The first scientific proposal for silicon-based life extends back to 1891 and the ideas of German astrophysicist Julius Scheiner. Since that time scientists have debated the prospects of silicon-based life—with some embracing its plausibility and others dismissing it. But as a team of astrobiologists from MIT have recently pointed out, to date no one has systematically and comprehensively assessed the capacity of silicon to support life in both a terrestrial environment and plausible nonterrestrial settings. They tackle this problem in a 2020 review article published in the journal Life in which they present a detailed evaluation of silicon's life-support capacity.
Before it's possible to assess the usefulness of silicon as a chemical framework for life, it's necessary to identify the general chemical requirements for life. The team from MIT notes that any life-supporting chemical element must display sufficient chemical diversity. This chemical diversity is required to produce the chemical complexity necessary to generate the diverse collection of molecular structures and chemical operations required to originate and sustain living systems.
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