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About Me Premium Member Conceptual Artist thomastapir34/Male/United States Recent Activity Deviant for 1 Year
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Endless Forms, Carbonaceous and Beautiful

Sat Jul 11, 2009, 1:54 PM
Given the structural, metabolic, and hereditary demands of living systems--by every unanimous definition of life--nothing found in nature can compete with the combination of organic polymers, aqueous solvent system, oxygen respiration, and nucleic-acid-based molecular coding. Statistically speaking, and from the stark perspective of natural selection acting on a physical domain that always seeks the path of least resistance and greatest efficiency, these solutions will be overwhelmingly selected for by multiple factors across multiple critical dimensions. Relative abundance of raw materials, stability, versatility, potential for complexity, environmental tolerance, efficiency of resource exploitation, and density of information storage and expression all dictate carbon compounds, water, oxygen, and DNA (or an analogous molecular coding system) as the most likely candidates for the synthesis of living organisms. The fact that our planet hosts carbon-based life despite being overwhelmingly rich in silicon and poor in carbon tends to support the hypothesis that organic life possesses an inherent competitive advantage over other potential forms--and on a universal scale, carbon outnumbers silicon by a factor of 10 to 1. Does that mean I'm a "carbon chauvinist"? Maybe. But how exotic do we have to go to get extremely alien results?

Of the hundreds of amino acids available in nature, life on Earth uses only 20 to produce the millions of proteins found in terrestrial organisms. (Twenty is the most that triplicate-nucleotide DNA can code for.) Extraterrestrial life may not only use reverse "mirror-image" amino acid sets, composed of "right-handed" rather than "left-handed" stereoisomers, but may use an entirely DIFFERENT set of amino acids that doesn't overlap with our own in a single instance. It is in billions of years of independent and wholly divergent evolution reflected in alien genes, and their expression in the vastly unpredictable characteristics of proteins fabricated by exotic toolkits of disparate amino acid sets, that we will encounter the truly alien in extraterrestrial life. Life on other worlds will be diverse and strange beyond imagination--even for a carbon chauvinist.

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Pedantic late-night musings--a biased companion piece to ([link]), written from the perspective of carbon chauvinism. I was laying it on pretty thick for maximum outrage and thus quality of response. Whip me, beat me, make me feel cheap--my opinions will probably change by tomorrow anyway.

  • Mood: Thrilled
  • Listening to: Alpha Relaxation System 2.0
  • Reading: Illustrated Guide to Uplift Species
  • Watching: the days go by, there is water underground
  • Playing: Change Air Blade
  • Eating: Banana bread sans walnuts
  • Drinking: Decaf iced tea with Sweet 'n Equal

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  • Current Residence: Washington State
  • Interests: Art, science, nature, metaphysics
  • Favourite band or musician: Iced Earth, Blind Guardian, Gamma Ray, Firewind, DragonForce, Hammerfall, Thunderstone, Evergrey
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Comments


dam cool creatures!
you have a good feeling in combination some things together to form some very exotic but still terrestrial far relatives.

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Thanks so much, and thank you also for the watch, faves, and "collections"! I'm glad you've enjoyed my art, and your support is very much appreciated!
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Hello! I deicided tp try my hand at making "plant analogues" and I was wondering what you think of it.
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