Can life exist without carbon and its derivatives?
449284
I think that if carbon was not available when life was being formed, then life would be dependent on something else.  \n\nIf you notice, everything that is essential for our survival, is stuff that was plentiful when life was first forming.  If oxygen wasn't there, then we would not be dependent on it today.  Same with sunlight and water.
272583
All living creatures are made up of carbon.  You can't be alive without it.  It is what separates being a living thing (plant or animal) from a non living thing (stone).
663295
Chemistry relating to Carbon derivatives.
156825
Well, first I probably should know what a somer meteorite is, right? But you wanted answers, not more questions, right? Sorry, again. Okay, but be warned that a renowned physics professor at the University of Texas, a Dr. Steven Wienberg, I think (I hope!) it was, once reamarked about how remarkable it seems that our questions always honestly generate far more new questions than answers, so I'm not completely out of line, here, contrary to what may be quite conventionally viewed as popular opinion, especially in this context, i.e. an experimental situation, to wit; Yahoo! ANSWERS, a beta program.\nI believe Dr. Weinberg was involved somewhat in chaos theory, among other quite facinating things, I'm sure.\nIf memory serves me right, the term "carbonaceous" refers to, specifically, a geological era or period characteristic in reference to the more general use of the term as being rich in carbon, or consisting of carbon. Given carbon to be often associated with our familiar forms of DNA-based life, if it can be reasonably and plausibly demonstrated that any significant quantity or quality of carbon was introduced into the terrestrial environment via space, then this should prove to be interesting, at least, if not, indeed, rather provocative and even potentially quite instructive in terms of proper, universally themed deictic and didactic.\nSo, in my expert opinion, as the world's very first, ever, formal fact theorist, my best answer to your question is, "Good Question!"\nKeep up the good work, and keep excellent track of your sources, even though they shall invariably change with "progress" and "improvement" such as that so far demonstrated by several millennia of so-so documented record. (Everyone, especially the Catholic Church, for example, wants to rewrite history. Even the noble scientists pursuing "nothing but the truth", and so on in their quest to convert followers to their newest, "modern" religion, in theory AND practice, have been known to tamper with data for personal ambition, just a bit too frequently for comfort, among other things...)
499462
life exists on other planets.  it may be something like bacteria, or something large and intelligent.  life was created by chance though, and Earth had 6 mass extinctions where each had the potential to stop life in its tracks.  ironcaly, the extinctions caused evolution to speed up, but thats getting off the subject.  if life is on other planets, which i amm sure of, they will be like nothing any human can think of.  look at earth and how only a continent away can cause large differences in animals.  the planet will provide different challenges for life and evolution to overcome, the life might not even have DNA and RNA, they may have a completely different nucleic acid/genetic material.  its unlikely we will ever find them within the next century, though.  we simply wont have the space travel capabilities.  in time, though, i am positive that we will stumble across life, may be just odd bacteria or could be something like the aliens from ALIEN or the Covenant from Halo games.  we just dont know.  lizard-men?  highly unlikely.
843940
Carbon containing compounds found in living organisms.  BTW, starches are just complex sugars.
143308
Most probably. Life is complex chemistry composed of surprisingly simple components. We can make them in labs and we have found them in meteorites, the tails of comets and in insterstellar molecular clouds. So because all the ingredients are common in space there should be atleast one other place were they can interact with each other for a very long period of time with time being the magic ingredient. It took about 800 million years for life to emerge on the primordial earth. Some stars don´t even live for 80 million years but most stars in the universe are small and stable. Kind of like the sun.
941059
There are theories surrounding the possibility of silicon based life.\nHowever, silicon is fairly limited in the number of compounds it can form that could be considered "necessary for life".\n\nCarbon can form with practically anything to form anything.  That is why carbon is considered to be an essential base for all forms of life.
230089
Yes, without any chemical reaction in your body you would not be able to live. \nWithout physical interactions you wouldn't be able to live either. \n\nI am not quite sure what your question is, but I think the idea that the whole is more than the sum of its components could be helpful \ne.g. a house can be fully build from bricks, but it is very different from just a unregular heap of bricks. You can find shelter from rain/cold in a house, but barely under a heap of bricks. \nAnd you can get very different houses depending on how you put your bricks together.
1164312
Yet another interesting question, man_id.\n\nAll a theory of abiogenesis can do is give an answer for how life-from-non-life is *possible*.  ... I.e. what ingredients and conditions might result in a replication system that is sufficient for natural selection to take over?  And which ones *may* have been present in the early days of the earth (knowing what we do know about those days)?  There may, in fact, be multiple answers ... many different recipes, all equally possible.  If so, then we may never know which one actually occurred on our planet.\n\nBut it is also possible that we may never find a recipe that works that we know might have been available in the earth's infancy.  We've only started looking.
981867
Yes.  All living things are constantly exchanging carbon-14 with the environment, so the ratio is the same.  When an organism dies, the exchange stops, allowing the time of death to be estimated based on the amount of C-14 that has not decayed.
268872
Certainly.  While life of any sort is unlikely to be found in our solar system (at least beyond the possible existance of bacteria or bacterial fossils) the universe is simply too large for life to not occur somewhere else.\n\nAssuming that life on earth formed and evolved from the basic chemicals of a primordial earth into molecules, and the single celled organisms, it is entirely possible that this could happen somewhere else.  As was previously mentioned, there are a huge amount of stars in the universe, all of which may hold the potential to support a solar system with planets and create conditions likely to that of the Earth 4.5 billion years ago.  Even with a low frequency (1 in billions or more) of any sort of life-form formation, this means what there would likely be life in many places throughout the universe.\n\nI believe that experiments have been performed simulating the primordial chemical environment of the Earth, and subjecting it to electric discharge as would be released by lightning.  It was found that simple compounds such as amino acids could be formed from these reactions, and thus the formation of life may be viewed as a statistical event with a decent probability of occurance, given the correct conditions.\n\nWhile the chance of life existing is significant, the chance of it being intelligent interacting life-forms that we are able to find is much lower.  Even traveling at the fastest speed possible (speed of light), which has never been close to attained for human flight, it would take 15 billion years to reach the outskirts of the universe.  Assuming that life may undergo cycles in which a life-form may evolve, deplete a planet's resources, and then die out, the window of opportunity for finding any life form may be small.  Additionally, since prospective planets to explore that may contain life are likely identified by telescopes, the telescopes show what the planet was like in the past due to the time it takes the light to travel to the Earth.  If we are looking at a planet that is 5 billion light years away, we are looking at the light that was sent from that planet 5 billion years ago.\n\nWhile there are many formidable obstacles, it is not altogether impossible for us to find life on other planets, but I doubt that any of us will see it in our lifetimes.
5565
First you have to define life.   Unfortunately by the standards we use today light and gas cannot be considered lifeforms because they cannot reproduce and carry out other life functions.
557394
No living organism can live without oxygen. They also need a particular temperature to sustain lives. But, as far as we know, Neptune is a gas giant without oxygen. The temperature is below -200 C. Thus, it's obvious that there is no life in Neptune.
1096198
as humans we are carbon based but in order to live we need Oxygen\n\nYeah I think there are millions of things out there living on other gases.
1004396
Ive answered this one to many times.\n\nI dont think that intelegent life exists, but life does exist. I know that. Imagine this: A gas Giant. Nothing but clouds oif gas. Inside jupitur. How can life survive? They can float! Blimp-like creatures could fly and be hunted by gliding creatures called "sword tails", or perhaps an organism that has no mouth or nose for breathing, since it abosbs the ice on europa, and gets food by photosynthesis, on the moon of Europa. Or EVEN IN VENUS!!! There could be fat creacures that are resistant to the intence heat, and can last heavy pressure. They eat rocks and metal, and since the surface is boiling hot, they keep standing on one foot, alternating every once in a while. Great thinking, no?\n\nIntelegent life doesn't exist as far as I know, but other forms of life, like the ones I listed, or single celled organisms, could.\n\nMy answer: Yes! Definatly. There are kinds of life that can adapt to nearly anything. Bacteria for instance. Its a huge, wide space, and Earth isnt the only planet with life. Definatly not. Earthlings adapted to life on this planet. If we were somewhere like Europa or Titan, we might not have to breate, or be resistant to very cold temperatures. Imagine that!
222105
a) cyanobacteria \n\nOur atmosphere would have virtually no free oxygen nor any eukaryotes if not for them....