what do you think aliens would look like? - like what color, how tall.....etc.

darkangel_neptune · 2004-07-13 16:15:58

i think they would be gray and normal height no tall than any of us humans.

:angry:

Mad Grad Student · 2004-07-13 23:15:36

Who knows?

Mad Grad Student · 2004-07-13 23:16:24

Who cares?

REB · 2004-07-14 06:57:41

That would really depend on their environment they evolved in.

We do know, from observing Earth life, that certain forms are better suited for evolving intelligence.

Dinosaurs were on this Earth for over 100 million years, yet they did not evolve intelligence. I think, had they not become extinct, there were be intelligent dinosaurs on the Earth today (And no humans).

Humans have only been around for a million or so years, yet we have evolved intelligence relatively quickly. Why.

Several factors. For one thing, we have hands with fingers and a thumb. These allow us to work with tools. This helped early humans think.

Environment helps too. As humans spread across the globe, they encountered many environments. In the harsh environments, humans had to learn how to survive, or die. For example, early Europeans encountered a cold harsh climate. They had to learn how to build better shelters and make better cloths. They had to learn better hunting ways. They had to learn the seasons for planting. They had to learn much. Their cousins, in the warmer climates, didn’t have to have such shelter or clothing. Food plants grew all year, and animal life was abundant. It was the cold harsh climate of northern Europe that made Europeans evolve technology and science so quickly.

When dealing with aliens from Earth-like environments, we might find the humanoid form is common. At there very least, we might find we share similar features, like our hands.

Who knows what other forms intelligent life might take in our environment. What about water life?

And then there are alien environments. What about a cold world that has a methane cycle instead of a water cycle?

REB · 2004-07-14 07:05:07

Another thing we tend to do it put alien life-spans on the same scale as ours. There could be aliens with thousand year life spans.

Another thing to thing about is where the alien gets their energy from. Do they eat? Do they use solar energy like plants? Chemical reactions? Nuclear Reaction (Imagine an alien whose stomach fuses two hydrogen atoms together *bang*. I dreamed that one up for a science fiction story I am writing about the end of the universe)

Do they have blood? Venus-environment creatures with lead blood? Titan-environment with methane blood. Triton-environment with nitrogen blood. If they don’t use blood, how do they get energy through their body?

I guess the possibilities are endless as far as alien life goes. As far as intelligent alien life, I think the aliens form does play a big part, and that may have its limits.

Palomar · 2004-07-14 12:01:34

*Arthur C. Clarke speculates how alien lifeforms may evolve in different environmental settings in his book _Childhood's End_. It's brief but very interesting. I don't have the book available right now to point out the specific pages, but the book is a short and worthwhile read anyway. Check it out.

--Cindy

BWhite · 2004-07-14 12:10:58

What do you think aliens would think about how we look?

clark · 2004-07-15 08:53:42

That we look weird.

oscar · 2004-07-19 06:15:41

Due to Mars gravity, it's no need to have giants to build the huge pyramids & Cydonia artificial eroded face, etc.
In the film Mars Attack the director describes big headed Martians. That's due to gravity. In Star Trek tv series, chapter The Cage, the script said planet Talos IV had gravity 1,3 bigger than the Earth. So the Talosians heads were anatomic imposibility because the higher gravity would shrink their heads significantly. The script problem was solved because they diminushed gravity as happens with Mars.
In spite of this, I regret to say some sort of energetic creatures adapted their bodies to remain on Mars and we're dealing with hyperdimensional creatures as I explained in a thread with that issue in this forum. :rant:

publiusr · 2005-05-05 12:27:25

The Discovery Channel's Alien Planet Special featuring Barlowe's art looks to be pretty realistic.

srmeaney · 2005-05-05 22:01:32

Are we more likely to step on it before we know it is there?

Cobra Commander · 2005-05-06 12:24:24

The Discovery Channel's Alien Planet Special featuring Barlowe's art looks to be pretty realistic.

Yes, http://dsc.discovery.com/convergence/al … html]Alien Planet does look like it might be interesting, looking forward to this.

Also, the National Geographic Channel has a similar show coming as well. "Extraterrestrial" runs May 14th.

If I were a conspiracy theorist sort I'd say we're being prepared for something.

MarsDog · 2005-05-06 13:41:22

Humans have only been around for a million or so years, yet we have evolved intelligence relatively quickly. Why ?

We are the product of challanges, eliminating all but a few. Humans are omniverous, multiadaptive beings. Other species, less adaptive, have become extinct. You would expect aliens, also, to be very adaptive.

Perhaps, in the future, the actual form will be quickly self engineered to the location. Giant, intelligent jellyfish floating in Jupiter. Dolphins with arms, to dominate the oceans. Semiconductor, electronic beings to function efficiently in space.

Aliens will have adaptability and the technology to change form to exploit all habitat.

publiusr · 2005-05-06 13:52:58

The Discovery Channel's Alien Planet Special featuring Barlowe's art looks to be pretty realistic.
Yes, http://dsc.discovery.com/convergence/al … html]Alien Planet does look like it might be interesting, looking forward to this.
Also, the National Geographic Channel has a similar show coming as well. "Extraterrestrial" runs May 14th.
If I were a conspiracy theorist sort I'd say we're being prepared for something.

Hopefully we are getting away from the "all motorhead/home repair' crud on what are supposed to be educational channels.

Put Jesse James on Speed(vision)--and the TLC home repair/makeover crap on HGTV or E!

Tb0ne · 2005-05-06 15:33:20

I hope they air these shows in Canada. Alien planet will probably be on our Discovery Channel, but I get the feeling I'm going to have to wait months before they finally do so.

Personally, I think if the conditions are right on a planet, intelligent environment-changing life is inevitable. I really do believe that if dinosaurs did not go extinct, some sort of very intelligent dino-bird would have evolved.

By environment changing I mean some sort of ability to construct complicated tools. Dolphins may be intellgent as far as nature goes, but they arn't going to be making any spaceships, flippers and teeth just don't cut it.

Shaun Barrett · 2005-05-06 18:27:31

Thanks for the warning, people. I'll look out for those programs. :up:

It's an interesting mental exercise to imagine what forms life might take in different environments. Being a Mars nut from way back, of course, I've often considered the plight of animals which might have evolved on Mars in the early days, when conditions were favourable, only to find themselves confined to ever-shrinking ecological niches as the climate worsened.
If the conditions changed slowly enough, it's possible to imagine any such creatures adapting and changing their physiology to suit. But how tenacious can life be? Could macroscopic multicellular animal life adapt sufficiently to survive the freezing, near-vacuum, virtually oxygen-free environment we find on Mars today?

Apparently, Dr. Carl Sagan was prepared to believe it possible. In the design stage of the Viking landers, it was seriously considered that the probes might detect the movement of some of the 'rocks' on the surface - the idea being that some animals could have developed rocky exoskeletons to shield themselves from the intense U.V. light and the low temperatures. Sagan even wanted lights fitted to the landers, so the cameras could pick up the activities of any nocturnal creatures!

As it happened, of course, no Martian animals were detected. But I still wonder whether they might be there somewhere, in more sheltered regions than the open wind-swept plains the Vikings landed on.
I imagine things like small arthropods, crab-like creatures living in the depths of Mariner Valley or Hellas Basin, perhaps relying on symbiotic cyano-bacteria for their oxygen and a hypersaline cellular medium to ward off freezing. They might hide in underground burrows most of the time, when it's cold, and appear on the surface only briefly, when the Sun warms the sand and transient thin films of liquid water are possible.

Then again, maybe there are no such things! :laugh:
But it's entertaining to speculate.

srmeaney · 2005-07-21 23:29:08

Grey-Metallic, five feet tall, looks like a salt and pepper shaker, screams "exterminate" until you give in. Controlled by the brain of a closet NAZI. Notorious for getting around in flying saucers...Someone Mentioned Dalek. Give it a few million years of failed imbreeding and that will be us.

Tholzel · 2005-10-29 14:33:13

That would really depend on their environment they evolved in.
We do know, from observing Earth life, that certain forms are better suited for evolving intelligence.
Humans have only been around for a million or so years, yet we have evolved intelligence relatively quickly. Why.
Several factors. For one thing, we have hands with fingers and a thumb. These allow us to work with tools. This helped early humans think.
Environment helps too.
When dealing with aliens from Earth-like environments, we might find the humanoid form is common. At there very least, we might find we share similar features, like our hands.
Who knows what other forms intelligent life might take in our environment. What about water life?

If you believe in Darwin, then aliens on similat planets to earth must look just like us. We humans are perferctly adapted to earth. Indeed, each group of humans (or race, to use the scientific term) is slightly better adpated to its specific locale. High altitude Mongolians, and Peruvians have larger vital capacity, shorter noses (to avoid burns from high-altitude ultrviolet rays) and other metabolic differences that make thenm more adpated to living on thin air. Transport them to sea level, and many of them get Mongier's disease. Likewise, bring a sea-level person to high altitudes and yes, they will "acclimatize" somewhat, but then they will gradually weaken. They will never adapt to the same level as the locals.

On the question of intelligence, intelligence is not needed if it can't be used. (Thus dolphins do not have a human-level intelligence because what would they do with it? (In other words, it would give them no surival advantage, and thus die out.) Our opposable thumbs enable us to make and use complex tools--in other words, having the manual capability to be skilled, intelligence then does offer an advantage--mostly in the making of weapons. First the club because humans (and no other animal) can hold a club in its hand and swing it to deadly effect and so magnifying the hunting/survivability.

Then the spear, the spear with a throwing lever and finally the bow and arrow. Each of these inventions required the ability to use them--not just dream them up. thus, intelligent species need to be able to make things, and this requires arms, hands, fingers, eyesight, etc., etc.

Dook · 2005-10-30 11:46:30

Where are you getting these theories? They are not what's taught in the science books.

Darwin's theory does not say that aliens must look like humans. What it says is this, "Whatever works best survives."

And humans are not perfectly adapted to the earth. Drop a human in the middle of the Pacific Ocean and see how long they survive but toss in a lowly fish and it can thrive.

Intelligence is not needed if it can't be used? How so? You say dolphin's do not have human level intelligence but when sharks approach their pods they have been known to look at them and actually freeze the shark. There is much more there than we know. I don't use my toenails but they are still there.

Also other worlds in the life range are smaller or larger than the earth and closer or farther from their suns. There are many, many, variables. I would expect to find intelligent life based upon plants, avians, reptillian, and humanoid.

reddragon · 2005-11-05 11:30:04

Even if you restarted the development of life on Earth with the exact same conditions, you would end up with very different species. This is because the mutations that drive evolution are random. Thus humans would almost certainly not develop even on a planet witht he exact same conditions as Earth. And alien planets will be very different. Thus aliens will be very different.

idiom · 2005-11-07 01:10:04

What would be awesome is finding something living in deep space. Something that perhaps collects what not with huge membraneous scoops or what not. Using what it can and flinging the rest out the back.

If cold fusion is physicaly possible then it is not an unreasonable the nature has figured it out somewhere.

Tholzel · 2006-05-12 15:41:01

Even if you restarted the development of life on Earth with the exact same conditions, you would end up with very different species. This is because the mutations that drive evolution are random. Thus humans would almost certainly not develop even on a planet witht he exact same conditions as Earth. And alien planets will be very different. Thus aliens will be very different.

Wrong. Random gnetic mutations are all tiny--and either help, hurt or are neutral in helping the species survive. Because the randomness is so huge (millions of random events) it tends to even out and let the advantageous mutations survive. At the end of the million years or so of homo erectus, this random mutation has so finely honed the surviving racial variations, that we are still heading toward a single race, with intelligence now playing astronger role than ever--our survuval needs having been seen after.

However, technology is beginning to interfere with Darwin by letting defective adaptations survive. Look at eyeglasses, which mean that babies born with poor vision can get along just fine--instead of dying out when they can't hunt because they can't see the game. Many genetic defects that would result in an early death, now stave off early death--and let that person procreate to creat other defective types who Darwin would have eleiminated naturally.

But, just when two completely separate teams build an aircraft , and--givenexactly the same requrements (range, load, etc.) will--if they are perfect engineers--build the same craft--because their is only one optimum solution given the reqwuirements and the laws of physics--so, too will sentient aliens tend tolook just like us IF their planet is just like ours.

If you don;t believe this, then you also don't believe in Darwin.

kat-91 · 2006-06-20 08:27:33

Dinosaurs were on this Earth for over 100 million years, yet they did not evolve intelligence. I think, had they not become extinct, there were be intelligent dinosaurs on the Earth today (And no humans).

I disagree. For the length of time dinosaurs lived on Earth, they must have evolved some kind of intelligence. Otherwise how did they survive? how did they mate? how did they learn to walk, learn to cry out etc. Intelligence comes in the smallest details. If the theory that a meteorite hit the Earth and wiped out all the dinosaurs is true, then can we really say 'oh it's because they had no intelligence'. No, we cannot. If a meteorite headed towards Earth right this minute then what would we do? run? where to? Future life on Earth might think we had no intelligence either.

Without intelligence they wouldn't have lasted on Earth for that long.

Dook · 2006-06-21 13:49:58

Frogs have been around for millions of years but I don't think anyone would classify them as intelligent.

geokerkid · 2008-05-12 21:51:09

That's actually an extremely typical opinion on how aliens would look. It would depend solely on their environment because they would be built to cope with the environment. Just imagine, there could be aliens out there that look at water like an extremely lethal gas!

Just like we look at Titan's vast methane lakes. If there were life on an Earth-like planet with the exact same atmosphere they would look exactly like us, that's probably very likely!

And I disagree, you don't need to be intelligent to survive. I mean, flies aren't exactly intelligent yet they have been around for so many years. All you need to have is a survival instinct.

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