[Space] Panspermia and the Campgaign

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by whswhs

Silicon by itself doesn't seem likely to form useful information-bearing polymers. At least I don't know of anything comparable even to hydrocarbon chemistry based on it.

The hydrocarbon analogs are siloxanes. The monomer unit isn't -C- but -Si-O-, and they can form fairly long polymers, and rather complicated other structures (the 5 unit rings, and the cubane analog are both fairly stable, and give you a fine core for building elaborate structures around). Though the ones more interesting to us are silicones, mixed things with Si-O- backbones but carbon chains hanging off the other two bonds from the silicon.