite plausible. Silicon, after all, forms the most chemical bonds outside of carbon.

Most estimations I've seen have silicon lifeforms being quite slow. Nutrient intake would be, of course, more mineral-rich than a carbon being. That doesn't rule out carbon nutrients, though, anymore than a carbon-based lifeform survives without minerals. Hard to say.

As for the planets.. Look. The thing about life is it'll adapt to the enviroment around it. As long as theirs resources for it to intake and G's enough to hold it to the ground, it can evolve there, in theory.

As for the energy source.. Hawking worked out how you could get energy from a black hole, but gravity drives are a horrible, horrible brainbug.

Admiral Valdemar · Post by **Admiral Valdemar** » 2003-07-12 12:55pm

Silicon has too powerful an affinity to O2, I'd love to see a decent sized silicon based life form try and breathe without coughing what passes for a pulmonary system out of itself. That and silicon based analogues of carbon molecules have crap chirality, so good luck trying to get something to have anywhere near the diverse macromolecules a carbon based organism has. The fact that no such organisms exist on this planet nor have been hinted at on other planets is a big neon light sign against silicon organisms.

It's a brainbug, there may be organisms on this planet that use silicon (certain plankton ciliates for instance) but a fully silicon based life form would be amazingly inefficient, ammonia based life forms would be more plausible even.

kojikun · Post by **kojikun** » 2003-07-12 01:07pm

It's kind of irrelevant because a silicon based lifeform would be as rigid as glass and couldn't survive unless it were something like a plant.

Admiral Valdemar · Post by **Admiral Valdemar** » 2003-07-12 01:13pm

kojikun wrote:It's kind of irrelevant because a silicon based lifeform would be as rigid as glass and couldn't survive unless it were something like a plant.

Or The Andromeda Strain, but that was a virus really... or something similar.

I can't see how it would matter given the amount of technobabble already in the story it would seem, silicon life forms aren't as far fetched as say, black hole fuel or even FTL. But they are bunk.

kojikun · Post by **kojikun** » 2003-07-12 02:01pm

Admiral Valdemar wrote:I can't see how it would matter given the amount of technobabble already in
the story it would seem, silicon life forms aren't as far fetched as say, black
hole fuel or even FTL. But they are bunk.

If the atmosphere was very O2 depleted, like Mars, then it might be
possible for anaerobic silicon microbes to form, but it doesn't matter, cause
they'd be sluggish even if they were carbon based, let alone being made of
sand.

GrandMasterTerwynn · Post by **GrandMasterTerwynn** » 2003-07-12 02:55pm

The Nomad wrote:I'd like to introduce a silicon-based lifeform in my sci-fi, but I don't know exactly what the properties and requirements of a silicon-based lifeform would be ( I don't know jack about silicon-based chemistry ).
Is is that plausible in the first place ? I've heard that the molecular bounds of silicon would be unfit for what we would call "life" ( compared to carbon ).
Would it use a genetic material comparable to DNA ? What kind of temperature/radiation exposure would it like/withstand ? What kind of gravity/atmosphere/pressure would be convenient ?
What could it use as a nutrient ? Would "M-class planet" chemicals as commonplace as dioxygen, water, nitrogen etc. be harmful to it ?

I know it is a bit dodgy to care about the plausibility of such a lifeform in a scifiverse that uses neutronium/quarkonium or black holes as fuel, gravity-based as well as inertia/reaction-less sublight drives and at least four different kinds of FTL ( tachyon-transition, wormhole gates related to a spacefolding propulsion, a warp drive comparable to the Dahakverse's Enchanach Drive, and finally an extra-dimensional hyperdrive )... but I'd like to hear your opinion and advice about it.

Because of silicon's properties, the only 'silicon-based life forms' you'd have in any universe would be the generic and traditional robots, super-intelligent computers, and the like.

HemlockGrey · Post by **HemlockGrey** » 2003-07-12 03:04pm

Don't reason it through. Just make it very, very alien and don't even try to offer any sort of logical explanation.

The Nomad · Post by **The Nomad** » 2003-07-12 03:44pm

SirNitram wrote:As for the energy source.. Hawking worked out how you could get energy from a black hole, but gravity drives are a horrible, horrible brainbug.

I'd like to know about a formula that would give the amount of Hawking radiation emitted by a black hole, but right now I just assume that the ones I use are very massive ( between femtoscale and attoscale ) and contained in inertialess tanks.
Well, the EM-based inertialess drive ( which assumes that ZPF is truly responsible for a particle's inertia ) out-classes the gravitic one by orders of magnitudes in performances and efficiency... that's just a way of getting rid of the propellant mass for "slow" manoeuvering ( orbiting a planet - manoeuvering in a dogfight ).

Admiral Valdemar wrote:It's a brainbug, there may be organisms on this planet that use silicon (certain plankton ciliates for instance) but a fully silicon based life form would be amazingly inefficient, ammonia based life forms would be more plausible even.

Nearly all lifeforms in my scifiverse are carbon-based, but I'd like to introduce some diversity...
You say that a fully silicon-based lifeform would be inefficient, but what about "hybrid" lifeforms, like the silicon-fluor based Rull of The War against the Rull ( A.E. Van Vogt ) ?

kojikun · Post by **kojikun** » 2003-07-12 05:18pm

gravity drives arent THAT big a brain bug. they would work, but you'd need a gravity source that doesnt require mass, and can dissociate the field from the source, which we've never seen happen.

The Nomad · Post by **The Nomad** » 2003-07-12 05:25pm

I grasped from an article that gravitons can travel FTL via wormholes. Why not stealing gravitons from distant, powerful gravitational fields ?

That, or Brandon Bray's explanation on B5's gravimetric engines

TheFeniX · Post by **TheFeniX** » 2003-07-12 06:36pm

I've read that for Silicon Life to actually evolve on a planet, very specific incidents like all the carbon being trapped way beneath the surface would have to happen. If there was any decent amount of carbon, it would react many times before the silicon would to generate life.

Admiral Valdemar · Post by **Admiral Valdemar** » 2003-07-12 07:09pm

The Nomad wrote:Nearly all lifeforms in my scifiverse are carbon-based, but I'd like to introduce some diversity...
You say that a fully silicon-based lifeform would be inefficient, but what about "hybrid" lifeforms, like the silicon-fluor based Rull of The War against the Rull ( A.E. Van Vogt ) ?

That'd probably be worse given it'd be like having an Apple Mac running with a Windows PC, to have a hybrid would make things complex to say the least.

Go with normal alien biology, something that would evolve as we'd understand but acclimated to their planet's environment. Just because all life is carbon based doesn't mean not coming up with something different will mean boring same old stuff. It's what works and that's best, IMHO.

Post by **NecronLord** » 2003-07-13 09:03am

Upon seeing this my first reaction was "Go to california, there's millions of them...

kojikun · Post by **kojikun** » 2003-07-13 01:31pm

that explanation of how their gravity drives work is bloated. all you need is to discover a way to produce a gravity field with an unusual shape (instead of a dent, it creates a barbell shape with one lobe being pull and the other being push) as a result the center of the force is on the generator but the centers of each polarity is off the generator.

The Nomad · Post by **The Nomad** » 2003-07-14 04:03am

Why should I care ? The explanation will appear only in my technical manual, not in the fictions themselves, and I'll be able to correct it at will.

His Divine Shadow · Post by **His Divine Shadow** » 2003-07-14 05:57am

What about that movie Evolution? Nitrogen based, or what was it? Funky-ish...

CaptainChewbacca · Post by **CaptainChewbacca** » 2003-07-14 12:28pm

Ok, here´s a brief rundown of different theoretical kinds of life:

Carbon: We know it, we love it, they all look like us but with bumpy forheads.

Silicon: Less diversity of macromolecules, and the creatures would have to be highly energetic in order to get any sort of electron transfer through the silicon chains.

Nitrogen: Again, not many different macromolecules, but their metabolism would be more efficient and could happen at similar temps.

Sulfur: A long shot, but if you include metal compounds like iron and copper into their bodies, you can get some rather fun structures to work with.

If you want silicon, I suggest combining it with some kind of energy that keeps them contained.

My own scifi has a nitrogen/hydrocarbon based alien race that also incorporates silica for skeletal support. They evolved in the outer reaches of their system, so lower temperatures allowed it.

Above all, have fun.

Admiral Valdemar · Post by **Admiral Valdemar** » 2003-07-14 07:26pm

His Divine Shadow wrote:What about that movie Evolution? Nitrogen based, or what was it? Funky-ish...

Do not take your science facts from a movie which had Mulder and co. kill off a giant alien invasion by shooting Head & Shoulders up the bad guy's anus.

kojikun · Post by **kojikun** » 2003-07-14 07:33pm

Admiral Valdemar wrote:Do not take your science facts from a movie which had Mulder and co. kill off a giant alien invasion by shooting Head & Shoulders up the bad guy's anus.

Hey, they were right about the contents of H&S.

MKSheppard · Post by **MKSheppard** » 2003-07-14 07:45pm

CaptainChewbacca wrote:Ok, here´s a brief rundown of different theoretical kinds of life:

Carbon: Fucks me up the ass.

go back to TK, fucktard.

*whips out Railgun and aims*

<(BZAPP!!!)>

{SPLAT!!}

*Shep laughs with glee as the Depleted-Uranium Rail Slug hits flesh at Mach 8. The massive hydroshock, the flash-vaporization, the violent stripping of flesh from bone, bone immediately shattering into tiny razor-sharp shards and getting propelled throughout his body at half the slug's speed instantly severs Chookie's body at the waist and flays it into a rapidly-expanding cloud of chunky gibs, jagged ribbons of cooked meat, and crimson salsa...*

IMPRESSIVE!!

LordShaithis · Post by **LordShaithis** » 2003-07-16 02:51am

What's this goofy railgun shit anyway?

ME SHOOT U IN HEAD! BOOM!!1!

His Divine Shadow · Post by **His Divine Shadow** » 2003-07-16 03:32am

Admiral Valdemar wrote:
His Divine Shadow wrote:What about that movie Evolution? Nitrogen based, or what was it? Funky-ish...
Do not take your science facts from a movie which had Mulder and co. kill off a giant alien invasion by shooting Head & Shoulders up the bad guy's anus.

Why not?

StarDestroyer.Net BBS

Silicon-based lifeforms

Silicon-based lifeforms

Re: Silicon-based lifeforms