Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by gus_massa 833 days ago
Boron and Nitrogen may have a chance. They form long weird molecules that are stable. Is it possible? I don't know. Can they compeat with Carbon base life? Perhaps no. In a weird planet where almost all the Carbon is sequestred by some weird chemical composition of thee rocks, can Boron or Nitrogen life have a chance. I don't know!

(My guess is that we still need a few thousand years to answer these questions. We still don't understand too may details about Carbon based life. I'm not very optimistic.)
2 comments
pfdietz 833 days ago
Boron is scarce; it's one of the x-process elements, and those inherently have low abundance (although the boron-to-carbon ratio in the Earth's crust is enhanced over the solar system ratio, I believe.)

Boron nitride is weirdly analogous (indeed, isoelectronic) to carbon in that there's a graphite-like form (hexagonal BN) and a diamond-like form (cubic BN).

One thing that would hold back BN life is that by themselves B and N form more stable compounds than carbon does. Nitrogen in particular forms molecular nitrogen, which is annoyingly tightly bound.

link
gus_massa 832 days ago
Too many nitrogen together make you go to the list of https://www.science.org/topic/blog-category/things-i-wont-wo... I'd try to be far away from a planet with living things made of nitrogen chains.
link
__MatrixMan__ 833 days ago
I wonder to what extent they'd need to compete at all, they'd probably have a different diet. Maybe there are carbon life forms out there living mutualistically with boron-nitrogen life forms.
link
gus_massa 832 days ago
I don't expect a mix of Boron and Nitrogen. Only Boron in some planets and only Nitrogen in another planets.

We [1] can eat things with Nitrogen, so I expect a competing form to be completely eaten if they are less effecient.

I don't know enough about Boron chemistry, but if there were enough of them we will eat them too, unles they eat us first.

The first stages of living things are probably very ineficient. If you need a year to make a viable copy, a previus life form will probably eat you before that. I think that two independent origins of life in tha same planet are impossible.

[1] If you include bacteria and archea in "we". And even we (humans) can eat some compound with nitrogen, in particular proteins that mix carbon and nitrogen.

link