Considering Mars is largely made of iron I would be fascinated if they found evidence of an Iron based life form as opposed to our carbon based life forms. THAT would shake the science world

I haven't done research to verify this, but I believe that while Mars has more Iron on the surface than Earth does, it's still got a lot more Carbon than that.

Still, the thought of Iron-based life forms is certainly fascinating, maybe the life forms that are up there are underwater, that would also be quite amazing.

Ugh my mind has been exhausted lately imagining the wonders we could possibly uncover up there.

I wonder what sex in that kind of gravity would feel like, then again I wonder what sex in general feels like.

It's pretty much guaranteed you'll be covered in something by the end of it.

In shame, because you paid so much just to bang somebody IN SPACE

I vote Varrok to be the person who greets the aliens.

Can someone explain to me why life forms based on different elements would be so crazy? I must have missed the science class that taught why the difference would be such a big deal. Would iron-based life forms be incorporeal colossi that glow electric blue or something rad, or is it just “oh their DNA strands would have different atoms”.

Because iron isn't in the sweet spot where it has the maximum amount of open connections without being the atom that gets sucked to a different center. i don't understand it all, but I know that it'd change many dynamics.

Well, they wouldn't have DNA, for one thing. The probability of a non-related creature having deoxyribonucleic acid (totally just guessed the spelling of the correctly) as its information carrier is vanishingly low. A seperately evolved creature would have to solve the process of breeding, passing on information, etc in a different way.

As for Iron, the problem is that it doesn't form long chain molecules like Carbon does. And almost every significant structure in your body is made up of a long chain of Carbon, Hydrogen and Oxygen (sometimes with some other stuff as well, but C, H and O are the building blocks). I believe that it's more likely that we'll find a Silicon-based life form because it's more chemically similar to Carbon. But the fact is that given the relative abundance of the elements in the universe and their chemical properties, it's highly likely that non-terrestrial species would also be Carbon-based.

EDIT: Also this.

What a cheap impersonation.

I love it.

So basically: a non-carbon-based life form would look so different to us at an atomic level that we have no idea how it would even begin to affect them at a macro level, so we just have no idea what they might even function? That’s really cool and really disappointing all at once.

I was genuine about not knowing and asking the question, but halfway through writing the post I realized how grouchy I sounded and went with it.

A dead ringer for me.

Yes, but that's also true of an unrelated carbon-based lifeform.