Why are there more carbon compounds than silicon compounds on earth?
Interesting question. I will guess that it is because of life. There are few silicon compounds because the silicon holds tightly onto oxygen and won’t let go. If the same happened with carbon you’d get carbon dioxide. But carbon dioxide is used by plants to build structure, giving off oxygen. There’s a lot of free oxygen on our planet, and nearly all came from the metabolism of carbon dioxide by plants, so that means there’s a lot of carbon around to make compounds.
