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From: glg@sfsup.UUCP (G.Gleason)
Newsgroups: sci.bio
Subject: Re: Non-carbon based life
Message-ID: <1767@sfsup.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 4-Aug-87 17:17:25 EDT
Article-I.D.: sfsup.1767
Posted: Tue Aug  4 17:17:25 1987
Date-Received: Fri, 7-Aug-87 02:36:09 EDT
References: <265@askja.UUCP>
Reply-To: glg@/guest4/glgUUCP (xmpj20000-G.Gleason)
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In article <265@askja.UUCP> frisk@askja.UUCP (Fridrik Skulason) writes:
>As everybody knows, all life - as we know it - is carbon based. Now, what
>I would like to ask is: 

>     Is non-carbon based life possible?

Is carbon based life possible?  If we did not have our own earth as an
example, this would be just a speculative.  When you really think about
it, life is composed of networks of inter-connected processes that
somehow manage to keep reproducing themselves.  Probably the hardest
thing to explain about life is how it got started in the first place.
Present life forms are probably too complex to have come into being in
one step.  Some explainations rely on simpler precursor that are
replaced at a later stage of evolution, and others speculate that it
did not start here, but that inter-stelar microbes of viruses seeded
life on out planet.

>I am not sure if this question can be answered at all, or if one first has
>to answer the following question:

>     What is life?

>which - maybe - is a philosophical question rather than a biological one.

It probably is, but of course to some people it is a matter of definition,
rather than a question to answer.

Food for thought:  If somehow artifitial intellegence developes into a
reality rather than a limited game we play with computers, and a group
of intellegent robots are isolated either by extinction of carbon-based
life, or simply physical separation.  Imagine what a tricky problem it
would be for these robots to speculate about their origins.  Even if
they came accross carbon-based life again, I don't think they would
ever believe they evolved from that, much less that such creatures
actually designed and assembled their ancestors.

Gerry Gleason