Alien Biochemistry

[T.Neo]

I can also build a bicycle in a lab. It doesn't mean that natural forces can create a bicycle.

The experiment will always be artificial. Already the processes and the available elements in abiogenesis are different to what you can supply in a laboratory. You can potentially create very odd forms of life in the laboratory that only vaguely resemble natural life, carbon based or otherwise.

I do not really see any reason to have an enthusiastic crusade to create life, to learn how life arose in the first place; the two processes are different, one is natural, the other artificial.

It would certainly be interesting and useful in many regards, but it isn't a scientific cure-all.

 

[Keatah]

Just that if something can be made in a lab, means that it is possible for it to exist! Because it *can* be made there, well that is one possible avenue for creation of whatever...

I fear we are arguing semantics now.

 

[T.Neo]

The argument isn't whether something can exist or not, but whether it can generate and survive in a natural environment. Doing stuff in a laboratory can't really tell you that.

That is why I use the analogy of a bicycle: you can build it, it can definitely exist, but you won't find one in the 'wild'.

 

[fsci123]

Sure it will !! Building life in a lab demonstrates our understanding of the process. If we cannot build it, then it means we do not know enough about it!

Yeah we made an artificial genome last year dosnt mean that we understand all of it...
I built a model plane out of a kit dosnt mean I know all of the pieces and their purpose...

 

[Wishbone]

The Planet of Talking Bicycles... sounds nice for a horror movie.

 

[ZombiezuRFER]

if the conditions were right, you could have giant robots walking around on their own, but its highly unlikely. Lab conditions can occur in the environment. Also, building it in a lab means its possible. You say it will be completely artificial, but you forget that it would be likely the conditions of the outside world would be simulated as well.

 

[Dambuster]

Just as a point of order: building a bicycle would be extraordinarily difficult in your average lab.

 

[walsjona]

if the conditions were right, you could have giant robots walking around on their own, but its highly unlikely. Lab conditions can occur in the environment. Also, building it in a lab means its possible. You say it will be completely artificial, but you forget that it would be likely the conditions of the outside world would be simulated as well.

Thats if you set the experiment up that way. If you say wanted an MgO based life form to prevail then you would set the lab conditions to allow that to happen. Those might be the "natural" conditions underwhich it could exist, however that dosn't mean that those conditions exist in the outside world. In fact they could be called artificial!

I agree with T.Neo, in nature things are normaly allot different compared to the lab. Even if an MgO organism is possible dosn't mean it will exist because there are more efficeint ways of building life, such as through Carbon. There is also a greater ellement of "chance" which dosn't exist in a lab to much. An unlucky meteor strick, or devastating seismic events can change the ball game quite considerably.

In all liklyhood though, ETs will be prodominatly carbon based. That dosn't mean other forms won't excist, but carbon just has that edge which is what is need in natural selection.
It could be quite possible that initialy other forms of life also existed on earth, but carbon based life prevailed because it was a more advantages building block:thumbup:

 

[T.Neo]

Just as a point of order: building a bicycle would be extraordinarily difficult in your average lab.

Depends on what kind of lab it is... maybe it is a bicycle testing lab. :lol:

if the conditions were right, you could have giant robots walking around on their own, but its highly unlikely.

I would say: impossible. Those sorts of components don't form and assemble themselves, at least not in current scientific understanding.

Those might be the "natural" conditions underwhich it could exist, however that dosn't mean that those conditions exist in the outside world. In fact they could be called artificial!

Exactly. Also, you will have a lot of trouble trying to accurately predict the conditions in all abiogenetic environments everywhere. We even have trouble trying to understand what the conditions on early Earth were like.

And you simply cannot simulate other factors with total accuracy, like timescales for example.

Even if an MgO organism is possible dosn't mean it will exist because there are more efficeint ways of building life, such as through Carbon.

Sadly I have a feeling an MgO organism is not chemically possible... it isn't really a chemical that likes to 'play around' in the environment like carbon or even phosphorous or silicon do.

 

[ZombiezuRFER]

Sadly I have a feeling an MgO organism is not chemically possible... it isn't really a chemical that likes to 'play around' in the environment like carbon or even phosphorous or silicon do.

Is it really about how much the base reacts or how the chains build up upon the base?

 

[Linguofreak]

. Those sorts of components don't form and assemble themselves, at least not in current scientific understanding.

Now a purely naturalistic argument (which I don't hold to, being a supernaturalist, but I'm playing devil's advocate here) would be that humanity is a result of natural processes, and humanity's actions are natural processes. Therefore, anything that humanity, or any other intelligent life, has done, in the lab or not, is a result of natural processes. [/devil's advocate]

 

[T.Neo]

That's not what I am saying. Although one way of looking at things is that human activities are a 'natural' process, it's pretty universal to define 'artificial' as something as having been done by humans (or potentially another intelligent species).

Whatever you define human actions as, robot parts still don't form out in nature somewhere.

 

[ZombiezuRFER]

There is the possibility of spontaneous intelligence. Its main flaw though, is that i requires more than imaginable amounts of Butterfly effect type occurences to form. say a robot is made, but its turned off. all it takes is one thing to turn it on naturally, like maybe a hail fell and hit the on switch. Similar to that really.

 

[Ghostrider]

if the conditions were right, you could have giant robots walking around on their own, but its highly unlikely.

Koji Kabuto would probably like to challenge this statement...

 

[ZombiezuRFER]

Koji Kabuto would probably like to challenge this statement...

I suppose I should stop attempting to simplify things to make it easier to get my point across.

 

[Polaris]

I'm working on a book myself. In one chapter, the heroine meets an alien on a space station orbiting Mars (said alien got there due to a crash- the story is set before man develops interstellar travel). Basically, the alien is carbon-based, but since I wanted to add some biochemical barriers, I want the creature's proteins to be the opposite of our own (left-handed proteins become right-handed proteins, and vice versa). Is this possible?

 

[Linguofreak]

That's not what I am saying.

I'm not saying that's what you're saying. It's not really what I'm saying either. It's just an argument that *could* be made under assumptions that are not altogether uncommon these days.

 

[Wishbone]

Chirality difference _may_ be a cause of allergies, and I'm no physiologist. At one end of the allergy reaction spectrum one has anaphilactic (sp?) shock and quick death (IIRC).

 

[Polaris]

Chirality difference _may_ be a cause of allergies, and I'm no physiologist. At one end of the allergy reaction spectrum one has anaphilactic (sp?) shock and quick death (IIRC).

Nice to know!

 

[Turbinator]

You mean Magnesium Oxide as the Oxygen carrying component in an alien cardiovascular system?

In humans it is Iron(ii) Oxide, witch is why our blood is red:

And the biological mechanism for transporting oxygen that uses Iron is the Hemoglobin.

There are species on Earth that use Copper as the Oxygen carrying component, and their blood is green. The biological mechanism is called Hemocyanin. One such species is the Horseshoe Crab.