TomHendricks474  wrote or quoted:

> Oh and on a side note: Some talk of silicon life
> as a possibility - with silicon replacing carbon.
> Yet the earth has more silicon than carbon -
> (when it combines with oxygen we get the basic
> ingredient of sand silicon dioxide).
> If it could work, it should have worked here as
> well as anywhere else. And silicon life did not
> work on earth - carbon life did.

Silicon life /did/ work here - according to
A. G. Cairns-Smith in his numerous books on the subject:

  http://originoflife.net/cairns_smith/

As to why life started using carbon atoms - as well as silicon ones -
that subject has also been pretty well covered.
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