Silicon-Based Life: Difference between revisions

 

== Silicon ==

* The Tekkamen from ''[[Tekkaman Blade]]'' look like they are simply wearing [[Powered Armor]] after their [[Transformation Sequence]], but it's explained in-series that they are actually transmuted into crystalline-based entities.

* ''[[Suzumiya Haruhi]]'': Silicon-based Data lifeforms were {{spoiler|responsible for the mysterious happenings}} in one of the two stories of the eighth volume. But they live on without their bodies. How? That's classified, apparently.

 

 

* Rot Lop Fan, from ''[[Green Lantern|Tales of the Green Lantern Corps Annual # 3]]'', is stated to be a silicon-based life form in a galaxy with no visual light spectrum. He looks like a frog.

** In another DC Universe story by [[Alan Moore]] collected in the same book, there is a rare example of a more realistic portrayal of silicon lives as they would exist at Earth-like temperatures. When their planet is invaded by the power-hungry Spider Guild, the silicon beings, resembling giant stone statues of men, don't even notice because they move at a geologic pace.

 

 

* ''[[Stargate Atlantis]]'': In the ''[http://forum.gateworld.net/threads/71213-Stargate-Dark-Frontier-2.0 Dark Frontier]'' fanfiction, the Shade are a strange hybrid of carbon- and silicon-based life: they are mostly carbon-based but use a powerful acid to digest any mineral in order to build and repair a silicon-based exoskeleton. Their unusual composition also gives them the ability to use ammonia and ''sulfuric acid'' for what we use water. Oh, and they are cold-blooded, capable of draining anything from alkaline batteries to energy shields in order to stay alive for months without feeding in any environment. The biggest ones (few thousand miles across) strip mine entire planets for naquadah and trinium, also draining the planetary core for heat; when they move on, the planet is essentially a dead husk locked in an eternal ice age while the metals are used to build planetoids which serve as hatcheries. Despite being living creatures, they are apparently capable of entering hyperspace.

 

 

* Xenomorphs from the ''[[Alien (franchise)|Alien]]'' franchise are apparently silicon based.

* Space Slugs and Mynocks are described as silicon based in various ''[[Star Wars]]'' sources.

 

 

* ''Sentenced to Prism'' by [[Alan Dean Foster]]. Most life on Prism is silicon based. Foster has a lot of fun with the possibilities: natural [[Frickin' Laser Beams]], rich colouration, lots of armour, a casual approach to being on land or underwater (the inhabitants consider water 'thick air') and so forth.

* The [[Isaac Asimov]] short story "[[wikipedia:The Talking Stone|The Talking Stone]]" was about Silicon-Based Life forms called "siliconies" that lived on asteroids. They survive by absorbing gamma rays from radioactive ores.

 

 

* The Tholians of ''[[Star Trek]]'', as seen in the page picture (taken from ''[[Star Trek: Enterprise]]''). The original Trek just showed the head. The Horta are also this trope.

* ''[[Star Trek: The Next Generation]]'':

 

 

* [[Carl Sagan]] explored this question in [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oa79YA0PqdE this video]: "I wonder if we'll ever find a specimen of life based not on organic molecules, but on something else -- something more exotic." He goes on to describe himself as a "carbon chauvinist."

 

 

* ''[[Dungeons and Dragons]]'':

** Crystal spiders from [[Dark Sun]].

 

 

* ''[[Gunman Chronicles]]'' uses it as a plot point, where {{spoiler|Silicon lifeforms can't digest Carbon lifeforms}}.

* The [http://wiki.uqm.stack.nl/Chenjesu Chenjesu] in ''[[Star Control]]'' are essentially sapient crystals. They are living [[Subspace Ansible|hyperspace receivers]] more sensitive than most sentients who tried managed to build and [[Planet of Hats|make pretty much anything]] from crystalline materials.

 

 

* ''[[Schlock Mercenary]]'': A halfway house between this and regular life: Sergeant Schlock, who is carbosilicate (i.e. based around both carbon and silicon) amorph. In a bit of realism, his biology and biochemistry is pretty clearly shown to be fundamentally different from traditional carbon-based life. Also, they evolved from self-repairing memory banks.

* ''[[Vexxarr]]'' ran into a few of these. Sentient (though rather childlike) rock crabs are [[Nigh Invulnerable]]. Once they were used as living projectiles - impacts that can breach a spaceship hull didn't harm them, and then most internal damage was caused by the crew frantically trying to "repel boarders" using personal beam weapons, while rock crabs simply crawled around and ''fed upon'' direct hits. They are also laced with a high temperture superconductor. Then there are silicon predators - [[Armless Biped]] the size of a boar, feeding on ''them''... They also act as a swarm of foragers for "[http://www.vexxarr.com/archive.php?seldate=092706 predatory moon]" - a [[That's No Moon|huge asteroid-like monster]]. Vexxarr figured out that this requires some exceptionally aggressive chemistry. {{spoiler|From this point on, predatory moons and occasionally individual silicon predators were killed by [[Feed It a Bomb|throwing into their throats]] simple and energetic organics (mostly, sugars), which causes digestion to turn toward chain reaction somewhere halfway and then the thing loses its crap - very fast, and along with pieces of the outer shell if the "charge" was big enough.}}

 

* ''[[Invasion America]]'' has a genetically-engineered species called manglers. A baffled human scientist describes the discovered bones of one as a "silicon analog" rather than carbon-based.

* This trope is invoked in the episode of ''[[The Simpsons]]'' when Homer encounters an alien.

 

 

* Silicon is more abundant than carbon on the Earth's surface, and yet Earth life is almost exclusively carbon-based. The reason for this is because using silicon instead of carbon is only an advantage in hellishly hot environments (around 300 degrees Fahrenheit), where silicon compounds would remain stable while carbon compounds would break down. It's speculated that such silicon-based life would actually be ''silicone''-based life, as silicones can bond with organic compounds just like the carbon backbones in our biology (silicones are silicon-oxygen chains used in synthetic rubber, engine lubricant, and breast implants). It would use a substance such as sulfuric acid as a solvent in the same way we use water (as it remains liquid under high temperature) and breathe pure fluorine (which has an attraction to silicon, and unlike oxygen, doesn't combine with it to form sand). To compensate for the vastly different methods of energy production and consumption, it would probably have physiology most closely comparable to fungus if not something stranger (the more popular crystalline formations would only be found in pure silicon-based life, not silicone-based life). Hilariously, they'd be [[Made of Explodium|prone to exploding]] on [[No Biochemical Barriers|contact with an earth-like atmosphere]].

** Even weirder are the hypothetical sulfur and fluorosilicone based-life, who would live in even ''hotter'' environments, and at the hotter end, use ''molten rock'' as a solvent instead of water.

== Other Elements and Compounds ==

 

* ''[[Evolution (film)|Evolution]]'' has nitrogen-based life. Since this makes them giant piles of azides, they are literally [[Made of Explodium]]. Cleverly enough, evolution has turned this into an advantage: extreme heat catalyzes their rapid cellular reproduction and growth. Combined with rapid mutations, this is why they seem to evolve before our eyes [[Evolutionary Levels|(such as a field of them suffocating in our atmosphere, with one able to gasp for life long enough to start producing more offspring already better able to breathe our air, then growing wings and flying away).]].

 

 

* ''[[Animorphs]]'': While they don't discuss what element they're based on, the Venber in one story are "not carbon-based" as they melt above freezing temperatures. Probably ammonia. It's been speculated that ammonia-based life could exist on extremely cold planets.

* [[Arthur C. Clarke]]

 

 

* Another ''[[X Files]]'' episode featured ammonia-based alien brain worms that rode to Earth on an asteroid in prehistoric times and were hiding out at the North Pole. How they were able to take over the bodies of the human scientists that were trying to study them, despite the fact that not only is their biochemistry obviously incompatible, but being inside a human body for any length of time should have ''melted'' the little bastards is, of course, never adequately explained.

* ''[[Doctor Who]]''

 

 

* ''[[GURPS]]: Space'' has suggestions for hydrogen and sulfur based lifeforms as well as silicon based ones.

* ''[[Star*Drive]]'' uses a page in its ''Alien Compendium'' sourcebook to explain six different classes of biochemistry, based on "liquid medium," "reagent for cellular respiration," and "compounds or elements that can create very complex organic molecules," which correlate well with the GURPS supplement described above. Furthermore, each type is only found on certain classes of planets. These classes are Class I: Terran (habitable), Class II: Minimal (minor life support required due to climatic extremes, atmospheric conditions, etc.), Class III: Extreme (major life support required due to intolerable climate or atmosphere), Class IV: Space (including asteroids, rings, etc.), and Class V: Jovian (extreme life support required).

 

 

* The Volus of the [[Mass Effect]] universe have a biochemistry based on Ammonia. As a result, they're forced to wear environment suits anywhere that's not a planet catered specifically to their biology. They just can't breathe in an atmosphere that isn't ammonia-rich. Their flesh will also split apart and rupture because they evolved on a planet with an extremely high pressure atmosphere, so their skin can't hold together under lower air pressures.

 

 

* A NASA astrobiology team recently found microorganisms in a toxic (to everyone but them) lake in California which use Arsenic in place of Phosphorus in their biomolecules, such as DNA or ATP. However, the announcement was [http://www.theatlanticwire.com/opinions/view/opinion/Is-NASAs-Arsenic-based-Life-Discovery-Flim-Flam-6111 contested] because of issues with the announcement. Regardless, [http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2010/12/its_not_an_arsenic-based_life.php these lifeforms are still primarily C-H-O-N based, like everything else on Earth], and ''can'' use Arsenic in place of Phosphorus if they're forced to, with a performance decrease. It's not as if they like it. They just don't die from it, unlike most other Earth lifeforms.

* In 2011 [http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn20906-lifelike-cells-are-made-of-metal.html it was proven that metal oxides can function in a manner similar to carbon compounds in the formation of life.]