Tag: Life

Arsenic and Old Life– I grew up reading science fiction and was introduced at a young age to the idea that life might have a different chemical basis than the standard  arrangement based on carbon. Silicon based  life was already a cliché long before I saw the old classic Star Trek episode The Devil in the Dark wherein a Federation mining colony is terrorised by a life-form that could ingest  rock and move through solid matter as if it were swimming in water.  I remember asking my father, a chemical…