[science!!] For further research: some stuff I learned about the likelihood of silicon-based life forms.

Simple version, according to my notes:

* Protein chains (?) are the building blocks of life. They can be disrupted by radiation, of which gamma rays are the most energetic and dangerous.
* Silicon is incredibly plentiful on Earth. However, protein chains made with silicon are very fragile and extremely prone to being smashed by gamma radiation.

* You know what silicon does that's REALLY stable? Silicon + oxygen = rock.

* In any environment where oxygen exists, silicon will almost certainly become rock instead of life.

* Oxygen is incredibly plentiful throughout the universe, and in the unlikely event of an oxygen-poor environment that might otherwise support life, silicon's fragile chemical bonds with other things are very vulnerable to gamma bombardment.

* And it has to be bombarded by SOMETHING because energy (i.e. electromagnetic radiation of some sort) is needed for life.

* (otherwise it'll just sit there?)

* While still unlikely, photosynthesis could impart enough energy. However, silicon is still fragile and oxygen will still encourage it to be rock.

To do:
* research all of these steps and make sure I'm understanding them properly
* invent a silicon-based life form that works anyway

(oxygen-poor viscous environment! slow-light microuniverse!!)

The poor microbiology panelists at Dragoncon had to field way too many questions about this. People really like their silicon-based life forms.

Silicon-based lifeforms are cool!

A question I had reading this plurk: If a silicon-based lifeform goes to a place with oxygen, with they just up and turn to rock?

oh, huh, this is an argument I haven't heard before!

I'd always heard the argument that silicon doesn't form as wide a range of highly flexible compounds at Earth-surface-like temperatures

...so the silicon-based life idea I once dabbled with formed on a high-temperature planet and evolved primarily from geochemical rather than photosynthetic precursors.

TRON They might! o_O Which would be pretty dramatic depending on how much more or less technically realistic one wanted the life forms to be. I'm not sure what scale the proton-chains-being-disrupted-by-gamma-bombardment thing could happen on, but that could be dramatic too if it went to a place with higher radiation.

Exacerangutan Ooooh, I don't think temperature came into the discussion; a lot of it was about how life could have evolved in the more volatile conditions as a planet was getting set up for life, which would include less protection from heavy gamma bombardment which would transmit vital energy to the compounds.

Weirdly enough, they said photosynthesis might be an option if the life could get started in the first place, as lower-spectrum light wouldn't be energetic enough to break the bonds.

Meanwhile, in other formation-of-life news, humans can mass-produce human embryoids now.

(From stem cells, with much concern about where the line is between studying "embryoids" and creating/exploiting Actual Human Life.)

I mean that is a legit point of concern XD

Ooh, those are some good points! I wonder if they could be warned about the gamma bombardment ahead of time and make shielding or other precautions?

Maybe! Assuming silicon life already managed to evolve to sapience, it'd surely figure something out!

Yeah! ^_^ They might not know all the details and might need some freiends to help, but hopefully it won't be a problem!

I mean physics-terminology gamma will obliterate any chemical bond XD but I know biology calls much lower-energy photons "gamma" radiation and nuclear physics sometimes calls any emitted photon "gamma radiation"

terminology \o/

...............THAT. EXPLAINS A LOT.