(discuss) silicone based life

Science!
1

silicone(the polymer with a backbone mate out of repeating units of silicon monoxide) is a very versatile family of chemicals, and has rather simple conditions required for its formation:
you need reduced silicon
you need a reducing atmosphere with a high concentration of methane, to form the alkyl chlorides
you need chlorine gas to be produced(for the alkyl chlorides)
you need the chlorine to react primarily with the methane and other alkanes, and not hydrogen
you need the silicon to react with alkyl chlorides to form silicon alkyl chlorides(with most of them having 2 chlorides and 2 alkyl groups)
and you need the silicon alkyl chlorides to react with water to form silicon alkyl hydroxides, which then react with eachother immediately on contact to form silicones

[1]

to reduce silica into metallurgical grade silicon you need to remove all of the oxygen bound to it.
industrially, this is done via carbothermal reduction in an electric furnace [2]

however, at extremely high temperatures, SiO2 can be reduced into SiO(which decomposes into Si and SiO2 rapidly at magmatic temperatures[3]) by H2, CO, or CH4[4], and methane can reduce it further, into Si[5]

so our first requirement is a very high carbon content in the planet’s mantle, and only enough oxygen to fully oxidize the silicon, and it will produce lots of CO but not much CO2

to produce methane abiotically, you need hydrogen, carbon dioxide or carbon monoxide[6], a catalyst[7] at least 30 bar(3 megapascals), and temperatures of 300-400C [8]
which, on a cold venus, is doable while still retaining liquid water oceans, since the catalyst can be heated geothermally.

and since we have CO from volcanism and H2 from both reduced silicon reacting with water, and serpentinizing systems(which also make some of their own methane [9], but at a limited rate due to CO being insoluble in water[10]), there will be plenty of resources for CO methanation to take place on any heated, exposed, native nickel

methylamine is also rather easy to form, and an important step in abiotically producing nitrogenous carbon compounds like nucleobases, as it just requires ammonia and methanol to react on an aluminosilicate catalyst [11]

now that we’re done rehashing a method for the formation of carbon based life, we need water with chloride salts to be electrolysed, so chlorine gas can be produced and react with the now methane dominated atmosphere(and methane will reduce the surfaces of hot silicate rocks, producing water and CO[12]) to produce methyl chloride, and other chlorinated alkanes and alkenes, which can then go on to react with the reduced surfaces of hot rocks and the silicon in fresh volcanic rocks, producing alkyl silane chlorides and alkene silane chlorides and aryl silane chlorides, all of which must only react with water and then with eachother to polymerize into silicones, which are highly water insoluble(unlike the chlorides they formed from and the hydroxide intermediates) and thus must interact with water via groups attached to their carbons, and will likely be stuck solely inside membranes and the silicone belgium covering the surface of the water for the early days of their existence
(this is an extrapolation of information from the previously cited information on the production of silicones, based on my current knowledge of chemistry. if you notice it is wrong, tell me why.)

and with that, all the basics are over, so, discuss silicone based life and how it could work, and again, if you notice something wrong with this post, tell me, and i will attempt to fix it

  1. Silicones - American Chemistry Council,
    Chemistry - Grinding - Silicones Europe,
    β†©οΈŽ

  2. Our Silicon Production Process | Mississippi Silicon,
    Metal Silicon Production Process: From Raw Materials to Refined Ingots β†©οΈŽ

  3. β†©οΈŽ

  4. https://ro.uow.edu.au/articles/journal_contribution/Reduction_of_quartz_to_silicon_monoxide_by_methane-hydrogen_mixtures/27752628,
    https://www.researchgate.net/publication/300083099_Reduction_of_Quartz_to_Silicon_Monoxide_by_Methane-Hydrogen_Mixtures β†©οΈŽ

  5. β†©οΈŽ

  6. β†©οΈŽ

  7. industrially, nickel based catalysts are used, which is why i chose nickel for the planet to be rich in, aside from that nickel oxide is easily reduced by carbon β†©οΈŽ

  8. β†©οΈŽ

  9. https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Key-reactions-during-serpentinization-of-olivine-and-orthopyroxene-from-ultramafic-rocks_fig4_366734273 β†©οΈŽ

  10. β†©οΈŽ

  11. β†©οΈŽ

  12. https://ro.uow.edu.au/articles/journal_contribution/Reduction_of_quartz_to_silicon_monoxide_by_methane-hydrogen_mixtures/27752628,
    https://www.researchgate.net/publication/300083099_Reduction_of_Quartz_to_Silicon_Monoxide_by_Methane-Hydrogen_Mixtures β†©οΈŽ

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finished typing it out

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Seems pretty good, though:

I don’t think you can decide to have a chemical just NOT react with other chemicals in it’s environment

Are you sure this wouldn’t just eventually end up with the remaining water also evaporating?

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forgot i removed the part where i said it should, at the start, be far enough away from the star for any and all liquid water on the surface, not directly warmed by geological activity, to be frozen, since it will get a LOT warmer

what i meant is that it needs to react with the methane, alkanes, alkenes, and whatever, more frequently than it reacts with H2
both will produce HCl, as the chlorine is replacing hydrogens on the carbons it reacts with, but reacting with H2 just makes HCl, and doesnt make anything that reacts with silicon to make precursors to silicone

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Tbh I’m not sure there’s anyone technical enough here about the workings of the silicone other than you to be able to speculate about silicon life in depth

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Hopefully, silicon-based life won’t just be sentient slow moving rocks.

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No I think that’s not very accurate to what it could be.

Is the notion that they would breathe out some kind of a weird gel correct?

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So something more akin to the Petrosapiens from the Ben 10 franchise?

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silicone, the polymer, is incompatible with the concept of being a rock
silicone simply has a silicon monoxide backbone, all the attachment points for things to bind to the polymer are carbons

silicones are more like oils than rocks

no, they could oxidize silicones into silica and CO2, but it’d have a rather high energy requirement and they’d need to intentionally crystallize it to not get dead from doing that
more realistically they’d live in some weird gel

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Could they substitute breathing with some other metabolic process that’d make them still more effective than pure anaerobicness?

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By their composition, would silicon-based life be automatically better as exoelectrogenic life forms than carbon-based life?

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maybe?
carbon based life definitely could though
in fact a lot of anaerobic processes for metabolizing certain things, like sunlight, are orders of magnitude more efficient and effective than their aerobic counterparts

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Would achieving sapience for such anaerobes be harder? I’d imagine so

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i shall take this to the spec evo forums then

no clue

not necessarily, and life that uses silicone oils as a solvent would probably depend on chelated ions to regulate stuff and for biological processes, and as such would make their solvent conductive by chelating ions from water to get them into the silicone oils

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Btw, would these organisms be overall liquid-like (as in like what you meant by the oils)? Could they become solid at a larger scale like it is with the cells of humans and humans themselves?

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they likely would not be much different in solidity from carbon based life, if they form cells, which some people say is a requirement to be alive
and carbon based life already has a wide range of solidity

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Are the β€œoils” similar to cytosol?

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in the context i mentioned them they would be replacing water

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Should we expect those cells to have similar structures to those of carbonite cells?

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It is my understanding that, in a world without Oxygen, Iron Respiration is really efficient. However, Earth’s Iron Respirators are really Oxygen intolerant.

Would the same phenomenon that creates β€œDark Oxygen” on the ocean floor would work for this?

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