Could life exist on other planets? John Harris

Opening Technical Setup and Speaker Introduction

Work on this recording, and I'm going to work on Facebook Live.

OK, you're going to keep working on it? OK, so let's go ahead and move forward, and we'll see what we can do. OK, all right, so I'm Terry Camarazel, representing the Creation Fellowship of Santee, California.

And we are happy tonight that we have John Harris with us as our speaker. John Harris is the director of Living Waters Europe, and he's also the founder and CEO of Creation Science UK. John was originally trained as an analyst software designer using at least half a dozen different computer languages, and he has run his own IT business for over 23 years.

As a Christian apologist, John speaks at conferences, events, and churches throughout the UK, as well as teaching monthly classes and apologetics. He also leads street teams in open air and one-to-one witnessing in London.

And he has hosted two Living Waters Ambassadors Academies in Europe, the first one in France in 2016 and the second one last year in the UK. Earlier this summer, I heard John give a talk at the Living Waters Evolution Exposed online conference, so we reached out to him to come share more in-depth on the same topic he presented that day, which is, could life exist on another planet?

So we are happy to have him. Again, we are recording, and John's format is going to be that his presentation will be a little bit on the shorter side so that he can leave a lot of room for Q &A. So if you do have any questions during that time, you can put them into the chat.

And we'll keep recording during the Q &A tonight, so if you would like to turn on your microphone and or camera to ask your questions yourself, you can, or else you can put your comments in chat, your questions in chat, and then I'll ask them on your behalf.

So with that, John, go ahead.

Hi, everybody.

It's great to meet you all. Thank you so much for inviting me, even though it's nearly 3 AM in the morning. If I fall asleep, I blame it on somebody else. I blame it on Terry. Guys, to start with, I'm going to share my screen so you can see exactly what's going on.

So give me a second. I'm hoping that this is going to work. And if I start speaking and you cannot see it, then please interrupt me so that I can fix it. So here we go. All right, so I assume this is working.

Otherwise, somebody would have interrupted by now.

Good.

You're good, John. You're good.

It's good to know.

Give me a second. Let me change camera angles so that everybody can see me properly. There you go. Good stuff. So good morning, good afternoon, good evening,.

Wherever you are.

Good to see you all. And thank you very much for inviting me for this talk. We're going to do a talk on a very interesting topic that many people may have thought about but don't really talk about much.

The Evolutionary Case for Life on Other Planets

Could life exist on another planet? And with life, I mean intelligent life, like us. Could there be aliens on another planet? Well, it seems to me how you answer this question is dependent on your worldview.

That's basically what you believe and what you think life started. There are really only two main worldviews here to take into account. You're either an evolutionist and believe that life could spontaneously generate from non-living matter, or you are a creationist who believes that life is created by a personal, powerful being with an intelligent mind.

What other choices do we have, really? It's either by coincidence or by design. And by design, I mean a designer. And by a designer, I mean God. So it's either by coincidence or by God. Now, if you're an evolutionist and watching this, I assume your answer to this question will have to be, well, yes, as far as you're concerned.

If life exists on this planet through random chance mutations and natural processes, then why wouldn't life, like us, exist on another planet, given the right conditions, of course? So if the conditions are right, then life should or could exist somewhere else, right?

Now, on the other hand, if you're a Christian, you might be thinking, well, why not? We know God is all-powerful and able. So if he wanted to, he could create life on another planet. If he can, then why wouldn't he?

Now, is there a way we can know if God did or would create life on another planet? Well, that's what we'll see in just a minute. But first, let's answer the question from the evolutionary worldview. What are the chances, knowing what we know, that life could exist on another planet?

Now, for the sake of the evolutionists, I'm going to be very kind here, which is what I'm going to do throughout this talk. I'm going to make a lot of uncomfortable allowances. I'm going to ignore lots of important stuff, like, for example, the law of biogenesis, which tells us that life can't start from non-life.

This is the law that tells us that no matter how suitable a planet is, life wouldn't just automatically start or exist. That wouldn't even happen here on Earth, which is 100 suitable for life. If you destroy all life on Earth, that would be, if you destroy all life of Earth, it will just die.

Earth will become barren. It wouldn't just spontaneously exist again, even though it's super suitable for life. Now, in case you're interested, this whole idea that life could just spontaneously exist from nothing has been disproven as early as 1968 by Francisco Redi, an Italian physician.

And this is what he said. He proved that the higher forms of life did not originate spontaneously by demonstrating that maggots come from eggs of flies. But believe it or not, because some people just never give up.

In 1745, John Needham, an English naturalist and biologist, tried to disprove Francisco Redi's experiment. He added a chicken broth to a flask and boiled it. He then let it cool and waited. Microbes grew, and he proposed it as an example of spontaneous generation.

But in 1768, Lazzaro Spallanzani, Italian biologist and physiologist, repeated Needham's experiment, but removed all the air from the flask. But this time, no growth occurred. What a surprise. And finally, in 1864, Luis Pasteur, he nailed it once and for all.

He did a series of experiments similar to those performed earlier by Needham and Spallanzani. Pasteur demonstrated that life does not arise in areas that have not been contaminated by existing life. Pasteur's empirical results were summarized in the phrase, omni vivum ex vivo.

In Latin, life is from life. But of course, evolutionists never give up. Those who support the idea of spontaneous generation claim that this did not apply to microbes. So they tried and tried to prove it with experiments.

Two of the famous guys who did this are called Franz Schultz and Theodore Schwann, but they never succeeded. So Dr. Walt Brown, I don't know if you know him, he has a degree in mechanical engineering.

He says these things. Spontaneous generation, which is the emergence of life from non-living matter, has never been observed. All observations have shown that life comes only from life. This has been observed so consistently, it is called the law of biogenesis.

The theory of evolution conflicts with this scientific law when claiming that life came from non-living matter through natural processes. Evolutionary scientists reluctantly accept the law of biogenesis.

However, some say that future studies may show life could come from lifeless matter, despite virtually impossible odds. Others are aware of just how complex life is and the many failed and foolish attempts to explain how life can come from non-life.

They duck the question by claiming that the theory of evolution doesn't begin until the first life somehow arose. Still others say that the first life was created, then evolution occurred. All evolutionists recognize that based on scientific observations, life comes only from life.

Okay, so he's saying, give it up guys, it's the law. Life, we have to live with it. The whole idea originally came from the worshipers of idols who believe that the goddess Gaia can make life from stones.

Well, at least these pagans believe that someone, a goddess, made life from stone, rather than from nothing. That's still better than evolutionists that have to say that it's a non-guiding force. But for the sake of working out the probability of life existing on another planet, I'm going to ignore this law.

This is one of those allowances I'm going to make, even though this law has never been falsified and it's always been verified. I'm also gonna ignore something else. I'm gonna ignore what they call the information found in DNA.

We all know that DNA is complex structure that holds the blueprint for life. It's literally like a manual that would use, that you would use to build something sophisticated like a robot. It even tells us the order of each part, how each part should be built and put together.

It's full of information. And by the way, we have a whole scientific field dedicated to support this understanding of information. It's called information science. I'm specifically referring to a very special type of information called prescriptive information, not Shannon or functional information.

That's for people who study the information science here. This is the prescriptive information is what we find functioning in the DNA. So in fact, the DNA is so packed with so much intelligent information, we call it the language of life or the book of life.

We have always seen that this kind of prescriptive information comes from an intelligent mind. This means again, life couldn't just pop into existence on its own. So I, again, I'm ignoring this fact along with many other laws we have that make life possible in the first place.

So these are all the allowances I'm making. In fact, this is such a big deal. These laws that make life possible, such a big deal that makes people like this English astronomer, Fred Doyle say, a common sense interpretation of the facts suggests that a super intellect has monkeyed with physics as well as with chemistry and biology and that there are no blind forces worth speaking about in nature.

The numbers one calculates from the facts seem to me so overwhelming as to put this conclusion almost beyond question. Fred Doyle is saying, look, it feels like someone is deliberately making these figures work.

It's so precise, it cannot be an accident. They're all beyond question. Yet I'm going to ignore all of them because that's what evolutionists actually do. When talking about life on this planet or any other planet, they ignore all these facts.

I don't think you can be fairer than that. Okay, so what are the chances that intelligent life like ours or aliens could exist on another planet from the evolutionary worldview? Well, to start with, the conditions have to be right.

Now, what are the conditions? Well, we call these the factors or elements or parameters. For example, we need to be in the right location in the galaxy. We need to be in the circumstellar habitable zone from the sun, we call the Goldilocks zone.

Otherwise, Earth will be too hot or too cold. It must have a planetary system with a giant planet to shield the inner planets from too many common impacts. It must orbit the right kind of star, not too hot or not hot enough.

It must have a moon to stabilize the tilt of its axis so that it can have moderate seasons. That it's a terrestrial planet, solid like a rock, with a crust that's thick enough for tectonic activities, with enough heat inside the planet to circulate the liquid ion to generate magnetic field.

We need the right kind of atmosphere with enough oxygen to allow complex organisms to survive. It must have enough water and enough continents to support life like ours with just the right amount of volcanic activity for sole mineralization and allow carbon and vapor to go back into the atmosphere.

I'm not kidding you. The list just goes on and on. And they have to all be there all at the same time for life to be supported. There are so many things that need to be right for life to exist that we have a name for this.

It's called the Anthropic Principle. By 2001, we found we need 153 fine-tuning factors for life on Earth. By April 2004, the numbers shot up to 322 parameters. In the future, who knows? We might find even more factors or parameters.

What you see in the background are the parameters in small font because there are so many of them to fit in the screen. But having said all that, now, for the sake of being extra kind, which I said I'm gonna be doing all along here in this talk to give as good a chance as possible, I'm only going to use the smaller list of 2001 with 153 parameters.

So what are the chances that a planet would have one of these elements? All right. For this, I'm gonna do something seriously crazy. I'm going to assume that a planet has only one in 10 chance of having any one of these factors or elements.

That's got to be more than fair, right? Now, that would be great if we only needed one element to match. But with 153 of them, once you start multiplying these probabilities together, the chances of getting a planet with all these parameters becomes very, very, very slim.

The actual probability is one chance in 10 to the power of 153. That's one followed by 153 zeros. Now, that's just an unimaginable small chance. But some of you are going to say, now, hang on a minute, John.

I get it. That would make the likelihood of life existing on another planet very small or impossible. I get it. But surely that depends on how many stars and planets we have, right? Well, that is right.

So let's have a look to see how many stars we have. Now, according to the European Space Agency, it says we have somewhere between 10 to the power of 24 and 10 to the power, between 10 to the power of 22 to 10 to the power of 24 stars in the universe.

But like I said, to be extra kind, I'm going to go with a higher number, giving more chance. I'm going up with the 10 to the power of 24. That's one followed by 24 zeros. This gives us more stars to work with.

But now you're going to say, but okay, wait a minute, John, that's talking about stars.

Well, how about planets?

How many planets do we have? Okay, that's a fair question. And that's where we go to NASA. Apparently, we do have an idea of how many planets exist out there. They say the average number of planets per star is greater than one.

There you have it. The average is greater than one, but obviously less than two. Otherwise they would have happily said the average is greater than two. But for the sake of being extra generous, like I said, we're going to keep being as extra generous as we can to make this work.

Let's pretend we have as many as a thousand planets per star. That means we have a thousand more planets than we have stars. Now that is a lot of planets. But can you see how that didn't even touch the surface of what's needed?

The odds are still too low. Let me see if I can help you appreciate the magnitude of this number. I feel we need to clarify this. They tell us that the universe is about 13 .8 billion years old. That's what they say.

And so we're taking this from the evolutionary point of view. And according to NASA, space .com and the BBC, wherever you look, they all say the universe is actually 92 billion light years in diameter.

Since we are roughly in the middle, it makes the edge roughly 46 billion light years away from Earth. That means if we were to travel at the speed of light in one direction, that's more than 186 ,000 miles per second.

That's very fast. It will take around 46 billion years to reach the edge of the universe that we can see. That's very, very far. Here's a side note. They tell us that young Earth creationists who believe in 6 ,000 year old universe are absolutely unreasonable because clearly there are stars 13 .8 billion light years away.

But the edge of the universe is 46 billion years away, not 13 .8 billion light years. Don't they have the same problem? The universe is clearly much, much, much larger than the age they claim it to be.

Why is that a problem for us but not them? It's obviously because it's expanding. But if that's the case, then why can't the expansion also work for young Earth creationists? Why is it okay for the evolutionists to have a universe larger than it's 13 .8 billion years old, but not okay for the creationists to have a universe larger than 6 ,000 years old?

Whatever allowances they are making for themselves could also apply for the creationists and it should work. Now, the reason why we measure things in light years is because everything is so far away. If we measure things in miles, well, the numbers are just too large to work with.

One light year is 6 trillion miles away. So you can imagine how many miles 92 billion light years would be. So it would be really crazy to measure the universe in any other unit of measure than light years.

But that is exactly what I'm going to do now, to make a point, to show you how large this number that we're dealing with is. I'm going to measure the universe in inches. That's going to be a lot of inches.

When I do that, I get 10 to the power of 28. That's one followed by 28 zeros. Each time you add a zero, please remember this, the number is 10 times greater, not just double. It's 10 times greater than the previous number.

So you can imagine how large 10 to the power of 153 is. Here's another example to help you appreciate the magnitude of this number. I'm going to keep doing this until I drill it and make you hopefully understand what odds we're dealing with here.

What are the chances of winning the lottery? Now, imagine this, imagine winning the state lottery by finding the winning ticket in the street and then continuing to win the lottery every week for a thousand years by finding the winning ticket in the street each time.

I mean, I'm not kidding.

You're not even having to buy this thing. You're walking down the street, you're finding a winning ticket and you find a ticket and it happens to be a winning one. The chances of that happening every single week for a thousand years is one chance in 10 to the power of 65.

That's one followed by 65 zeros. Now compare that to one chance in 10 to the power 153. So the chances of winning the lottery every single week by finding a random ticket in the street is greater than the possibility of finding life on another planet.

Are we getting this? In fact, as a number, 10 to the power of 153 is larger, listen to this, than the total number of atoms we have in the entire universe. That's right. You heard me right. It's much, much larger than the atoms we have in the universe.

Let me show you. The total number of atoms in the entire universe, and believe me, someone has already worked this out, is 10 to the power of 80. That's it. 10 to the power, that's one followed by 80 zeros.

But we're talking about 10 to the power of 153. You see what I mean? 10 to the power of 153 is like double, it's not like double or quadruple times more, oh no. It's 10 times more than a trillion, a trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion times greater than the number of atoms in the universe.

So if you were to have as many planets as there are atoms in this universe, which would clearly be impossible, it's just you can't have as many planets as you have atoms, you would still not have enough planets to come anywhere near bringing that probability even close to finding a planet suitable for life.

Can you now see the problem? But please remember, I've been very generous all along with all these figures in favor of the evolutionists. If we were to work with the actual figures and the factors given to us so far and compare them with the life-supporting bodies we have in the universe, that's planets, taking everything into account, the probability of finding a suitable planet is less than one chance and 10 to the power 282, that's even greater.

That's less than one in a trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion chance that life would exist on any planet or any rock anywhere in this universe by pure chance.

I'm hoping that my point is made clear. How unlikely is it that life could exist on another planet? If that didn't quite do it for you, I'm gonna go seriously crazy now. This is gonna be the ultimate, the ultimate measure here.

If you would fill all the empty spaces, right, in this universe with atoms. So you take the empty space, we got planets, we got stars, we got galaxies. If we take the spaces in between and fill this up with atoms, the total number of atoms will be now in our universe in total, one followed by 112 zeros.

That's still way less than 10 to the power of 282. So even if you were to fill our universe with as many planets as these number of atoms, it won't be anywhere near close. Let's go slightly crazier here with our comparison to finish off blowing your mind.

If you were to fill every empty space in our universe with atoms, like we said just a minute ago, then create as many universes as you have atoms, making sure that each universe itself is full of atoms like ours, and then you take each atom and magically take all the atoms combined, magically change each one of them to a planet.

You know how many planets you will have now? You will have 10 to the power of 224. That's still nowhere near close enough to 10 to the power of 282. That's still much bigger. Do you know how much bigger this is than that number?

Do you know how many more of these planets and universes you need that we just worked out? You need 10 times a trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, billion more planets than all these planets and universes put together.

William Dembski, who is an American mathematician, philosopher, and a theologian, worked out that anything with a probability of one chance in 10 to the power of 150 is not possible. He said this, "'Anything as rare as that probability "'had absolutely no possibility of happening by chance "'at any time by any conceivable specifying agent, "'by any conceivable process "'throughout all of cosmic history.'".

You know what I think?

I think it's game over.

Basically, if there is intelligent life out there, it's not going to make it. That alien will be homeless. Or if they did exist, it was a miracle, in which case we're back to God creating them. It just couldn't exist by pure chance.

Now, don't forget, right from the beginning, we ignored important laws, like the law of biogenesis and the information found in the DNA that tells us that life couldn't just pop into existence from natural processes.

And not to mention ignoring various other laws that makes life possible in the first place. So now, what we want to know is this. If life couldn't exist on another planet by coincidence, then who's to say that God didn't create life on another planet himself?

Why God Would Not Create Aliens in a Fallen Universe

Let's now have a look at whether God would create life like us on another planet. Why wouldn't God just choose to create life somewhere else, like he did here on Earth? What's the problem with that? Well, there is an obvious problem with this idea that this physicist actually gets.

His name is Paul Davies, who's not a Christian. He said, Christianity is, in particular, has difficulties with regard to the very special role that Jesus Christ plays. If they wish to retain Jesus Christ as their savior, is he the savior of mankind only or of all sentient beings throughout the universe?

Or will each community have its own savior? Doesn't it all start become a little ludicrous? So this unbeliever is saying, did Jesus die for all these aliens or are they doomed without a savior? And if they are doomed, wouldn't that be unloving?

It just doesn't make sense. So he's raising interesting points here. But why is he saying that? Well, he's saying that because of this. If aliens were to exist, then they are affected by the fall of Adam because the Bible says, through one man, sin entered the world.

Everything was affected, including plants like thorns and thistles. In fact, the whole creation groans. That includes galaxies. Everything will eventually perish, including the earth and the heavens. So that will include any life on another planet.

And eventually, everything will be burnt up when God creates a new heaven and new earth. So their fate will be almost certainly death. Therefore, any life God created on another planet is affected by the fall and have the same predicament as we do.

So the first question is, why would God create people who are affected by Adam's sin and not try to save them? But of course, he could create intelligent life if he wanted to, like us, and destroy it if he wants to.

But that would seem a little cruel, doesn't it? It doesn't seem compatible with a maximally great being who has maximally great attributes like love. But now I hear you say, now, wait a minute, John, why can't God send a savior there too?

Why does a savior only have to exist here on earth? Well, that's easy. Let's see if we can answer that. Because the Bible says that Jesus died once and for all, and for all time. That means he never had to go through death and the cross again.

We have verses for that. The Bible says Jesus did not have to suffer repeatedly, and that Jesus had to be our kinsman redeemer. Now, this is very important. With Jesus being born through Mary, he could represent humanity.

So Jesus' death could not apply to those aliens, even if they did exist. And on top of that, the Bible makes no provision for God to redeem any other species any more than to redeem fallen angels. So it's unlikely that Christ is going to do that.

And also the church is the bride of Christ and it's likened to marriage. So it's unlikely that Christ is going to be a polygamist with many other brides from other planets. So taking all this into consideration, I would say it's unlikely that Jesus went to another planet and suffered and died another death to save some other species in some other place in this universe.

So if I had to choose one way or another, I would say that it is very unlikely that God would create life on another planet. Therefore, the answer, as far as I'm concerned, is a no. The Bible tells us that God has lavished his love on us and that we are the apple of his eye.

We are the crown and principle part of his creation, creating things for our benefit, giving dominion over them. So could life exist on another planet? It doesn't matter how you look at it. The odds appear to be stacked up against it.

So apologies to all you Star Trek fans out there. Based on those probabilities alone, I don't think you'll find any aliens out there. I'm also sorry to say that E .T. does not have a home, he does not have a phone, and neither does he nor his friends actually exist.

I hope that's been helpful and informative. So hopefully we'll be able to help with any questions. So over to you, Terri.

Questions About Bacterial Life and the Purpose of Creation

Okay, so if you guys have some questions, you can put them into the chat, or we can also go ahead and I'll look for some raised hands. I can't see your videos, but if you wanna raise your hand, like if you open your participants tab, you people in Zoom, if you open your participants tab, then there's a button at the bottom that says raise hand and you can raise your hand that way.

I have a question to start with. So why couldn't God create other forms of non-intelligent life?

Yes, you mean like bacteria, right?

Sure.

That would be, that would solve the problem, I guess, wouldn't it? That would solve the problem that God could create bacterial life and therefore he doesn't have to rescue them and he just does that.

Okay, let me just see. I think I've got a slide for this. So that would be this one here. Could God create non-intelligent life for the, or bacterial life on another planet? Why wouldn't he do that? I mean, why would that not be possible?

We got a few reasons for that. I mean, we can't rule out these things, but we can logically work through them. So according to Gil's exposition of the entire Bible, man is the principal part of creation and for the sake of whom the world and all things in it were made, and which being finished, he is introduced into it as into a house ready, prepared, and furnished for him.

So this tells us a couple of things. It tells us that God spent creation week preparing it for mankind, his crown and glory, and that God created everything for mankind's benefit and mankind's enjoyment, even the microscopic bacterial, so that we cannot see are made for our benefit.

For example, they form symbiotic relationship in our stomach to help us digest our food and they're involved in recycling nutrients in the environment. Of course, we can't rule it out, the possibility that God could have created bacteria or non-intelligent life on another planet, but it seems very unlikely knowing the purpose of living things and their relationship with us.

That would be kind of my understanding of why I would reject that.

Silicon-Based Life and Why Science Fiction Is Not Evidence

It makes a lot of sense. Here's another question. Why couldn't silicon-based life form exist on another planet?

Yes, and you know what? It happens quite a lot that people actually would say that. Can you still hear me? I'm just swapping cameras so that I could show the details I wanna show you. Why couldn't other intelligent life form exist such as silicon life sprays?

Now, first of all, I mean, it is something that people say immediately when you show them the facts, which is normally a good sign when somebody says that. It means you made a good case for why life as we know it couldn't exist on another planet.

Otherwise, they would attack your reasoning and calculations, wouldn't they? So that would be the first point that they will attack your reasoning and your formula and your calculations. So in a way, they're agreeing that life as we know it could not exist on another planet.

But now they're saying, well, what about some other form of life, some form of life that we don't know, some other form of life. But when we talk about life on another planet, we are usually talking about life as we know it.

Silicon based life form, life is that something as we know it? Well, no, we don't know any silicon based life form. So what's the problem with talking about life as we don't know it? Well, the first problem is, how do we know if it's real life?

I've not seen silicon based life intelligent form. So how are we going to talk about another life form that we're not familiar with? Maybe it's not life at all, but it just looks like life. And how would we know?

Robots, for example, move and think like humans and they appear intelligent. Does that mean they are alive? What's the definition of life? That starts changing as well. Now, if we're gonna talk about life as we don't know it, then of course, you can make anything happen.

If we're going to accept any definition as intelligent sentient beings, maybe a rock is a life form. Maybe a spaghetti is an intelligent life form. I mean, if we're gonna change the definition, then how do we know that we have an intelligent life form or not?

If that's not, I mean, we don't call that science. It's a fairy tale on top of another fairy tale. I mean, the nature of fairy tale is that you can make anything possible. You just come up with a good story and suddenly you've got life.

If anyone pulls that card on you saying that some mysterious life form can exist in some other way, then simply thank them because they've just agreed with you that they agreed that intelligent life as we know it couldn't exist on another planet.

Otherwise, why even mention it? Why pull that card? It's clearly impossible. Now, silicon-based life form, is that even possible? I mean, check out this table here that I got. It shows us that we have more silicon on earth than carbon, yet life on earth is carbon-based.

But funny enough, the universe has more carbon than silicon. It's the other way around. That means you would expect life on earth to be silicon-based because we have plenty of it and life in space to be carbon-based.

So why assume that life would ever be silicon-based in space? Surely you would expect it to be carbon-based seeing it's full of it, right? You can see it on the table there. The numbers are much, much bigger.

Even on earth, life is carbon-based even though we have plenty of silicon. So how much more in space where there is plenty of carbon? So it's a strange thing to claim that life could be silicon-based in space if that's more possible than carbon.

Silicon-based life form are even less likely in space making the odds even worse. The only place we see silicon-based life forms is in science fiction films. That's where this idea belongs. It's a fiction, it's not science.

Now, I don't know if you want me to go ahead and explain why people say it. I mean, if you wanna know scientifically why people say it, I mean.

Yes, I do because I have heard that on many sci-fi programs and when Terry actually said that, I almost fell off my chair.

Yeah.

Why do they even go there for silicon?

Yeah, why silicon-based? Why some other base? Why not come up with some either idea?

But silicon-based. Like plastic.

Yeah, like plastic, for example.

Like some other formula.

So come up with some other element in the periodic table. Why silicon in the first place? Well, the reason why they like silicon-based life forms is because of this. Carbon and silicon share many characteristics.

Each has a so-called valence of four, meaning that individual atoms make four bonds with other elements forming chemical compounds. Each element bonds to oxygen. Each forms long chains called polymers in which it alternates with oxygen.

They give many reasons why silicon life would not exist that I don't have time to go into, but they make it very clear here. The fact that silicon oxidizes to a solid is one basic reason as to why it cannot support life.

So this report, the Scientific American Report, is giving you a reason why they find the idea attractive because of the way it bonds with oxygen and the valence of four and the ability to bond in the same way as carbon does.