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by 0x00_NULL 832 days ago
Wouldn’t an environment that has a significant sulfuric acid content naturally also a relatively limited free oxygen?

I’m thinking of Venus. That sort of environment would satisfy all criteria and would also start to get into the temperature ranges that would make Si-Si bonds possible.

That would at-least bracket the types of planets and their history to a useful extent.

1 comments

Sulphuric acid actually has a lot of oxygen and hydrogen in it, and the presence of any metal or even high enough temperature will cause it to break up.

In a lab, it makes for a good solvent, but any place that has sulphuric acid will have both water and oxygen.

Venus, notably, has little to none of both. What free oxygen that does exist is from CO2 and CO breaking down in the atmosphere from the intense and extended venusian day. Most of the sulphur on Venus is sulphur dioxide (a tiny percentage of the atmosphere), and water vapor is a measly 20ppm.

Even if all of that water was sulphuric acid (which it may well be), there's simply not enough of it staying still long enough to form the repeating patterns of chemistry that might reasonably be called life.