That was a mental image I did not need. DNA, if you extract it, looks very much like loogies . . .
I'm going to guess it has to do with polarity and H-bonding. Caffeine doesn't, so early life didn't like it. Your theory about life on Titan in a liquid ethane environment would indeed make caffeine dominant. I wonder if the Titans find adenosine a mild stimulant?
We have taken this metaphor far beyond where it was ever meant to go and we are not stopping now.
You mean H2O2 instead of H2O, or peroxide in the organic sense of ROOR? Because I don't find H2O2 life too likely. Water based life works because per molecule, there are an equal number of partial positive and partial negative charges, which causes H-bonding but also lets the water crowd around positive ions. In H2O2, H-bonding would still occur but positive ions would have nearly nothing to react with, so things like metal-ion pumps would be a good deal less important. I'm not saying that it wouldn't happen; I'm saying that the idiots at NASA would kill it long before they figured out it is life.
Why are all the drivers on the road complete morons?
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Date: 2007-08-23 08:46 pm (UTC)I'm going to guess it has to do with polarity and H-bonding. Caffeine doesn't, so early life didn't like it. Your theory about life on Titan in a liquid ethane environment would indeed make caffeine dominant. I wonder if the Titans find adenosine a mild stimulant?
We have taken this metaphor far beyond where it was ever meant to go and we are not stopping now.
You mean H2O2 instead of H2O, or peroxide in the organic sense of ROOR? Because I don't find H2O2 life too likely. Water based life works because per molecule, there are an equal number of partial positive and partial negative charges, which causes H-bonding but also lets the water crowd around positive ions. In H2O2, H-bonding would still occur but positive ions would have nearly nothing to react with, so things like metal-ion pumps would be a good deal less important. I'm not saying that it wouldn't happen; I'm saying that the idiots at NASA would kill it long before they figured out it is life.
Why are all the drivers on the road complete morons?