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Silicon life forms - An outlook of it's feasibilities

The sci-fi movies has fascinated us with lots of crazy stuffs, where one of it’s kind is the silicon based life forms.  The abundance and the chemical similarities with carbon made the science fiction authors think about the possibilities of silicon based life forms in their stories.

Recent research from the laboratory of Frances Arnold shows, for the first time, that bacteria can create organosilicon compounds. This does not prove that silicon- or organosilicon-based life is possible, but shows that life could be persuaded to incorporate silicon into its basic components.

SILICON - A HYPOTHETICAL ALTERNATIVE TO CARBON

·       There are 118 elements in the periodic table, then why many scientists think about the silicon based life forms?     Silicon is 150 times more abundant than carbon in the Earth’s crust, then why no for silicon based lives?

·        We know that silicon and carbon are chemically similar because they both are non-metals, having same number of valence electrons, almost equal density, etc,  these characteristics of silicon may kindle us to think about the silicon life forms. But when we dig it deeper, we can understand it’s impossibilities.

   Carbon - the key to life:

·    To understand why silicon life is impossible on earth, we need to know the why carbon is most suitable for life forms.

  • Carbon has some unique characteristics which makes it the backbone of the lives on Earth.  
  • Carbon in it's oxide form (CO2) helps to trap the heat waves close to the Earth, which is greenhouse gas that keeps the planet warm.
  • It helps the Earth to withhold the energy from the sun, preventing it from escaping back to the space.
  • Without carbon the Earth's ocean would have been a frozen solid.

WHY SILICON IS NOT A REPLACEMENT OF CARBON?

  • When carbon reacts with oxygen, we get carbon dioxide. But when silicon reacts with oxygen, we get silica in the form of solid, which is one of the basic reason why silicon can’t support life.
  • In photosynthesis, the carbon dioxide reacts with water to produce glucose which is an important energy source for all the cells.
  •  But this is not the case in silicon. Because silicon dioxide can’t react with water because it is difficult to break the giant covalent structure. 
  • Carbon makes four atomic bonds of equal strength with it’s neighbors which are well suited to form long-chain molecules that are the basis of lives such as proteins and DNA, but in the case of silicon the first bond is stronger than the other bond. 
  •  Carbon reacts with different organic elements and forms carbon-carbon, carbon-oxygen, carbon-hydrogen and carbon-nitrogen of similar bond strength, so atoms can be swiped easily (chemical reactions occur).  However for silicon the bond strength of silicon-oxygen, silicon-hydrogen, silicon-carbon varies drastically.  
  • The life forms that we observe, inhales oxygen and exhales carbon dioxide. If we think this process in terms of silicon based life forms, oxygen will be inhaled and would exhale silicon dioxide (rock). 
  • The breathing out sand is not a new thought, in a science fiction magazine “Wonder Stories” written by Stanley Weinbaum, 1934 quoted that an astronaut encountered a life form that was gray with one arm and a mouth that extruded bricks. 

 Silicon may be the building blocks of lives for the planets which are completely different from Earth. For example, silicon lives will be attractive for the planet Venus with sulphuric acid rainfall from it’s clouds or in the surface of Jupiter’s moon ‘Io’

References:

  • https://www.nbcnews.com/mach/science/silicon-based-life-may-be-more-just-science-fiction-n748266
  • https://www.airspacemag.com/daily-planet/silicon-based-life-staple-science-fiction-may-not-be-likely-after-all-180975083/
  • https://www.thegreatcoursesdaily.com/misconceptions-of-science-is-silicon-based-life-possible/










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