Sounds like you were watching that episode of "Star Trek" with the
intelligent living hot rock creatures... :-)


Why not, as for all we know there's living rock on Venus, or perhaps
just smart enough ETs that are half as smart as those hot rocks.
Either way, something intelligent made those hot rocks of Venus look
pretty damn interesting, as though intelligent and rational on behalf
of their creating a planned community, as having some really big and
impressive stuff to work with.
- Brad Guth -


I suppose it could happen, IIRC silicon is in the same column with
carbon on the periodic table. It may need the solvent equivalent of
carbon life's water, though. I wouldn't bet it being on Venus, but
somewhere elsewhere in the galaxy, maybe.

So far, intelligent life that possesses radio technology seems quite
rare, as SETI hasn't found anything that cannot be anything other than
artificial. Many years ago, when pulsars were first discovered, some
people considered that they might be navigation beacons for spacefaring
ET's, but they turned out to be natural objects. Doesn't mean that some
ET's couldn't use them as nav beacons, but the presence of pulsars
doesn't prove that ET's are out there. Doesn't prove that there are no
ET's either, all we can say is that "we can't tell. But the fact that we
exist, on a planet orbiting an ordinary G star in an ordinary section of
an ordinary galaxy would imply that there have been, or will be, or
currently ETs out there, probably at the level of one or two
civilizations with radio technology per galaxy.