What life form uses silicon?

Scientists have long known that life on Earth is capable of chemically manipulating silicon. For instance, microscopic particles of silicon dioxide called phytoliths can be found in grasses and other plants, and photosynthetic algae known as diatoms incorporate silicon dioxide into their skeletons.

Where is silicon naturally found?

Pure silicon is too reactive to be found in nature, but it is found in practically all rocks as well as in sand, clays, and soils, combined either with oxygen as silica (SiO2, silicon dioxide) or with oxygen and other elements (e.g., aluminum, magnesium, calcium, sodium, potassium, or iron) as silicates.

Is metal based life possible?

Titanium, aluminium, 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.

What are uses of silicon?

Silicon is one of the most useful elements to mankind. Most is used to make alloys including aluminium-silicon and ferro-silicon (iron-silicon). These are used to make dynamo and transformer plates, engine blocks, cylinder heads and machine tools and to deoxidise steel. Silicon is also used to make silicones.

Is silicon essential for life?

Silicon is also essential for plant and vegetable life. Phytolites are small silica particles that are produced within some plants. These particles also have the ability to be kept in fossils, providing evolutionary evidence.

Why is silicon not the basis of life?

Silicon can grow into a number of lifelike structures, but its chemistry makes it unlikely that it could be the basis for alien life-forms. Silica, or sand is a solid because silicon likes oxygen all too well, and the silicon dioxide forms a lattice in which one silicon atom is surrounded by four oxygen atoms.

What properties does silicon share with carbon that would make silicon based life?

What properties does silicon share with carbon that would make silicon-based life more likely than say, neon-based life or aluminum-based life? Si has four valence electrons, the same number as carbon.

What does silicon look like?

Pure silicon is a hard, dark gray solid with a metallic lustre and with a octahedral crystalline structure the same as that of the diamond form of carbon, to which silicon shows many chemical and physical similarities.

What does a silicon atom look like?

Silicon atoms have 14 electrons and 14 protons with 4 valence electrons in the outer shell. Under standard conditions silicon is a solid. In its amorphous (random) form it looks like a brown powder. In its crystalline form it is a silvery-gray metallic looking material that is brittle and strong.

Is silicon based life possible?

Silicon is inert at the moderate temperatures in the environments in which life as we know it exists, leading to an idea that silicon based life – if it could exist at all – could perhaps only exist at very high temperatures; these potential theoretical “organisms” have been called “lavolobes” and “magmobes”.

What is silicon based life form?

Silicon-based lifeform. A silicon-based lifeform, also known as a silicon cycle life form, was a corporeal lifeform that used silicon as the basis of its structure and life functions rather than carbon. While silicon-based lifeforms generally did not evolve on M-class planets; for a period of ten thousand years,…

What is silicon based life?

A silicon-based lifeform, also known as a silicon cycle life form, was a corporeal lifeform that used silicon as the basis of its structure and life functions rather than carbon.

What is silicon like?

Silicon looks like a metal, but does not do everything a metal does, like conduct electricity very easily. It is a metalloid. Silicon is used as a great deal in today’s computers and virtually every electronic device. Germanium can also be used in computers, but silicon is easier to find.