WHY Aliens are real, and WHAT they are not

Do you believe in alien life?

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This poll closed on January 7, 2005.
No longer accepting new votes.

[Andreyis]

My thoughts are largely (and eerily [sp?]) the same, and I will thus post an article I wrote about XTs.

Quote:

Yes, I believe there are XTs out there. The further questions should be: "Are they intelligent?", "Can they use/develop technology?" and "Can/Will they contact us?"

Assuming the answer to the first and second questions are "Yes", there are nine possibilities. Also assuming they would need technology to contact us in the second question, otherwise the point would be irrelevant.

The possibilities come from two sets of options. Set one is their starting point. Set two is their ability to develop technology.

Set one has three possibilities. They start before us, they start at the same time as us, and they start after us.

Set two also has three possibilities. Their technological advancement is slower than ours, at the same rate as ours, or faster than ours.

Combining the two we get:
1-They start before us, and advance slower than us
2-They start before us, and advance at the same rate as us
3-They start before us, and advance faster than us.
4-They start at the same time as us, and advance slower than us
5-They start at the same time as us, and advance at the same rate as us
6-They start at the same time as us, and advance faster than us.
7-They start after us, and advance slower than us
8-They start after us, and advance at the same rate as us
9-They start after us, and advance faster than us.

Depending on how far before or ahead of us they start, and their advancement rate, sometimes we will have the same technology as them, but it is more likely that they will be much further ahead or behind us. So, it is highly unlikely that we will come across a species with the same technology as ours.

This makes a Star Trek type universe (where most species have roughly the same level of technology) highly unlikely. It is far more likely that any species we come across will be much further ahead, or much further behind our own technology.

It is also far more likely that any XT life we come across will be unintelligent, using Earth as a guideline. Strictly by the numbers, again using Earth as a guideline, unintelligent life is rare, and the odds of a species having both intelligence and the capability/desire to use/develop technology is even rarer.

The third question entirely depends on what the hypothetical XT species does. If they want to contact us and have the means to (again, this is a highly unlikely possibility by the odds), then odds are good they will. If they don't want to or don't have the capability, then it'll be up to us to contact them.

Assuming we do make contact, one way or another, the further question is: "Are they friendly?" This depends on the human species' and their history, amiability, and depends on xeno-relations of both species, and thus I cannot say one way or another.

However, since they will have not wiped themselves out, it is likely that they will possess compassion, and thus, if they or we are not xenophobic, relations may be good.

This leads to yet another question. Will they be unified? Using humans as a guideline (yes, I know it's skewed, but I've got nothing else universally accepted to go on), they will not. Ambition, which they would need to develop technology (again, using humans as a guidline) leads to the forming of countries and empires. Or maybe they will have developed past the need for separate nations, or have a strong sense of species pride which unites them. The latter may make them xenophobic, and if we anger them somehow, the odds are good that they or we will be annihilated by war.

[Shard Morgan]

Oh...no big breasted hot space chicks? ********! If I cant be attracted to them... can I at least do them just for the fun? I mean... even though I'm not attracted... I could do it in an emotionaly detatched state of mind? ANyway..still...what if there WERE those kinds of aliens... I'd make it a mission to find them. BUt anyway... I believe that its all true.. I knew of this for some time now as it is... I think about things like this when I'm in school.

[The Blue Blue]

Alright, lets consider this for a moment. If there was an unidentified species from another planet, why do you suppose that it would be completely different from someone here on good ol' planet Earth? The only non-humanoid species that I can see that would ever have the capability of assembling an intersteller vehichle here on planer earth are undersea creatures such as squids and octopi, insects, and humanoid creatures such as monkies. Why do I say this? Well I just find it hard to picture a frog using a blow torch. Now this does not outrule the chance that they may look completely different from us or anything we have seen or anything that we are.
Lets imagine that their planet is mostly covered in ice. Through evolution and survival of the fittest, these creatures would most likely be covered in fur so as not to freeze to death. They would have to be carnivores unless some sort of plant life had developed on the planet that could survive using just ice. I don't say that this is impossible, just that it isn't very likely. I also don't say that these hairy space travelers would die out before they could travel either. Fish survive off of fish and plankten, and I'm sure that there are arctic fish since we still have penguins and polarbears here, which survive much the same way.
Now I realize that I could go through half a dozen scenarios where life could exist in an environment that we wouldn't naturally think of, but we also have to consider the fact that there could be vast plains, forests, and jungles, which would support human life. Now, why would this be important? Well lets look at a tree for a moment. What gives a monkey a better chance at survival than a wolf? The monkey has the ability to climb the tree and eat the food off of it. As such if the world was just fruit bearing trees, wolves, and monkeys, everything would survive. The trees would survive and give fruit, the monkies would eat the fruit, the wolves would eat the monkies. These monkies could in theory evolve much like we did from monkies, and tada, you have a humanoid species.
Now if there were no trees and there were just normal plans, turtles, and wolves, the plants would grow and feed the turtles, the wolves would eat the turtles, the turtles would have to evolve to become stronger so that the wolves didn't eat them, and the wolves would have to evolve so that they could eat the turtles.
Now, what causes this evolution? Darwin's Natural Selection. What is this? Well lets look at turtles for a moment. If you have a whole lot of turtles, they are close to the ground, correct? Correct. They eat the vegitation on the lowest branches to survive. If there is a drought, the turtles with the short necks will have considerably less to eat, while the turtles with the longer necks will eat what the short neck turtles would have eaten and then what the short neck turtles couldn't reach. The shorter neck turtles are wiped out due to starvation and the longer necked turtles survive and pass down that genetic trait to their young.
It's sort of like how I am good at baking, while someone else would be good at making money and going to macdonalds for food. If all of a sudden all of the macdonalds were to mysteriously vanish then I would survive, and if the only things that were left were the macdonalds and all of the farmers just quit, I would starve due to my inability to adapt to a world were money is the only way to eat.
So, in conclusion unless we are going to be mysteriously visited by space squids, or insects, (or maybe bears...I can see bears evolving to make spacecraft.) chances are that any alien life form that comes to visit us is going to be humanoid in one way or another. I know that the argument of "Why would they look the same when they come from another world" makes sense, but really, we have such a diverse ecological environment, why would they be any different than anything that we had seen?