What If Alien Life Were Silicon-Based? 

Humans are oil-based. We eat oil, we drink oil, we burn oil, we put oil on our skin, on our food...

Ben 10 aliens were carbon based

So conditions without water 💦 mite have life

@@osmosisjones4912 Excitement aside, spamming may not be the best method for getting anyone's attention.

2:23 yeah... that's trinitrotoluene

@@RossiGastone You mean flat earth nonsense? I've seen it- there's nothing but speculation and misunderstanding to it. There is no evidence for a silicon age.

@@RossiGastone "documentary" lol

That sounds like a cool game

Oh god, now I'm imagining benign alien archaeologists visiting Earth, thinking that there must be no life because nothing could possibly survive our nitrogen-rich atmosphere, and proceeding to burn away all our breathable air so they can go down and explore.

Now I want to play Stellaris again, I didn't come across this event.

Which also has a comments section mirroring ours talking about Silicon Based life. Making the readers laugh and click over a 100 thumb ups.

Wondering what they eat, how they breathe and how they develop. Calling the people who believe carbon based live exists crazies and outsiders

Brings up a point that carbon is highly likely building blocks but that would require some liquid built out of possibly hydrogen-oxygen liquids such as h2o which we know is highly destructive on our planet xD

They possibly consume elements of what they are made of, like other living beings made of silicon, or they may even have stomachs that can digest some rocks or minerals and extract the silicon.@@larryblake842

- "But how does life could exist with water, water is so....soft, and clear !" *Takes a sip of sulfuric coffee*

omg like jaadu

This comment made me ponder those *green men* and copper. What happens as copper ages? And oxidizes? Maybe these dudes just have *a wicked patina.*

Nothing evolved, evolution isn't real. Mindless matter and mutation can't manifest code. Evolution is a mythology of magic(rationality from irrationality).

@@Optable Copper salts are mostly in the blue-to-green range.

@@thatsclownshit3145 Jaadu!! I love him, nice to see someone else who watched Koi Mil Gaya here!

I was recently trying to find some serious speculation on how ammonia-solvent life might work and couldn't really find any. I need to remember to look for this essay.

You're awesome you're my favorite person today

@@mandiemoore3272 it was published in a collection called "The Tragedy of the Moon" in 1973 - an excellent book, and available online.

And Asimov was famously opposed to introducing aliens in his novels

I wonder who's evil... from his point of view, of course.

@@joaocalhandro from my point of view carbon based life forms are evil. theyre course and rough and gets every where... I hate carbon based lifeforms

I had to pause the video and have a good chuckle. Cheers Mr O'Dowd!

Dune? Oh, it came back to me -- Anakin to Padme.

The fact he kinda resembles an older looking Hayden Christensen makes this even better.

Also what if silicon aliens don’t exhale silicon dioxide but instead excrete the silica sand? That sounds like an interesting story about humans meeting an alien that could give us extreme quantities of a material we use for a LOT of things.

You build your houses out of our WHAT?! - Silicon based aliens, probably

@@NotreDanish If the energy is derived from separating oxygen from silicon, they could "exhale" oxygen immediately and let the sand build up in a bladder-like organ, and yeah as you say poop it out later leaving sparkly piles of sand

Sand pooping worms, anyone?🙄 almost like Dune, maybe the Emperor is ruling some planet right now

@@TheShadowwrend More like, "You make your computers out of what?!"

Cool. I also heard that they found a silicone based lifeform on Earth, but I can't remember if it was some kinda sci-fi thing or something.

A pharmacist here. Loved it!

@@ebubekiraka4595 thank you for doing such a crucial job and keeping us all alive and healthy 😁

yes, this one was amazing.

Also a biochemist. This video made me feel seen.

As a chemist who specializes in ochem, I wholeheartedly agree. It's also sort of funny knowing now how physicists probably feel watching this channel.

Yep, you're part of an ongoing chemical reaction that started around 4 billion years ago.

I also learned that even our "feeling" is just chemical reaction in our brain, hence why it's possible to temporarily fixed mental problem by using medicine

You're a self aware self improving chemical reaction capable of making more that all do the same thing. That said this is no kind of new revelation.

@@cypherusuh *electrochemical

@@MadScientist267 What if alien life were silicon based?

tnt is nitroglycerin in a clay that stabilize it so it won't explode easily!

@@TimJCOOL-ng8pu No, TNT is 2,4,6-trinitrotoluene (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TNT). I think you are getting confused. Nitroglycerine stabilised with clay etc is dynamite, patented by Alfred Nobel (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamite). I hope this helps!

@@TimJCOOL-ng8puNa it isn’t, TNT is trinitro toluene, basically a benzene with stuff round it, where as nitroglycerin is a non aromatic molecule, you can tell they are different too by their chemical formulae.

@@willlorenz3804 I stand corrected

​@@TimJCOOL-ng8pu You're thinking of dynamite there, which is indeed Nitroglycerin absorbed in Kieselguhr. TNT is a different compound

Yeah, I remember that being a plot point from the book, that terraforming the planet would liberate the natives but would be the end of the worms

They produce a kind of "sand" too.

The sandworms are just trying to keep kids off spice...

Just say Doh

They didn't "produce sand". They produce spice from the sand. The problem with making Arrakis a blue planet is it'll kill the baby worms and won't allow bigger ones to come to be. Everyone in the Galaxy is addicted to spice by this point and once you consume spice, you have to keep consuming, or you'll die

Isaac Arthur's version was just as good

I prefer the "There are no forests on Earth" version.

@@RossiGastone I did not know that and googled it and found out it is a part of the Flat Earth theory. It is fascinating how crazy people can be.

@@yttrxstein4192 You kidding me? Bonehead to Spock "Now you're telling fantasies. Silicon based life is impossible". Devil in the Dark was 25th episode of Season 1. There were events in the 24 episodes before it that broke laws of physics and chemistry with the incompetent one there to witness. Kelly got the worst lines of any major character on the show, other than Sulu (but he really isn't a major char). All in all, while only a few episodes are total disasters scriptwise (That Which Survives, Obsession), not one of the rest didn't have moments of rather illogical, terribly written script ..

@@yttrxstein4192 Yur latest reply didn't make it past the censors baby boy. Try another tantrum maybe a bit toned down?

You're amazing!

83 years young

amazing. you are the best too.

It makes me so happy to see you still want to learn. You are a role model for those your age 🤍

@@ellianadailey All of us!

The way schools are operated isn't good for promoting the will to learn. Unfortunately.

pretty sure a high school physics class would just be better off going through the SpaceTIme playlists

My dad and I concluded separately on a phrase we both love to repeat, "History is a fascinating subject only when you're not learning it for a grade." This can apply to any subject and is overall true in my experience. Love history but it's easily my most hated university subject.

Perhaps actual learning feels like a chore because it requires work. Passively watching a video doesn't create working knowledge because there's no manipulation/use of the knowledge. Also, when we're older we have a much larger store of experiences (sci-fi movies etc) that we can cross reference to create meaning from the abstract.

I LEARNED SO MUCH MORE FROM YT THAN I EVER DID IN COLLEGE💯YT UNIVERSITY IS THE NEW IVY LEAGUE😮‍💨

Another facet of Matt's Australian extraction, no doubt 👀

Truly one of the quotes of all time. Bravo Lucas.

If he's saying he doesn't like sand, wouldn't he technically be the one with the low ground?

@@Kwauhn. Yes, mountains are rock. Valleys are where the sand accumulates.

He was sooo lucky she had no experience with dating! 🤖

well first as the video explained, silicon life aint gonna happen, secondly the beings dumping their DNA on worlds to kickstart them also kickstarted us with their DNA. the xenomorphs come from the same DNA the first race has so they shouldnt even be this fantasy monster of silicon life. and you need to keep in mind they didnt know this stuff yet when the first couple alien movies came out. so the silicon life fantasy was still a possibility back then. to prove this point even futher how can there be aliens of a completely different chemical makeup that magically somehow merge with ripley dna to make the half human xenomorph in the 4th alien film. there are animals that have acid attacks on earth so we dont need to make up silicon life to have beings who have acidic chemicals in their bodies.

oxygen would be very deadly to them that for sure.

Was that a post-hoc explanation or is that actually included in the first movie?

That certainly isn't an actual fact.

@@tomizatko3138 they surely didnt care in the movies

You must be new around here, welcome! PBS-ST is a pretty solid science channel.

The vastness of space and numbers make it kinda likely

I get the feeling the writer thought to himself "how do I take a topic that has been done to death and add something new to it?". Like the part about why Arsenic is toxic, and the Diatoms! I had never seen them mentioned when talking about silicon life

Highly unlikely, maybe on Earth, yes. Give it 100 billion galaxies in the seeable universe, which in turn includes 100 billions of stars, which we now recently have found that most if not all has planetary bodies circling it, then take into account that even our own solar system has a planet like Venus and moons like Titan. Then give it a few billion years to evolve on those planets that are VERY likely to exist, and presto.. It becomes (edit) not impossible at least (since people have such a big gripe against the word likely)

did you really think Matt was gonna just clickbait us with shitty info lmao

Why isn't this comment more popular

That's a really great point

@@KarlaKandy123because people want to be philosophical and argue that "maybe we're the outliers"

wow well said. I never thought about it like that.

Great comment, however you are slightly conflating a question regarding possible alien life and the way life developed specifically on Earth. Earth is not itself proof of the standard for life on any planet across the universe, and so using it as an example for why "life didn't form around silicates" is moot, as Earth very specifically is a water world that would have been adverse since a very early age in its existence. So, this is not a "roadblock", as Earth is a sample size of one, but rather it is an interesting concept that likely correlates to the majority of life across the universe, but not the end-all. The flourishing of life is connected to the abundance of resources available, so much as life is a walking example of entropy bringing more complex molecules down to a simpler form, and moreover resources themselves are these higher energy molecules. There are however plenty of resources available in this universe that we as hydrocarbon based life cannot process and access, and other examples of entropy taking more sentient forms around different molecular structures is completely possible and plausible. Life itself, remember, does not translate to sentient, or even complex life. Given this, extremely simple forms of life, those between simply chains of chemicals that process other chemicals, to the proto-organic life that formed early in our planet's history, may just take forms that are not prevalent on Earth, or indeed do not conform at all to our ideas of biochemistry. This is different that examining Silicon itself however, as there are plenty of planets in this universe, through what we have observed, that do not have the water necessary to promote carbon based life. They do, however, have the ability to promote silicon based life, based on all of the examples brought forth in this video. Rarer does not mean impossible, and I would counter that our own knowledge of planetary bodies across the universe, combined with our more correct knowledge about water levels across the universe, are not even enough to posit that the majority of planetary bodies would be carbon-preferable to silicon. We do not, for example, have the current ability to conceive life at all on gas giants, given their fluctuations, cloud layers, and still mysterious energy levels that may differ from one body to the next. Rocky planets that do not lie in the small zone in which water is in liquid form are more prevalent to planets that are, so liquid water is quite limited and so its volatility is only a concern in that minority of cases, in which carbon life would naturally be a stronger choice besides. You also say that life has a preference for hydrogen over silicon based on percentage amounts, however hydrogen would play into a silicon-based life form's processes just as much as it does in carbon based life. More comparable is the raw amounts to carbon and silicon, but it is not significant enough for your argument there. Overall, I think that the scientist you talked to, and more scientists that search for alien life, are searching for not only the same type of life that we are--as it is known, but also sentient life, which carries with it a completely different set of parameters. If we were merely looking for any life, primitive or otherwise, we would simply be left in the dark most of the time. Indeed, life could exist already within our own solar system on other planets and moons, but would be undetectable by our current standards. It is simply more interesting and productive to search for conditions similar to Earth, as it is known. We also search for chemicals in the air that would distinctly be the mark of the artificial--surefire proof of more advanced creatures. The search is therefore constrained to what we know, as we cannot search for something we do not know anything about--like the search for dark matter or energy. We are literally in the dark there as well, for we have no concept of how to search for it, how do you search for something that is undetectable besides. So it is with simple life, which itself could more feasibly be comprised of completely different groupings of atoms. Silicon, however, may just be the only reasonable, and rare, alternative to carbon based life. In the game of numbers that is the universe, where a one in a billion chance per star system could be considered commonplace, there may just be a silicon based life form gazing upon the stars, and wondering if there indeed is a chance that carbon based life is a possibility. (In their case, they would probably think it very possible, and would interestingly think of themselves as the exception which is cool)

"I hate it" launched my sides into orbit

I loved that comment!

I laughed my ass off when he said it.

"it", not "it's"

@@hweidigiv incorrect. “It sand”? That’s grammatically wrong and also not what he said.

Esoteric? Sn2 displacements go through five-coordinate carbon.Six cordinate carbon, and no metals involved, DOI 10.1002/anie.201608795; Pyramidal C6(CH3)6(2+) "8^>)

@@unclealhello can I hav a chat with you

More like has its positives and negatives, amirite?

But silicone can't make as many different combination of molecules

​@@unclealtrue.. now put this molecule adrift and isolated in a planet, how long does it take for it to decay and how long till the next time it forms spontaneously again... just this is already improbable to happen frequently enough to even give opportunity for it to increase in complexity in comparison to silicon based compounds

But from that extreme pressure and high temperature in gas giants, life cannot emerge can they

No that's false. Why do people need to lie. No other chemicals form complex molecules like carbon.

@@rmduwk Maybe different life can.

@@rmduwk for all we know right now carbon based life could be the outlier in the universe.

Never knew that. Of course, if they depend on extreme pressure, such life forms could never escape their planet. On the other hand, we haven't done much better. And if they're living in Jupiter, they've got a lot of room to roam around in.

The current photosynthesis cycle invented and used by all plant (and many bacterial) life, is highly inefficient. With some minor tweaks, biochemists have made scary improvements to that cycle in a very short amount of time, and GMOs are being engineered to improve the photosynthesis efficiency of crops. Why didn't life already find these improvements in the billions of years it has existed? Easy, life finds a way, but it doesn't have to be the best way, just good enough.

@@ginsederp Do you have some sources for this? It would be an interesting read

@@leikom2010 5:43 ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-vYVSH2RpHcQ.html adding 2 new genes is all you need to increase C3 photosynthesis pathway efficiency by 15%, C4 pathway is better, but we haven't managed to modify any C3 pathway plants to C4 yet I believe.

@Mario Lutz ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-pQT3_Bjo5Ns.html the C4 rice project is trying to increase photosynthesis efficiency in rice by 50%, using acetate, scientists can grow plants in the dark more efficiently than sunlight (up to a certain point), scientists modified bacteria to produce acetate with an equivalent efficiency to 10 times that of plants

I've read this one book called Coming of Age in the Milky Way and it astounded me with one of its chapters discussing life's origin. It talked in great detail about what we can consider "life" by contrasting metabolism and reproduction. Apparently, one of the theories proposes that life may have begun from a time where there are only globules containing crystal-like structures that pattern the formation of molecules, favoring the ones stable enough to survive and "reproduce" by splitting into daughter globules which later may have become the progenitor "cell" that sourced every life on earth. My takeaway from this is that, it's not about nature finding a way but instead a form of "natural selection at the molecular or even atomic level". Your final sentence basically summarizes this entire essay, but with carbon being the option instead.

Hmmm. Would a Si creature hate beaches and deserts?

Isn't there a theoretical possibility that actual fungus could evolve to behave like that in real life? So X-files may not have been that far off.

@@thehermitman822 you mean because it's full of their waste :D

@@Kick0a0cat 💩

Right after the power house of the cell 😂

I wondered about that too. As a ST fan, I felt it was overlooked. But appreciated the deep dive on the subject.

The Horta and their eggs were even mistaken by the scientists/miners as rocks or strange minerals they were so unrecognizable. The silicon based virus in "The Observer Effect" from Enterprise was also interesting, but it was more about the alien observers than the virus.

I also came looking for that reference. A little disappointed it was left out.

there was also the "microbrain" from the TNG episode, "home soil."

"Damn it Jim I'm a doctor not a bricklayer!"

Thanks for watching Tell Aɴᴅʀᴇɪ Jɪᴋʜ, you were referred by me he has something new to discuss with you easily get in touch with him👆✍️

I'm glad that the explanation of the different pathways of biology has been helpful

I couldn't agree more, Marcus! 🤩😊 PBS Space Time is the best channel to learn about the science behind life in the universe. Bravo!

It was a Star Wars joke too. Anakin famously said “I don’t like sand. It’s course and rough and irritating… and it gets everywhere!” So you and the dark lord of the sith share a lot in common

Hah that reference went right by me. I didn’t care about Star Wars until Rogue One

Only thing worse than sand in those regards is regolith (which is basically extremely fine sand)

@@thedownwardmachine honestly, same! I had never seen the original trilogy until after Rogue One. Now I know too much about the Star Wars universe. Thanks Tony Gilroy

Oh yeah I was wondering why he was calling methylbenzene glycerin. thanks for the correction!

Not only that but molecule of CO few seconds later is drawn with triple CO bond.

In fact I thought it courageous for a physicist to make a video based on biochemistry. 😅

@@Yasen6275 actually, with leap of faith you could assume it's free radical / transition state in the midst of chemical process :D

@@TD39504 Sience has notohing to do with faith and radicals are denoted with dots, not with imaginary bonds.

Glad Someone got on this before I could only 16 min after posting.

Lol, commented this then saw you beat me to it. Well done fellow chemistry enthusiast!

I think the animators just failed first year chem...

@@nudebovine my apologies

I noticed this myself. I just didn't have the bravery to comment about a mistake that's so trivial and has nothing to do with the point.

Damn 😂😂😂

Botox is bringing bio back, baby!

While feathers grown by carbon-based birds are all black and can be used to write with.. no, wait.

@@Tom_Quixote 😜 We have three peacocks, two peahens, some quail, and a very spoiled Black East Indies house duck (she lives in the house with us) We are familiar with bird feathers. The peafowl feathers ARE actually brown and gray, and microcrystalline structures on the feathers refract light in amazing ways. Imagine if the feathers were silicon based, and therefore inherently crystalline.

@@Tom_Quixote fancy seeing you here hermano

I always imagine life as being see-through sometimes. Also, what why wouldn't rocks evolve to life forms here on Earth? Maybe over time, rocks will start evolving into life forms and we'll have Silicon life here on Earth.

@@victoriaeads6126 Have you heard of Agate?

Glad someone else noticed that. I'm surprised as well.

Tell me, with a straight face, that you don't think the crystal gems (not the Steven universe show itself, everyone agrees it kinda went bland after some time) is a cool alien concept

Because they would imagine us looking like golems 🗿

Jojolion visualizes Silicon based life as identical to human beings in form but with the added ability of being able to solidify at will... and also they are parasitic and spawn out of no where, replacing regular life in their growth

Incorrect. Plenty of unicellular and even some very small multicellular organisms don't need Oxygen. Replacing Oxygen as an energy source is far less ambitious than replacing Carbon with Silicon.

@@cormacb2326 but they would still need to have an environment that’s very low on oxygen to make sure not all silicone is in the form of sand? the combination of being both very stable and being an insoluble solid would make it very difficult for life to be able to access it once it has turned into silica

@@asdfghyter sometimes I wonder if the first intelligent/animal like life we encounter will be relatable in any way. Like sharing no common senses, scale, or environment. Would be hilarious if it was 1mm tall, lives in a thin layer on partially melted bedrock, and can only exist at high temperatures and extreme pressures. Chemistry assumptions like solubility are completely changed in those cases.

@@asdfghyter Carbon planets (planets that are made of mostly Carbon) are theorised to exist and all Oxygen in them will be bonded to Carbon. While Most of the Silicon will be in the form of Silicon Carbide (which is just as if not more inert than Silica) there will likely be a decent amount in less inert Organosilicon molecules because the Carbon and Silicon don't react nearly as readily as Silicon and Oxygen. Carbon being everywhere isn't much of a problem since Carbon is always going to be common enough for life to evolve since it's one of the most common elements in the universe. So for Silicon based life to exist Silicon must be the superior canidate for the basis of life due to the conditions of the planets. E.g. in a really cold planet Silicon could be perferable to Carbon due to being more reactive and less stable than Carbon if you could fix the solubility issue. Alternatively, if you could have Sulphuric acid ocean form on a planet due to asteroids bringing it in it might be enough for Silicon based life to evolve as Silicon based compounds are more stable than Carbon based ones in certain Sulphuric acid conditions (Souce: www.mdpi.com/2075-1729/11/5/400 figure 8).

@@cormacb2326 would it be possible for silicon based life to arise in space? Say, asteroid based? Or in planetary rings? Solves the oxygenation problems. A planet of different compositions than earth, an outer gaseous planet maybe?

I agree, with how big and diverse the universe is, to me it’d be weird if the only life out there was carbon based

@@goodmorning2386 I'm super interested to see what variety of life is possible. AI can really help us with this, I think quantum AI will be able to help us find aliens

@@silverback6497 agreed, I feel like AI is going to kind of revolutionise stuff like this

Also it’s a pretty bad approach in my opinion to think life must be similar to the life we have here on earth like the example with sand in this video too and also the solvent part silicon based life if it exist maybe uses electricity instead of a solvent, also solvents like methane under extreme pressure can also be a great solvent for silicon based life it doesn’t have to be revolving around water

If you consider a near-infinite set of possibilities, yes. Anytime it’s competing with carbon, though, it will probably lose, again purely by a game of numbers.

This guy chemistries.

I never noticed or cared

bad ass reply

Is it true that TNT "sweats" nitroglycerine? I seen it in a cowboy film.

@@aarondavis8943 this is a common mix up in movies, but TNT is a chemical and a solid, it's also very stable so it doesn't sweat anything. But dynamite is a stick of some kind of absorbent soaked in nitroglycerin which is more a liquid and can start to sweat out of older sticks of dynamite. At some point the two terms started getting used interchangeably in pop culture but they're completely different

@@Jay-cf6dz wdym

"That's nonsense, we all know that carbon-carbon bonds are too stable to allow for the production of complex molecules required by biochemistry. Carbon-based life is just a crazy fi-sci notion." (some irate silicon-based scientist)

@@benedictulnot everything is symmetric. We easily see some options life could have taken that would actually be better, like alternatives to chloroplast, additional amino acids, etc. It would go more like this “While no evidence of carbon based life has been found, the possibility of such is a profound mystery as to why life on this planet is exclusively silicone, which can tell us much about how life formed here and potentially elsewhere in the universe where conditions may be more favorable for carbon chemistry!”

I imagine they'd say: "Carbon based life is an interesting theory, but carbon is so rare it would be impractical and it is highly unstable in any sulphuric acid rich atmosphere. But it might be a possibility in some extreme environments."

Some silicon-based alien comment: If there are carbon based life, they would be gross. Imagine inhaling oxygen and releasing the waste product CO2 from the same orifice. Eeeww! Not like us, we have separate orifices for them.

there wont be silicon lifeforms. dna forms on its own when the ingredients are there, the same ingredients that are in roughly the same proportions all over the universe. there is so much more silicon than carbon yet DNA didnt bother with silicon because chemically it doesnt work well enough. its almost like you didnt even watch the video explaining why silicon isnt an alternate to carbon.

@@crusherolies8195 Ah, speaking in absolutes and pretending DNA matters that much (RNA was first, and it really doesn't matter the form, you just need self-replication information structures). Methinks I've found the Sith. Silicon is pretty terrible for such chemistry at our temperature ranges, but what of others?

@@Archgeek0 dna does matter that much, its what happens when you have all the basics hydrogen carbon oxygen etc. all life we find out there will also have dna because thats the shape the proteins make on their own. yes very good RNA was first, and required nothing more than the crap that is everywhere in the universe in the same amounts. we have things that live in extreme hot and cold here on earth, your temperature crap is just crap.

@@Archgeek0 you don't understand, these people are real scientists! They know the truth! Like the people before Einstein who claimed Newtonian physics are absolute, so do they claim their version is absolute. What bothers me isn't that they might be right (possible), but this species of people who are completely inflexible in a domain which can only expand if you dare to explore (carefully), the what-ifs.

@@crusherolies8195 confirmation bias much? objectively speaking, the video ISNT about why silicon life cant exist. it simply isnt. the fact that you interpreted it so is alarming and should push you to examine your biases and the way you learn & interact with new information.

They had superior armour plating.

@@matthewparker9276 and also speed

This seems fairly credible to me. There are "glass sponges", too. You've gotta wonder if, for instance, mollusks could have evolved silicate shells instead of carbonate ones with a slight tweak to history. The whole animal clade is really focused on carbonates, except for those sponges AFAICT, and you've gotta wonder if that's a coincidence or there's a really strong reason.

That would still be carbon life. Our bones are mostly calcium and by mass we have almost as much calcium as carbon but we’re not considered hybrid calcium carbon. It’s the biochemistry that would need to include silicon, and in the actually structure of the enzymes themselves, that would qualify it as hybrid.

I bet Transformers utilize metallic bonds.

@@ObjectsInMotion Ohhhh, that's a very good point, we should call ourselves Calcium carbon hybrids (jk) But yeah, that makes more sense actually.

@@SayAhh Yeah, but sadly not every planet has the allspark.

Thank you

Middle school, I would say. You can understand all of this with 8th grade knowledge.

Hahahaha, get out