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A comment on Earth was born dry until a cosmic collision made it a blue planet. Parent comment

Re:Earth was born dry until a cosmic collision made it a blu... by caymanjim on Saturday October 04, 2025 @10:09AM (#45473433)
There's a reason life is carbon-based, and it's not random. It's the only element that works, due to abundance; ability to form many bonds; bonds that are just durable enough but not too durable. There's plenty of sci-fi about silicon-based life, but that's infeasible fantasy. And no other elements have any hope. If you have carbon-based life, you need water as solvent and medium.

It's a pretty safe assumption that all life requires water.

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Re:Earth was born dry until a cosmic collision made it a blu... by marcosdumay on Saturday October 04, 2025 @12:51PM (#45474679)
> due to abundance; ability to form many bonds; bonds that are just durable enough but not too durable

Well, the thing is that all of those are environment-dependent.

We do have data on a somewhat diverse set of environments, and it's enough to confirm what we knew about the flexibility of carbon. But it's not enough to disprove the alternatives.

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Re:Earth was born dry until a cosmic collision made it a blu... by Animats on Saturday October 04, 2025 @04:40PM (#45476511)
> There's plenty of sci-fi about silicon-based life, but that's infeasible fantasy.

Right. Silicon dioxide is quartz.

Longer analysis.[1]

[1] https://www.the-ies.org/analysis/does-silicon-based-life-exi...

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