Feasibility of life/existence of a world devoid of transition metals

I was wondering if it is possible for life to evolve in a world which lacks any transition metals. I am wondering this because, it could give a plausible explanation for a world which is very unlikely to discover or harness electricity.

The setup is:

• Ultra-advanced alien civilization comes to world and, due to need for metals/conductors, completely mines it out of all transition metals. They could use self-replicating nanobots (or could even be the results of an AI-explosion gone astray, from Earth or another planet), some chemical vaporization technique, etc.
• The entire planet, including iron core, is mined out
• The miners are mainly interested in the transition metals. Particularly iron, titanium, platinum, gold, copper, nickel, tantalum, tungsten; i.e. the metals which have the most use for manufacturing more stuff. However it is safe to assume that a lot of other trace materials are used as well.
• The original inhabitants are completely wiped out during this (very destructive) mining event.
• Whatever entities did the mining move on to other worlds never to be seen again.

As for the hard-science tag, there are two seperate questions. As millions/billions of years go by:

• Can life evolve in such a world without transition metals (without Iron for example)?
• Is it even possible for a world to structurally exist without a transition metal core?

posted about 8 years ago

jbord39‭

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