Scientists Confront 'Weird Life' on Other Worlds

SPACE.com ^ | Friday, May 7, 2004 | Leonard David

[PatrickHenry]

The true cause of dinosaur extinction:

[null and void]

Sulfer-based life? Imagine the BO a Sulferite would give off. Come to think of it, there's some bums who hang around the liquor store near my house that just might be sulfer-based life.

As a test you could set a few alight and see if they burn with a blue flame...< /kidding>

[Bloody Sam Roberts]

Gom Tu!

[VadeRetro]

Looking again at this picture ...

I thought perhaps that Barney was wearing an ugly-looking thong which shows his hips to some disadvantage. A look at his other pictures shows to my relief that there is no thong, he's merely naked from the waist down.

[null and void]

Sulfur? Too reactive, wouldn't you say?

In an oxidizing environment, yes. In, say, an SF₆ or H₂S atmosphere, no.

[Bloody Sam Roberts]

Or, more precisely, "Gumptuu".

[dr_who_2]

Try me.

[Cronos]

H2S atmosphere, no.

ooooh, stinky!

[null and void]

*shrug* You get used to it...

[Reeses]

Silicon based life forms are similar to the carbon ones.

[null and void]

*sigh* That's SILICONE. Dagnabit, you have no idea how annoying it is to have my home referred to as "Silicone" Valley....

[longshadow]

"Festival of Repugnant Pink Dinosaurs" placemarker

[devolve]

[Junior]

This is something I don't understand. Silicon-based life need not be stony in appearance, just as carbon-based life need not by, for want of a better word, coaly. Silicon-based life might appear to be similar to carbon-based life; it wouldn't be till you got down to the molecular level that things would begin to appear differently.

[null and void]

Silicon is a bigger atom than carbon. Chemical bonds have a pretty fixed length. Imagine the molecules as beads on a string, in both cases the length of string between the beads is the same. The string with the bigger beads will be less flexible than the string with small beads.

Silicon based life need not be stony, but it will be less bendy. OTOH, it could survive conditions that would make carbon based life coaly...

[PatrickHenry]

Two articles on silicon-based life:
Could Life be based on Silicon rather than Carbon?
silicon-based life.

[VadeRetro]

Could Life be based on Silicon rather than Carbon?

I say "No." My computer disagrees.

[Virginia-American]

read "Ice World" by the late Hal clcment.

The title is a translation of alien words that mean, roughly, "the place where sulfur itself is solid"

[null and void]

Oddly enough, I'm reading "Mission of Gravity" By Hal Clement right now. I'm about half way through it...

[Virginia-American]

One of my favorites.

HC had quite an imagination for aliens well-adapted to their environment. He wrote a short story "Uncommon Sense" where the aliens have one sense that is similar to both sight and smell.