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Silicon-based life Like carbon, silicon can create molecules that are sufficiently large to carry biological information; however, the scope of possible silicon chemistry is far more limited than that of carbon. [citation needed] Silicon dioxide biochemistry Non-water solvents Silicon dioxide-based life
They suggest that Earth-like planets may be very rare, but non-carbon-based complex life could possibly emerge in other environments. The most frequently mentioned alternative to carbon is silicon-based life, while ammonia and hydrocarbons are sometimes suggested as alternative solvents to water.
The term was used as early as 1973, when scientist Carl Sagan described it and other human chauvinisms that limit imagination of possible extraterrestrial life. [4] It suggests that human beings, as carbon-based life forms who have never encountered any life that has evolved outside the Earth's environment, may find it difficult to envision radically different biochemistries.
Since the advent of the microprocessor in the late 1960s, such machines are often classed as "silicon-based life". Other examples of fictional "silicon-based life" can be seen in the 1967 episode "The Devil in the Dark" from Star Trek: The Original Series, in which a living rock creature's biochemistry is based on silicon. [44] In the 1994 The ...
The exact timing at which life emerged on Earth is unknown. Minimum age estimates are based on evidence from the geologic rock record. The earliest physical evidence of life so far found consists of microbialites in the Nuvvuagittuq Greenstone Belt of Northern Quebec, in banded iron formation rocks at
Silicone is also sometimes used in breast implants, contact lenses, explosives and pyrotechnics. [76] Silly Putty was originally made by adding boric acid to silicone oil. [77] Other silicon compounds function as high-technology abrasives and new high-strength ceramics based upon silicon carbide. Silicon is a component of some superalloys.
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In this case, silicon-based alien life forms can be intelligent just in case they have these "right" causal powers; i.e. they possess neurons with synaptics connections that have the power to reciprocally stimulate each other.