Articles for tag: Alternative Biochemistry, Life Without Oxygen, Science Fiction, Space Science, Theoretical Biology

Close-up of a gloved hand holding a bacteria culture in a petri dish for laboratory analysis.

What If Life Had Evolved to Breathe Something Other Than Oxygen?

Suhail Ahmed

We treat oxygen like the star of biology, but for most of Earth’s history it was barely a cameo. Long before forests greened the continents, microbes thrived by shuttling electrons into minerals, acids, and salts that would sound more at home in a chemistry set than a lung. Today, as we scan other worlds, a ...

Conclusion

Could Alien Life Be Made of Something Other Than Carbon?

Andrew Alpin

When we picture extraterrestrial life, most of us imagine something fundamentally similar to Earth’s creatures. But what if we’re thinking too small? What if alien life forms are constructed from entirely different building blocks than the carbon-based chemistry we know and love? The universe is vast and strange, and the possibilities for alternative life may ...