[extropy-chat] Scientists Confront 'Weird Life' on Other Worlds

[Mike Lorrey]

--- "Robert J. Bradbury" <bradbury at aeiveos.com> wrote:
> away from the star (read comets for the most part).  So if the
> planets are not large enough to serve as good comet targets (e.g.
> Venus & Earth -- to a lesser extent Mars) and/or lack the gravity
> to hold onto CO & CO2 in gaseous form and/or you get some Jupiter
> type planets capturing or hurling comets out of the system then you
> get planets in the liquid water zone that tend to be carbon poor
> and Si/Mg rich.  (I chose to discuss Si because it can form 4 bonds
> while Mg can typically form only 2).

And carbon can form what? 8 or 12 bonds? That's a good reason right
there: you get more diversity in possible bonds, thus a more complex
chemistry capable of interacting in expnentially greater numbers of
ways.

> 
> Also Mike, if you have my PhysProp.xls spreadsheet and look at the
> BondStrength sheet you will see (if I'm interpreting it correctly
> that the C-C bond strength is almost identical to the Si-Si bond
> strength so I'm not quite sure why carbon is the basis for organic
> life while silicon is the basis, in part, for geochemistry (and
> semiconductors...).  A puzzle perhaps.

Almost ain't quite the same as the same, is it?

Lets also look at possible catalysts for the two chemistries. Carbons
greater number of bonds means greater number of possible catalysts. 
This is a key point the creationists always miss when they yak about
how evolution hasn't had enough time to result in man given normal
chemical odds, they always ignore the role that catalysts play in
speeding things up.

=====
Mike Lorrey
Chairman, Free Town Land Development
"Live Free or Die, Death is not the Worst of Evils."
                                       - Gen. John Stark
Blog: http://www.xanga.com/home.aspx?user=Sadomikeyism


	
		
__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Movies - Buy advance tickets for 'Shrek 2'
http://movies.yahoo.com/showtimes/movie?mid=1808405861