[Make it Lady (OP)]

I have always liked the idea of writing a scifi book about a planet of inorganic creatures with mercury for blood. Could inorganic creatures actually exist (in theory of course.) What do you think?

 [?]

[LeeE]

organic is what you define.

[DoctorBeaver]

I have always liked the idea of writing a scifi book about a planet of inorganic creatures with mercury for blood. Could inorganic creatures actually exist (in theory of course.) What do you think?

 [?]

You mean like Rock Hudson?

[RD]

I have always liked the idea of writing a scifi book about a planet of inorganic creatures with mercury for blood. Could inorganic creatures actually exist (in theory of course.) What do you think? [?]

The physicist Robert Forward wrote about inorganic life forms in his science fiction novel "Dragon's Egg"...

Major themes
The key attractions of this story and its sequel are:
Life based on nuclear interactions vs. electronic/chemical interactions

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon's_Egg

[SquarishTriangle]

If we eventually found something somewhere in the universe that was:
• non-humanoid
• non-animal/plant/fungus/protozoan-like
• possibly non-cellular
• did not encode anything via nucleic acids
• of proportions non-comparable to life on earth
• possibly with an amorphous appearance
• possibly non-motile
• inorganic (and therefore not carbon based, and composed of compounds other than proteins and what have you)
• umm...non-English speaking...

...how would we recognise it as 'life'?
Or furthermore, how would 'intelligent life' be recognised if we were to encounter it, especially seeing as our ability to percieve it even within animals here on earth is somewhat limited.

A nice idea that there would be 'beings' out there just like us that we can have tea parties with (well it sells movie tickets, doesn't it?)...but could the reality be a little disappointing to some?

[blakestyger]

One of the problems of the philosophy of biology is that there is no definitive specification for what life is. For it to be replicable it has to contain information that can also be replicable and this requires a degree of molecular complexity not found in inorganic molecules.
It could be argued that sodium chloride possesses information in that an evaporated solution will always form the same cubic lattice in its crystals, impurities allowing.

Anybody interested in how life could be defined is welcome to look at -

http://blakestyger.livejournal.com/

- a paper in the form of an interview that I did last year for a genetics course I was on.

[Make it Lady (OP)]

One of the problems of the philosophy of biology is that there is no definitive specification for what life is. For it to be replicable it has to contain information that can also be replicable and this requires a degree of molecular complexity not found in inorganic molecules.
It could be argued that sodium chloride possesses information in that an evaporated solution will always form the same cubic lattice in its crystals, impurities allowing.

Anybody interested in how life could be defined is welcome to look at -

http://blakestyger.livejournal.com/

- a paper in the form of an interview that I did last year for a genetics course I was on.

Thanks for this it has given me food for thought. Obviously my creatures will either have to be clones, made like robots or they must have a degree of organic molecules present for reproductive purposes. MMMMM interesting. Anymore gems would be welcome so that I can really get my creatures working.

[JimBob]

Then, therer is the question "is Artificial Computer Intelligence" life or not? We are not that far away according to some liberal definitions.

[neilep]

I have always liked the idea of writing a scifi book about a planet of inorganic creatures with mercury for blood. Could inorganic creatures actually exist (in theory of course.) What do you think?

 [?]

Yep...inorganic life exists.......

..wifeys cooking...left alone for a while....soon develops it's own intelligence....voila !!

[Make it Lady (OP)]

Maybe your wife should cook lamb chops!

I know about intellegent robots that may one day become life forms in their own right but I was hoping to make them different to robots as Sci Fi is full of robots with feelings.

[backgroundwhitenoise]

Just to put a different spin on the robotics as inorganic life forms. I have been playing around with the idea of human evolution (as in from homosapiens on) i have come to the conclusion that our evolution is with what we create now, as in the mechanical devices and "robots" so if you went with my ideas then if say robots took over the world in a Terminator like way, then that could just be thought of as the next step in human evolution.

[Don_1]

If we eventually found something somewhere in the universe that was:
• non-humanoid
• non-animal/plant/fungus/protozoan-like
• possibly non-cellular
• did not encode anything via nucleic acids
• of proportions non-comparable to life on earth
• possibly with an amorphous appearance
• possibly non-motile
• inorganic (and therefore not carbon based, and composed of compounds other than proteins and what have you)
• umm...non-English speaking...

...how would we recognise it as 'life'?

It's name would be Gordon Brown!!!! Hehehe

[Nobody's Confidant]

How about a planet of robots, super intelligent AI learning robots. Nobody made them, nobody programmed them, they're an actual native species of the planet.
Sci-fi! Laser weapons FTW!

[stevewillie]

Silicon has been proposed as the basis for some kind of life form. Like carbon, silicon can form long strong chains. Life requires two features: metabolism and replication. It's questionable whether silicon based "life" could satisfy these requirements. At room temperature, they would be "living stone" capable of taking minerals from their environment and growing across the landscape, much like a fungus. They could exist at very low temperatures. The key is that they would take nutrients from their environment to extend themselves,supporting a kind of metabolism. They might well grow toward areas where nutrient minerals are plentiful. This would be life very much as we don't know it. No DNA, no cells or organs, no seeds or reproductive mechanisms that we would recognize. But it would have a low energy metabolism and possibly "reproduce" by budding off new growth centers. Weird, but some say possible. (See my biography for a referenced source).