Can self-replicating species flourish in the interior of a star? (2020) [pdf]
Buried in the first assumption is the question of <i>structure</i>.<p>Instead of chemistry, which I will refer to only by analogy, let&#x27;s imagine Tinkertoys, the old wooden ones.<p>0) A tinkertoy ball with zero holes can connect to nothing.  It is a monad.  It is boring.  You can build nothing with it.  This is rather like a noble gas.  (Hahah yes you can build a cage around Xenon very clever thank you move along)<p>1) A tinkertoy ball with one hole can connect to another tinkertoy ball.  If you have only these, well, you can form pairs with them, but nothing beyond the pairs.  This looks like diatomic molecules.  You can jumble them about but you cannot build a larger structure with them.  Another dead end.<p>2) A tinkertoy ball with two holes can connect with two other tinkertoy balls with the same number of holes.  If this is all you have you can build a long chain, as long as you like.  Were it not so ruthlessly hungry for other electrons, ozone, which is to say three oxygen atoms, is a very flawed example.  Sulfur, the next Group VI element, is better ... you can make chains of six to thirty sulfurs rather easily.<p>Let me pause here.  This is really a fundamental question: can you do anything <i>interesting</i> with this chain of sulfur atoms?  Are there fascinating Van der Waals self-interactions?  Can you effectively &quot;knot&quot; these chains, forming a higher level structure?  This is the absolute bleeding edge.<p>I propose that you need to hit ...<p>3) Tinkertoy balls with three or more holes.  At that point you can form branching structures or a flat plane, and so on.  This would be your nitrogens and phosphorus-analogues.<p>My general thought is that, whether you have whole atoms with valence electrons, or wads of nuclei in a neutron star, whatever &quot;chemistry&quot; or equivalent is going on, you need three holes, or the ability to form three connections to other components, to create structure more than a humble chain, and that these connections must be relatively stable.  If there is a chemistry analogue occurring on or in a neutron star, or some kind of strange plasma, or really <i>anything</i>, you must have a minimum number of connections to form a large enough structure to be more than just isolated bits of matter.<p>I will allow that the &quot;chain&quot; model of just two connections might lead to something, but I wouldn&#x27;t lay money on it.<p>Granted, I&#x27;m a fan of Forward (and his son&#x27;s work as well), but my guess is that the nucleonic matter alone wouldn&#x27;t support those kind or number of connections, or &quot;bonds,&quot; as fun as it is o think about.