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What would aliens actually look like? Realistic extraterrestrials. Alien life is probably common in the universe. But by alien life, I mean life like bacteria other one-celled creatures. Complex intelligent life like mammals is probably exceptionally rare.
But whenever you see alien creatures in the movies, they look like humans humans. This would be nearly impossible. This is a reason to be highly suspect of any alien visitations.
The raw ingredients available to all planets are the most common elements in the universe:
Hydrogen, helium, oxygen, Neon, nitrogen, carbon, silicon. Our solar system is made of the same elements. But the key element to life is Carbon. Carbon is the backbone of every known biological molecule. Carbon can form 4 bonds with other atoms simultaneously. This makes it well suited for long chains of molecules that serve life, such as DNA.
Why can’t alien life be based on silicon? The complexity required for organic chemistry with silicon is not there.
All life uses Liquid water as a solvent, and Adenosine Triphosphate (ATP) to store and release energy. Water is the most abundant compound in the universe. It's a good bet tthat intelligent alien creatures on other planets are also based on water.
There is a critical distance from a star where a planet is not so hot such as mercury, but also not too far like Jupiter where it is so cold that water freezes. Earth happens to be at this ideal zone. So let’s look at what intelligent life that evolves on an earth size planet in the habitable zone of sun-like star, based on carbon chemistry and water would be like.
There is one thing that is nearly certain: an alien life form will be symmetrical. Intelligent life would need to be able to build tools. This would require limbs or digits of some sort to hold and manipulate objects. They would require some way of recognizing their environment - sensory mechanisms - the analogs of eyes, ears, noses.
Eyes seem to have evolved a few times separately on earth, so something like eyes may be a universal trait. But alien "eyes" would have evolved for the peak electromagnetic spectrum of their own star.
it appears crucial for a species to cooperate and communicate in some kind of language. So they'd need to do this somehow, not necessarily by sound, like us with our mouths and ears. They could use other methods.
Do they live in a sea, In the clouds, or on land? There is no complex life that lives permanently in the atmosphere. And most intelligent species on earth happen to be on land, instead of the sea. According to physics professor Bernard Bates at the University of Puget Sound, Aliens with advanced technology would have to be on land because technology needs fire to kick-start it.
Regarding oceans, there is very little light beyond 200 meters in the ocean. So the energy that ocean creatures have to work with is less than the energy available on land. This makes it hard for larger complex creatures to evolve.
If aliens live on land, they would also need some means of locomotion - mammal legs and insect legs evolved separately, so aliens would likely have legs of some sort. Predators on earth mostly appear to have legs for fast running. So the legs would likely be segmented like ours for more efficient running. Whether it is two or 4 or more is hard to say. Natural selection on their planet would probably weed out inefficient body plans.
Dr Yael Kisel, scientist at NASA’s Ames Research Center believes that most life in the universe as a whole is likely to be microbial. It is not clear whether intelligence is an evolutionary imperative. It is possible that the energy required to maintain a large brain is not evolutionarily advantageous vs. having larger teeth or higher speed.
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But given the vast number of planets in the universe, it seems that even if our intelligence is an accident, we should still have company - intelligent neighbors somewhere, but they are likely to be so far away, that we may never encounter them.