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Carbon is versatile because it can form single, double, and triple bonds. It can also form chains, branched chains, and rings.

Also, carbon atoms bond fairly readily with other carbon atoms. It's much more energetically favorable for, say, a silicon atom to bond with an oxygen atom than another silicon atom; with carbon, the difference is less, so carbon-carbon bonds are more stable in the presense of oxygen than silicon-silicon bonds are... this is important, given that oxygen is the third most common element in the universe.

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