Life on other planets

viettrekkie20, it looks like we are just going to have to disagree, and that's OK.  At least your thinking about science, and that's good.  I would be very interested if you could name a PhD level biologist that has written a peer reviewed paper that said a non-carbon life form is possible. 

Ok, I do not know if he has a PhD, but you know him. LOL Stephen Hawking. Even if he does not have a PhD, you cannot discount him at all, since he is a genius.

Stephen Hawkins has a PhD.  However, he is an astrophysicist, not a biologist.  He is a lot less qualified to talk about biology than your local medical doctor.  

The issue of silicon-based life is really about the ability of silicon to form stable molecules containing large amounts of information, presumably together with some solvent that will allow molecules to move around and interact.

I understand that carbon is simply the best element for forming the backbones of complex molecules.  It's tetravalent and forms very strong bonds (carbon forms the hardest and strongest materials of all as a result), and its molecules are so varied it is the only element with its own huge branch of chemistry devoted to them (a branch which is probably bigger than the rest of chemistry these days). Admittedly the importance is because organic chemicals are the large majority of those important to life on Earth.

Thank you Elroch, you put it better than I could have.

So, they are turning a radio telescope towards Tabby's Star to see if a race that can do engineering on a solar system scale still uses radio so inefficiently that we can detect it!