Silicon based lifeforms inside earth!

[Gisgangusur Profile]

Intraterrestrial Aliens:

SETI spends enormous amounts of money and resources looking for life outside of Earth's realm, but life forms so alien that scientists may simply not have recognized evidence of their existence could inhabit the Earth, according to a leading scientist.

Dr Tom Gold, emeritus professor of astronomy at Cornell University in America, believes that organisms based on silicon - completely unrelated to all the carbon-based life man has encountered so far - may live at great depths.

In a forthcoming book he will suggest that scientists should take the possibility more seriously. Gold, who is a member of the Royal Society, previously predicted that vast amounts of more conventional bacteria live miles down within the Earth's crust. Scientists initially dismissed the idea, but many now agree with him.



Silicon Lifeform

"So long as nobody suspects there could be silicon-based life, we may just not be clever enough to identify it," he said last week.

Rocks bearing signs of silicon-based organisms may already be sitting in laboratories, he believes, with their significance overlooked.

Every known living organism, from bacteria to mankind, is based on the chemistry of carbon, which forms the complex molecules such as DNA that are central to our existence. Scientists believe that if extraterrestrial life is found, the chances are that it, too, will be carbon-based.

Rock Life IntraterrestrialSilicon has many chemical similarities to carbon, prompting scholars and science fiction writers to dream up new life forms. Huge "space slugs" that can swallow space ships appear in the film The Empire Strikes Back; in an episode of Star Trek a rock-like alien attacked Captain Kirk's crew; and killer parasites based on silicon surfaced in The X-Files when scientists explored the interior of a volcano.

Gold's life forms, if they exist, would most likely be micro-organisms capable of withstanding enormous pressures and temperatures, living in tiny pores inside rock deep within the Earth's crust. They could draw energy from dissolved gases and surrounding minerals.



Gold's ideas, which center on an alternative explanation for oil and mineral deposits, will be published in his book, The Deep Hot Biosphere, in January.

"It is speculative but logical that there could be a large bio-chemical system very deep down which works better at high temperatures and pressures," he said.

Others are skeptical. Dr Harold Klein, who headed the Viking Lander project team that searched for signs of life on Mars in the 1970s, pointed out that silicon was far inferior to carbon at forming the complex polymers crucial for life.

"I personally doubt the idea of silicon-based life. If we do find organisms far down inside the Earth, I'd bet they'd be carbon-based," he said.

Nevertheless, he urges future missions to Mars to carry an instrument to test for non-carbon-based organisms - just in case. It is possible that the chemistry of silicon is altered sufficiently by the great temperatures and pressures deep in the Earth to make it more suited to forming complex molecules, according to David Noever, a research scientist at NASA's new Astrobiology Institute.

He said some scientists at the American space agency were treating the idea of silicon-based organisms seriously, particularly with a view to searching for extraterrestrial life.

"It's almost naive to assume all life must be carbon-based; I could possibly make good cases for life based on both silicon and phosphorus," he said.

Carbon based life

Silicon is used by some carbon-based single-cell organisms called diatoms to form protective shells, according to Dr David Williams, a diatom researcher at the Natural History Museum in London. But diatoms are still fundamentally carbon-based.

However, bizarre organisms have been found in recent years deep in the Earth's crust. Steve Jones, professor of genetics at University College London, said: "There's an unknown universe down there that has already produced organisms with metabolisms so strange that, by comparison, man and mushrooms are almost identical, so God knows what else they'll find."

Microbes have been found living on the ocean floor at depths and temperatures where life was previously thought unsustainable.
Without knowing what silicon-based life forms might be like, said Dr Harry Elderfield, an earth scientist at Cambridge University, it is almost impossible to predict how scientists could even test for them.

Yet Gold has been described by Stephen Jay Gould, president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, as one of the most iconoclastic scientists - but one who is often right.

[Karbowiak Profile]

Well, if - say all the "aliens" we are seeing everywhere (or some is anyway) - are silicon based lifeforms from within the earths crust.

They would explode as soon as they entered our atmosphere - why?..
Pressure my good friend, pressure!..

But interesting theory none the less

[Kkris Profile]

It is verified that water retains consciousness. Consciousness is the symptom of life. Megalithic stones show symptoms of consciousness. I have little doubt that this theory is correct from my findings as a dowser, consciousness, life is all around us, not just in the animals and plants.
I would go as far as to say that the writings in the ancient vedic texts of India which state that there is life 'everywhere' - even in space and in fire is correct, and science is catching up with the vedas. Michael Cremo's findings are based on the lead of the vedas, and astronomers are finding that the cosmology of the vedas is correct, that there is the possibilty of there being multiple universes, as the vedas state ' there are as many universes as mustard seeds in a sack.' and the oscilating universe 'theory' - that the universe expands and retracts repeatedly. This can be found in the canto's of the Srimad Bhagavatam.

[Gisgangusur Profile]

Well, if - say all the "aliens" we are seeing everywhere (or some is anyway) - are silicon based lifeforms from within the earths crust.

They would explode as soon as they entered our atmosphere - why?..
Pressure my good friend, pressure!..

But interesting theory none the less

There are lots of lifeforms too evolved to be just imagined of populating universe,and I mean all dimentions of it!!!

This is just an add on my friend

[Cornbread714 Profile]

Looks like the Buddha...

Cool post!

[Gisgangusur Profile]

It is verified that water retains consciousness. Consciousness is the symptom of life. Megalithic stones show symptoms of consciousness. I have little doubt that this theory is correct from my findings as a dowser, consciousness, life is all around us, not just in the animals and plants.
I would go as far as to say that the writings in the ancient vedic texts of India which state that there is life 'everywhere' - even in space and in fire is correct, and science is catching up with the vedas. Michael Cremo's findings are based on the lead of the vedas, and astronomers are finding that the cosmology of the vedas is correct, that there is the possibilty of there being multiple universes, as the vedas state ' there are as many universes as mustard seeds in a sack.' and the oscilating universe 'theory' - that the universe expands and retracts repeatedly. This can be found in the canto's of the Srimad Bhagavatam.

I definitely agree with you

[Gisgangusur Profile]

Looks like the Buddha...

Cool post!

TNX mate!!

[Gisgangusur Profile]

It is verified that water retains consciousness.

Fuckt!!!I'm not being able to embed utube now!
Maybe my server

But try to research the name masaru emoto on net!!!

[Iamthatiam Profile]

Hypothetical types of biochemistry are forms of biochemistry speculated to be scientifically viable but not proven to exist at this time. While the kinds of living beings we know on Earth commonly use carbon for basic structural and metabolic functions, water as a solvent and DNA or RNA to define and control their form, it is possible that undiscovered life-forms could exist that differ radically in their basic structures and biochemistry from that known to science.[citation needed]

The possibility of extraterrestrial life being based on these "alternative" biochemistries is a common subject in science fiction, but is also discussed in a non-fiction scientific context. A recent example of the non-fiction discussion is a 2007 report on life's limiting conditions prepared by a committee of scientists under the United States National Research Council.[1] The committee, chaired by John A. Baross, considers "hypothetical alternative chemistries of life",[2] including a range of solvents other than water.[3] The committee begins its discussion by raising the concern that a space agency might conduct a well-resourced search for life on other worlds "and then fail to recognize it if it is encountered".[4]

Alternative-chirality biomolecules

Perhaps the least unusual alternative biochemistry would be one with differing chirality of its biomolecules. In known Earth-based life, amino acids are almost universally of the L form and sugars are of the D form. Molecules of opposite chirality have identical chemical properties to their mirrored forms, so life that used D amino acids or L sugars may be possible; molecules of such a chirality, however, would be incompatible with organisms using the opposing chirality molecules. It is questionable, however, whether such a biochemistry would be truly alien; while it is certainly an alternative stereochemistry, molecules that are overwhelmingly found in one enantiomer throughout the vast majority of organisms can nonetheless often be found in another enantiomer in different (often basal) organisms such as in comparisons between members of Archea and other domains[citation needed], making it an open topic whether an alternative stereochemistry is truly novel.

[edit] Non-carbon-based biochemistries

Scientists have speculated about the pros and cons of using atoms other than carbon to form the molecular structures necessary for life, but no one has proposed a theory employing such atoms to form all the molecular machinery necessary for life. Still, since humans are carbon-based beings and have never encountered life outside the Earth’s environment, excluding the possibility of all other elements may be considered carbon chauvinism.

[edit] Silicon biochemistry





The structure of silane, the silicon-based analogue of methane.
See also: organosilicon

The most commonly proposed basis for an alternative biochemical system is the silicon atom, since silicon has many chemical properties similar to carbon and is in the same periodic table group, the carbon group. Like carbon, silicon can create molecules that are sufficiently large to carry biological information.[5]

However, silicon has several drawbacks as a carbon alternative. Silicon, unlike carbon, lacks the ability to form chemical bonds with diverse types of atoms, which permits the chemical versatility necessary for metabolism. Elements creating organic functional groups with carbon include hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, phosphorus, sulfur, and metals such as iron, magnesium, and zinc. Silicon, on the other hand, interacts with very few other types of atoms.[5] Moreover, where it does interact with other atoms, silicon creates molecules that have been described as "monotonous compared with the combinatorial universe of organic macromolecules".[5] This is because silicon atoms are much bigger, having a larger mass and atomic radius, and so have difficulty forming double or triple covalent bonds, which are important for a biochemical system.

Silanes, which are chemical compounds of hydrogen and silicon that are analogous to the alkane hydrocarbons, are highly reactive with water, and long-chain silanes spontaneously decompose. Molecules incorporating polymers of alternating silicon and oxygen atoms instead of direct bonds between silicon, known collectively as silicones, are much more stable. It has been suggested that silicone-based chemicals would be more stable than equivalent hydrocarbons in a sulfuric-acid-rich environment, as is found in some extraterrestrial locations.[6] Complex long-chain silicone molecules are still less stable than their carbon counterparts, though.

Another obstacle is that silicon dioxide (a common ingredient of many sands), the analog of carbon dioxide, is a non-soluble solid at the temperature range where water is liquid, making it difficult for silicon to be introduced into water-based biochemical systems even if the necessary range of biochemical molecules could be constructed out of it. Another problem with silicon dioxide is that it would be the product of aerobic respiration. If a silicon-based life form were to breathe using oxygen, as life on Earth does, it would possibly produce silicon dioxide as a by-product of this, assuming that the only difference between the two types of life is silicon in place of carbon. This implies that the exhaled product, silicon dioxide, would be a solid, thus filling the respiratory organs of the organism with sand. This however would be solved if the organism lives in temperatures of several hundred to thousand degrees, where the silicon dioxide becomes a liquid. Oxygen-breathing silicon life, if it exists, is therefore most likely to exist in environments with very high temperatures or pressure.

Finally, of the varieties of molecules identified in the interstellar medium as of 1998, 84 are based on carbon while only 8 are based on silicon.[7] Moreover, of those 8 compounds, four also include carbon within them. The cosmic abundance of carbon to silicon is roughly 10 to 1. This may suggest a greater variety of complex carbon compounds throughout the cosmos, providing less of a foundation upon which to build silicon-based biologies, at least under the conditions prevalent on the surface of planets.

Also, even though Earth and other terrestrial planets are exceptionally silicon-rich and carbon-poor (the relative abundance of silicon to carbon in the Earth's crust is roughly 925:1[8]), terrestrial life is carbon-based. The fact that carbon, though rare, has proven to be much more successful as a life base than the much more abundant silicon, may be evidence that silicon is poorly suited for biochemistry on Earth-like planets. For example: silicon is less versatile than carbon in forming compounds; the compounds formed by silicon are unstable and it blocks the flow of heat.[9] Even so, biogenic silica is used by some Earth life, such as the silicate skeletal structure of diatoms. This suggests that extraterrestrial life forms may have silicon-based structure molecules and carbon-based proteins for metabolic purposes, therefore enabling the ability to feed on a common resource on a terrestrial planet like Earth for building up the silicon-based part of their body.

Silicon compounds may possibly be biologically useful under temperatures or pressures different from the surface of a terrestrial planet, either in conjunction with or in a role less directly analogous to carbon.

A. G. Cairns-Smith has proposed that the first living organisms to exist on Earth were clay minerals—which were probably based on silicon.[10]

In cinematic and literary science fiction, a moment when man-made machines cross from nonliving to living, it is often posited, this new form would be the first example of non-carbon-based life. Since the advent of the microprocessor in the late 1960s, these machines are often classed as computers (or computer-guided robots) and filed under "silicon-based life", even though the silicon backing matrix of these processors is not nearly as fundamental to their operation as carbon is for "wet life".

[edit] Nitrogen and phosphorus biochemistry

Nitrogen and phosphorus also offer possibilities as the basis for biochemical molecules. Like carbon, phosphorus can form long chain molecules on its own, which would potentially allow it to form complex macromolecules were it not so reactive. However, in combination with nitrogen, it can form much more stable covalent bonds and create a wide range of molecules, including rings (a class of compounds called phosphazenes).

Earth's atmosphere is approximately 78% nitrogen, but this would probably not be of much use to a phosphorus-nitrogen (P-N) life-form since molecular nitrogen (N2) is nearly inert and energetically expensive to "fix" due to its triple bond. On the other hand, one could say that some Earth plants such as legumes can fix nitrogen using symbiotic bacteria contained in their root nodules, but those bacteria have to exist before the nitrogen fixation process they perform can actually take place. On Earth, the intense temperatures created by lightning split atmospheric nitrogen in order to make it available for the first nitrogen containing organisms to use. A nitrogen dioxide (NO2) or ammonia (NH3) atmosphere would be more useful. Nitrogen also forms several oxides, such as nitric oxide, nitrous oxide, and dinitrogen tetroxide, and all would be present in a nitrogen-dioxide-rich atmosphere.
In a nitrogen dioxide atmosphere, P-N plant analogues could absorb nitrogen dioxide from the air and phosphorus from the ground. The nitrogen dioxide would be reduced, with analogues to sugar being produced in the process, and waste oxygen would be released into the atmosphere. Animals based on phosphorus and nitrogen would consume the plants, use atmospheric oxygen to metabolize the sugar analogues, exhaling nitrogen dioxide and depositing phosphorus, or phosphorus-rich material, as solid waste.
In an ammonia atmosphere, P-N plants would absorb ammonia from the air and phosphorus from the ground, then oxidize the ammonia to produce P-N sugars and release hydrogen waste. P-N animals are now the reducers, breathing in hydrogen and converting the P-N sugars to ammonia and phosphorus. This is the opposite pattern of oxidation and reduction from a nitrogen dioxide world, and from the known biochemistry of Earth. It would be analogous to Earth's atmospheric carbon supply being in the form of methane instead of carbon dioxide.

Debate continues, as several aspects of a phosphorus-nitrogen cycle biology would be energy deficient. Also, nitrogen and phosphorus are unlikely to occur in the ratios and quantity required in the universe. Carbon, being preferentially formed during nuclear fusion, is more abundant and is more likely to end up in a preferred location.

An ammoniated atmosphere would be possible and stable at first view (in a reductive environment), and this type of environment would be preferencially present on massive planets which are more likely to retain hydrogen slowing down its escape to space, and have thick atmosphere that better protect ammonia from radiations; like super-Earth with mass in range between the Earth and the little giant planets like Uranus and Neptune. But it is doubtful that an atmosphere rich in nitrogen dioxide could even exist. Since the nitrogen oxides are all endoenergetic compared with molecular nitrogen and oxygen; and they are oxidizing, they would decompose by stellar radiation and by catalysis on the surface of rocks when they are produced. Unlike nitrogen dioxide, the chemically similar gas nitrogen trifluoride is not endoenergetic and is more stable, but the relative rarity of fluorine means that NF3 is unlikely to be present in large enough concentrations in any planetary atmosphere.

[edit] Other exotic element-based biochemistries
Boron's chemistry is possibly even more variable than that of carbon, since it has the ability to form polyhedral clusters and three-center two-electron bonds. Boranes are dangerously explosive in Earth's atmosphere, but would be more stable in a reducing environment. However, boron's low cosmic abundance makes it less likely as a base for life than carbon.
Various metals, together with oxygen, can form very complex and thermally stable structures rivaling those of organic compounds; the heteropoly acids are one such family. Some metal oxides are also similar to carbon in their ability to form both nanotube structures and diamond-like crystals (such as cubic zirconia). Titanium, aluminum, magnesium and iron are all more abundant in the Earth's crust than carbon. Metal oxide-based life could therefore be a possibility under certain conditions, including those (such as high temperatures) at which carbon-based life would be unlikely.
Sulfur is also able to form long-chain molecules, but suffers from the same high reactivity problems as phosphorus and silanes. The biological use of sulfur as an alternative to carbon is purely theoretical, especially since sulfur usually forms only linear chains rather than branched ones. (The biological use of sulfur as an electron acceptor is widespread and can be traced back 3.5 billion years on Earth, thus predating the use of molecular oxygen.[11] Sulfur-reducing bacteria can utilize elemental sulfur instead of oxygen, reducing sulfur to hydrogen sulfide.)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypothetical_types_of_biochemistry

[Canubis Profile]

QUOTE
SETI spends enormous amounts of money and resources looking for life outside of Earth's realm, but life forms so alien that scientists may simply not have recognized evidence of their existence could inhabit the Earth, according to a leading scientist.

what a load of horse crap!

WE ALL KNOW theres ALIENS! ffs and they spending billions doing shit TOP SECRET and aiding other secret PROJECTS!

and we get some leading scientist pissing into a cup..!

WE ALL KNOW that who ever is working at these facilitys theres a greater number of people on earth that would better sute the job and know better, BUT TOP SECRET and CIVYS dont mix!

ARE U A CIVY? DO U WANT TRUTH?? to bad....keep funding..