so to make this more general, one factor is a liquid solvent of some sort
Just for clarification, carbons in water are not dissolved. It more of a suspension. There are some exceptions, and some of these execptions can be rather important in biology and medicine (alcohols, lipid, etc). For the most part, our organics are hydrophobic.
Liquid Water is a very unique molecule. The current belief is that its presence was essential for life to form. This is mainly due to not only its strong polarity, but the way in which water molecules interact with eacher, a phenomenum (that can't be spelled right) known as hydrogen bonding. This is an incredibly strong intermolecular bond that gives water many of its properties including how it interacts with other molecules.
i also wonder if liquid is necessary, or if many of the same properties could occur in any fluid ('fluid' signifying a gas or a liquid). there is a fair amount of parity between both liquid and gas dynamics that makes me hesitant to dismiss the possibility of self-assembling molecules in a gaseous medium
The only problem I see with that is the thermaldynamics question. If it is a gas, that means intermolecular interaction is essentially non-existant (from a chemistry point of veiw). Also if it is a gas, due to heat, intramolecular bonds may be easily broken, as that extra thermal energy would be enough to essentially burn it up.
Darwin only ever set out to explain the diversity of life;
Indeed Darwin was extrememly religious. His work many established how different species would come to exist via natural selection. Origins of life theories use evolution as a starting point. The Utilitarian movement did use Darwin's work to justify their socio-political adgenda, as did many other social movements and groups did at the time. His theory was very sound and it still works to this day, but the modern theories of evolution are a much broader take on his original work.
I was thinking about that; couldn't the reverse be true? As in an abundance of, say, butane (that is the first liquid hydrocarbon right?) which would clump polar molecules together so that they might interact in life-forming ways? That would be very, very different from anything on earth.
Butane is a gas here. We do have liquid benzene, hexane, and on up, but some of them will evaporate rather quickly. The lightest liquid would have to be benzene, possibly pentane (can't remember if its aliquid or not). That's a really cool Idea though. I'm reasoning it outloud while I type. Most other polar molecules are relatively small, acids, bases, mostly. For a molecule to be totally polar you need a strong difference in teh electonegativeity of the atoms and that happens when you mix extremes of the periodic table. Problem with that is that is that the SP3's aren't there, you'd be looking at a 1 or 2 electron bond (gah, Hybrid theory - gets book....reads...scrathes head.... eats candy....returns...)or VESPPR bonding? The molecules would be pretty simple. I don't see how polymerication of anything could occur. I mean, I would assume that the polarity would force the molucules arrange them selves by their poles (especially in a solid). High melting and Boiling temps would be good, harder to disrupt.
I dunno. The advantage of using carbons for "organic" molecules is that they can have up 4 bonds each allowing them to bond in a vareity of different ways which results in a lot of chemicals with similar traits but different properties. In addition they are incredably stable. Simple Polar molecules would oreint themselves by poles, meaning you would have to break that interaction prior to any chemical reactions occuring. Also they could be easily disrupted by salts (anything ionic). Not to mention that stong polar moleculrs don't have as many bonding sites (1-3) and some of the atoms are incredibly reactive and unstable if their valence shells are disrupted (analogous to solid, elemental sodium).
I dunno if you could do it out of polar molecules, but I won't go so far as to say that life would have to exclusively carbon based. Metalloids and transition elements could be used, as well as sulfur and silicon (atleast from a bonding perspective). Now you hit the inorganics and I personally detested inorganic chem (and thus know very little about it) You would have problems with crystal structure and ionization, but if it were used in conjunction with lots of non-metals, I'd bet it wouldn't be impossible. It would still have some of the same stability and versitility problems that Carbon doesn't have.
Gallium has the same properties of water.
Nope. Gallium is a metal, with similar properties to Aluminum. It'd bet it would behave similarily (I can't spelll!!!) to Al. Since its near the metalloids and transition metals, I'd bet on a mix of ionic and covalent bonding and I'd bet on more ionic metal behavior than the covalent nonmetal behavior of water.
They say this can be acheived in 20 to 30 years. I am not optimistic! How about you?
I think it depends on the people's enthusiasm for such an undertaking. I mean the the competition with the USSR really stirred up intrest in the apollo program, but after apollo 11, the intrest died out quickly, except in sensational circumstances (apollo 13, challenger, columbia). Unless we find something of strategic importance on mars (economically or militarily), or something happens where Mars is used as a symbol of progress (like the moon in teh 60's), I don't really see modern people that interested in a mars trip. There's too much to worry about here at home.