Why did Earth choose carbon-based life over silicon-based life? What does silicon-based life look like?
The difference between carbon-based life and silicon-based life
From a macro perspective, the earth is a very ordinary planet in the vast sea of stars, but from the perspective of life, the ordinary earth is not ordinary at all, and even the word "legend" is not an exaggeration.
Just the right distance from the star, and the protection of the atmosphere, makes the ambient temperature of the earth comfortable, and liquid water can also be retained on the surface. In this natural "cradle", the earth creatures enjoy all the beauty of life.
However, it is only the beauty that can be enjoyed on earth. Outside the earth, the splendid cosmic space is actually full of dangers, which is extremely bad for life on earth.
In the solar system, besides the earth, the most comfortable planet is undoubtedly Mars, but the so-called "comfort" is only relative. Without any scientific and technological power, there is no way for life on earth to survive on Mars, because here The atmosphere is thin, liquid water is extremely scarce, and the strong temperature difference between day and night is almost unbearable for all life.
As for Earth's other "sister" - Venus, its environment is even worse. The greenhouse effect that has been completely out of control has turned Venus into a "pressure cooker", where even machinery cannot "survive" for more than 20 minutes. , not to mention the flesh-and-blood creatures of the earth.
However, this so-called "bad" is actually only for carbon-based life. As far as we know, all life forms on earth are carbon-based.
Why?
Since the rapid development of molecular biology, human beings have discovered one thing: no matter what kind of life or life form the earth is, all are composed of 25 elements, without exception.
Taking human cells as an example, 96% of the total mass is composed of oxygen (65%), carbon (18%), hydrogen (10%), nitrogen (3%), and the rest is some trace elements, such as calcium , phosphorus, iron, etc.
Someone should have discovered that the oxygen content in the total mass of cells is as high as 65%. Why is it called carbon-based life instead of oxygen-based life?
The reason is very simple. In the cells of living organisms on earth, most of the oxygen does not exist in the form of elemental substances, but in the form of water. The role of water in stabilizing cell structure and function is far less than that of another element, carbon. Therefore, it is said that life on earth is carbon-based rather than oxygen-based.
Why did life choose carbon as the key element and not others?
High school chemistry tells us that the atoms in a molecule are connected together by "chemical bonds". We can understand chemical bonds as hooks. The hooks of atoms are connected to each other, which constitutes a molecule.
However, each atom has a different number of hooks. For example, a hydrogen atom has only one hook, which means it only hooks on one atom, and an oxygen atom has two hooks, which can hook up to two atoms.
In contrast, the carbon atom is very powerful, because it has four hooks, which means that it can hook four atoms at the same time, thus giving birth to the basis of organic compounds - the carbon skeleton. Scientists refer to molecules with carbon as "organic molecules".
With the innate advantage of having a hook, carbon elements are like building a castle, building a colorful carbon-based life and carbon-based world.
There are many more elements than carbon "arms", aren't they more capable of building complex molecular structures? Why didn't life be born?
In the particle world, it’s not that the more arms the better, although the heavier (behind the periodic table) elements have more arms, a very fatal problem will appear after they are sufficiently complex—stability is not good, This fundamentally prevents the appearance of life.
In addition, there is another important factor that determines the ability of carbon atoms to stand out, that is, the activity of carbon atoms themselves. All reactions in organisms are chemical in nature, such as pupil dilation, the production of various sensations, etc. Only highly reactive carbon atoms can ensure that these reactions occur quickly.
The earth is all carbon-based life, so are there life forms based on other elements outside the earth?
No one can give the answer to this question, because human's understanding of the universe has even talked about a lot of "fur". However, if life forms based on other elements really exist, then there is a high probability that it will be silicon-based life.
Why? The main reason is that silicon and carbon are very similar, both in terms of morphological structure and chemical properties.
Of course, although carbon and silicon are very similar, similarity is not equivalent to the same, so silicon-based life and carbon-based life must have very different appearances and interiors.
If silicon-based life existed, what would they look like?
First, in an aerobic environment, carbon in carbon-based life combines with oxygen in the environment to form carbon dioxide, which is easy to expel from the body because it is a gas.
When silicon-based life encounters oxygen, silicon dioxide will appear, which is the main component of glass. It is a solid, so it is not easy to be directly excreted from the body. Therefore, the respiratory system of silicon-based life is definitely different from carbon-based life.
In the imagination of science fiction writers or scientists, silicon-based life is almost always covered with a layer of crystals, similar to a crystal that moves, and their bodies are devoid of water, replaced by hydrofluoride that dissolves silica acid or sodium hydroxide.
Second, silicon has more stable chemical properties than carbon, such as being more resistant to high temperatures, which carbon cannot match. Therefore, carbon-based life prefers the comfortable environment of low temperature like the earth, while silicon-based life prefers the environment of high temperature and high pressure, because this environment can improve their activity.
Although silicon is more stable than carbon, it is not without its weaknesses. From the chemical point of view, silicon has no way to maintain stability in water, so silicon-based life must be afraid of water, and the only defect in the universe does not matter.
Just imagine, if a kind of life likes high pressure and high temperature, does not need water, and does not need oxygen to breathe, then the number of planets that they can survive on is extremely astonishing. Only such planets in the solar system can’t be counted, let alone the vastness. space out.
In this case, the earth, which is heaven for carbon-based life, becomes a "purgatory" for silicon-based life, so from this point of view, the universe may be more suitable for silicon-based life.
Finally, it should be noted that silicon-based life only exists in theory, and basically does not exist in reality, because silicon-based complex molecules are so fragile that they cannot form living cellular structures.
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