Popular Mechanic asked this question and the results
appeared on the 6th August, 2014, in an article by John Brandon
titled What Would Aliens Actually Look
Like? We Asked 7 Experts. Here is
that article with added images. https://www.popularmechanics.com/space/deep-space/g1592/we-asked-7-experts-what-would-aliens-actually-look-like/
Movies and TV shows would have us believe aliens would look
a bit like us, only with a big (bald) head, green skin, and crazy eyes. Don't
believe it.
Movies and TV shows would have us believe aliens would look
a bit like us, only with a big (bald) head, green skin, and crazy eyes. But we
weren't satisfied with that old cliche. So we decided to ask sci-fi authors,
science experts, and ET buffs what they think extraterrestrials really would
look like.
Kevin Anderson:
Science-fiction author
"Look at the incredible diversity of biotypes here on
Earth, all of which evolved under the same planetary environment. I don't
believe an alien species from an entirely different biochemical foundation
would happen to turn out with two arms, two legs, two eyes, ears, nostrils . .
. two genders, warm-blooded, and so on. But, for intelligence one would assume
brain capacity, and therefore the body would need some sort of protective
mechanism for the vital brain—an exoskeleton, a skull, something like that.
"To build tools they would need some kind of
manipulative digits, like fingers (not necessarily an opposable thumb, maybe
prehensile tentacles). There would have to be a reproductive system, but it
could be budding, seeding, fission, egg laying—not necessarily live,
warm-blooded birth. They would require some sort of sensory systems, the
analogs of eyes, ears, smelling apparatuses. But their "eyes" would
have evolved for the peak spectrum of their own sun, not necessarily ours.
"Do they live in a sea? In the clouds of a gas giant?
On land? In a desert? In a jungle? They would need a way to eat or consume
energy, and they would need to excrete waste. For intelligence, they'd need to
communicate—by voice? Pheromones? Blinking phosphorescent patches?"
Darren Campo: TV
producer and executive
"When it comes to film and TV, it's problematic to make
a race of aliens that does not resemble humans. Actors have to play these
roles. What aliens look like in the real world will depend on where they
evolved. An alien that evolved in interstellar space would have very different
needs from an alien that evolved on an Earthlike planet.
"There is one thing that is nearly certain: an alien
life form will be symmetrical. Everything we know of that grows follows a
symmetrical pattern. Cut a tree in half lengthwise, the branches and roots on
one side would be fairly similar to the other. The same applies to humans and
all living growth, even inorganic growth such as crystals and galaxies.
"The size and shape of the alien would be determined by
gravity, ambient density, and source of energy. Plantlike aliens are unlikely
because photosynthesis doesn't encourage complex survival strategies. The need
to chase food favors mobile life. If such life evolved in a thick atmosphere,
it's likely to be a horizontal creature. A thinner atmosphere would favor the
most vertical animals. Two legs and two arms are more efficient than four legs,
so incorporating the rule of symmetry, it's not unlikely that aliens would have
evolved just like humans: bipedal and upright.
"When we consider that 95 percent of the universe is
not perceptible by our senses or technology (dark matter and energy), then it's
most likely that's where the aliens are. So one might say most aliens don't
look like anything because they are invisible."
Aaron Rosenberg:
Science-fiction author
"Never mind the gaunt, nearly skeletal figure with the
long talons and the scorpion-like tail and the mouth full of razor teeth. Never
mind the little green or gray men with oversize craniums and oversize eyes and
tiny mouths. Never mind the cat-men or lizard-men or dog-men or people with
blue skin and strange, tattoo-like markings or odd brow ridges or pointier
ears. Why would an alien look that similar to us?
"Bilateral symmetry is actually a pretty crappy design,
when you think about it. Yes, it looks nice and even but what's the point? Why
have two sides exactly the same when you could have something completely
different on the other side? Even the Daleks figured this one out—they had a
sucker arm on one side and a laser on the other. And bipedal? Ridiculous—one
good push and we fall over. Why would another world's race evolve with that
exact same design flaw? Why would another world's race grow eyes and a nose and
a tongue and all the other fiddly bits we have? They wouldn't.
"Living beings evolve in response to their environment.
We grew opposable thumbs so we could better grasp objects. Monkeys developed
prehensile tails for the same reason. We have eyes because light breaks down
into the visible end of the electromagnetic spectrum here.
"But if we had occurred on a completely different
world, with different temperatures and topography and flora and fauna, we would
have evolved differently. And if that other world had a completely different
chemical composition, so would we. All life on Earth is carbon-based, but that
wouldn't be the case elsewhere. Life forms could be silicon-based or iron-based
or anything else at all. They could have any number of arms and legs—or none at
all.
"Perhaps life on other planets evolved without physical
form or with no fixed form—perhaps there are aliens who are nothing more than
sentient clouds, or who have mutable bodies that can alter to suit the needs of
the moment. Maybe they can sail through space unaided, and use stellar radiation
for a food source and a sensory array, detecting changes in the radiation the
same way bats detect sound waves. Who needs eyes and ears when your entire
being resonates? Who needs a distinct brain when your consciousness is spread
throughout just like our nerve endings are with us? Why have skin when your
form is held together by electrostatic shock and mental control, and can
condense or expand at will?
"There are plenty of creatures here on Earth that are
so astoundingly different from us that we can barely comprehend them. Try
watching an octopus pull itself through a tiny crack in a glass tank sometime,
or examine a tobacco hornworm, or look at a praying mantis up close. Then think
about how small our planet is compared with the universe as a whole—it's like
finding the weirdest shaped M&M in the bag, and then realizing that you're
in an entire candy store filled with literally thousands of other kinds of
candy, most of which you've never even heard of before. A real alien would be
so far from anything we've ever imagined that we would barely be able to
comprehend its existence. And we would seem just as completely, bafflingly
bizarre to it."
Harry E. Keller:
Chemistry professor, Northeastern
University
'Somewhere in the universe, there must be, have been, or
will be other advanced civilizations. The chances of anyone alive today seeing
or even communicating with them are very slim. However, such problems should
not stop us from imagining what they might be like.
"First, a real alien is bilaterally symmetrical,
endothermic with excellent manipulative abilities, and has a hard container for
a brain.
"Eyes? Of course. You have to see to build a
civilization. The squid has better eyes than we do, and the eye seems to have
evolved separately a few times at least. Our alien will have eyes that may only
resemble ours superficially. A lens and iris are almost an absolute
requirement. The whites do not have to be white. Neither does the iris have to
be colored in anything like the way ours are. How many eyes? One just will not
do. Inability to perceive distance will lead to rapid extinction. Unless you
can find a good reason for it, extra eyes create evolutionary baggage and will
not persist, spiders not withstanding. Eyes being important, they will be recessed
and capable of being covered, as necessary. Our aliens are not likely to be
bug-eyed, although we cannot totally rule that out.
"Nose? An alien must have the means to breathe. It must
be symmetrical. The nose does not have to be in the middle of a face, although
that is convenient for some purposes such as sharing the air pipe with a mouth
for times of exertion. You can imagine other arrangements.
"Mouth? Must have means for ingestion of food. All
large animals have some means to capture and swallow food. Some masticate it;
others do not. Teeth are rather common on Earth but other systems of eating are
possible. The problem is that plants and animals have been in an evolutionary
war for millenia. We inherit the outcome of that war. Teeth were necessary to
eat plants that became more fibrous, an evolutionary reaction to being eaten.
There are other ways to sheer off plant food, such as what birds do. They
'chew' in their gizzards.
"Legs? Most certainly. Other means of locomotion will
be relatively slow and be relegated to armored animals and of those living in
holes. Neither of these lifestyles will lead naturally to greater intelligence.
How many legs? In our case, we adapted the forelegs for manipulation from
animals with four legs. No land animals with endoskeletons have more legs. The
implication is that aliens with two legs are more likely than those with four.
"Fur? Hair? Feathers? Scales? Something else truly
alien? The skin covering could be anything that makes sense. Real feathers are
not so likely. Because feathers are used for flight, brains will be small.
Scales are unlikely because they are particularly well-adapted for ectotherms,
although a scaly sort of skin might be possible. Fur versus hair is hard to
sort out because of my inherent bias. Fur has good reasons for being that are
not related to intelligence. If furry, our aliens probably have short fur.
"Head? If you define head as a bony enclosure for the
brain as well as the location for eyes, nose, and mouth, then it's likely. The
nose could be located above or below the mouth. Above works better for
swimming, but that's not a strict evolutionary requirement.
"Neck? Not at all necessary. Useful to swivel the head,
but you can imagine other ways to look around. It's an annoying place for big
cats to grab and strangle you with their powerful mouths.
"Arms? You must have something with which to manipulate
things. Tentacles are unlikely because of their inability to perform fine
manipulation. They usually have suckers on them and a very different purpose
than toolmaking. The number of joints could be greater, and the direction of
bend could be different.
"Fingers? You must have a way to grab tightly and a way
to pick up small objects and twist and turn them. Two fingers are probably too few.
Five is overkill. Three or four (as cartoon characters have) is about right.
Our three joints in our fingers is about right. One would not do. Two, as with
our thumbs, is unlikely."
Bernard Bates:
Physics professor, University
of Puget Sound
"An octopus is a good example of an advanced-alien
analogue on Earth. Octopuses are quite (probably human-level) intelligent and
live in a totally alien environment (compared with ours). Evolution has had to
find novel solutions to the pressures they're under—pressures completely
different than those that shaped mammals on land.
"Dolphins and chimpanzees are extremely close to
us—we're all mammals. The last common ancestor for humans and dolphins was
around 100 million years ago, and for humans and chimpanzees was about 10
million years ago. Most of the evolutionary choices leading to intelligence
were probably made before the splits occurred. The last common ancestor between
mammals and octopuses is much, much further back in time, probably 800 million
years ago.
"Aliens with advanced technology would have to be on
land (technology needs fire to kick-start it). What we would expect in order to
develop a technology comparable to ours? Hands with fingers (for delicate,
precise manipulation) are important. At least two legs are needed for
locomotion. If it has four legs, think centaurs—you need those hands to build
things.
"You need binocular vision to judge distance (to prey).
Elevated head to see predators. Eyes near the brain to reduce the time delay
(or degradation) of the visual signal. Sound and smell sensors (ears and nose).
Your survival chances improve if you can use all of the ways you can to detect
food, mates, and predators. Living in an atmosphere means sounds and smells
will arrive before the stinky, noisy predator."
Nnedi Okorafor:
Sci-fi author
"Three things are generally intrinsic about human
beings:
1. We think we know everything.
2. We think everything is about us.
3. We need things to be about us in order to care.
Thus, in most of our stories about aliens, the aliens come
because of us (be it to kill, enslave, or study us) or to take things that are
dear to us. We are also usually the first who make contact with the aliens, and
they almost always look something like us or like something familiar to us.
"I believe aliens exist. However, I don't pay much mind
to the little-green-men mythology. I don't think aliens have to be humanoid,
carbon-based, or even alive by our definition of alive. Human beings aren't
made to survive in space. If aliens arrive on Earth here, it means they have
survived in space and have the means to adapt to our atmosphere. I think it
highly possible that they'll be nothing like us.
"In my novel Lagoon, the aliens that show up in Lagos, Nigeria,
are fundamental shape-shifters with consciousness and control all the way to
the molecular level, and their molecules do not resemble or operate like
anything Earth-based. They use matter (whatever that matter is and wherever it
comes from) and they adapt to wherever they are. And their wants and needs and
methods of going about their business are wholly foreign to humans.
"I don't see why aliens couldn't be microscopic, only
be seen at wavelengths beyond human detection, be built in a way so outside of
human understanding that to look upon them would cause one to faint. I don't
think aliens have been, are, will be what we are expecting."
Tobias Buckell:
Sci-fi author
"Aliens with pointy ears and bumpy foreheads are a way
for Hollywood
to save money by applying prostheses to human beings and to move forward with
the plot. It seems strange to think the truly alien would look anything at all
like us. And yet there are examples of parallel evolution in nature: the eye of
the octopus being identical to that of a human being a famous one. Some
speculate that an alien evolved to have a civilization similar to ours would
have a similar form.
"We have examples of aliens right here on Earth to look
toward that might give us a hint of what an alien intelligence would look like.
Octopuses and squids exhibit startlingly intelligent responses and learning,
and the form of their bodies is designed for an environment alien to our own.
Tentacles and large brains seems to be a fantastic form for low-gravity or
aquatic environments. Creatures that may communicate by flashing colors across
their skin. Science fiction has a long history of exploring hard-to-understand
tentacled horrors.
"An article about the gears found in plant hoppers'
legs has gotten a lot of attention online. The idea of biology and evolution
already using cogs leads one to wonder what else might exist. Minds that
evolved silicon circuitry through natural selection? Steampunk,
radiation-powered life forms that we couldn't even approach? Thought
experiments can get rather mind-boggling. Nature always surprises.
"Talking and reacting to alien behavior will be the
hardest. We already struggle to keep patient enough to understand other
cultures and differences within our own human cultures. Dolphins, octopuses,
elephants—these all seem to be higher-order thinkers, yet we cannot communicate
well with them nor do we particularly share the planet well. What will an alien
encounter be like? How will their actions seem?
"In short, I'd assume things would be easily
misunderstood, as we all come with an existing load of baggage about such an
encounter. And their actions will depend a great deal on the environs they come
from, and the nature of their groups. Are they solitary? Or prefer herds or
small bands? What would be the mind of an intelligent predator who normally
lives alone?
If we do find other life, I have to assume that it would
hint that a great deal of life is possible. We may encounter all of the above.
Creatures like us, and yet so different from us we can barely understand them.
It might be a plethora of minds and body types, much like the world is filled
now with a wide variety of intelligences and forms. It might be quite
overwhelming . . ."
---------------------------fin-------------------------------------
If you look up Bernard Bates you will find the following
Fall 2016 Courses
SSI2-123 SETI Seminar
Mon, Wed, Fri 11:00-11:50 (Wyatt 204)
Physics 111 LABS
Tuesday 9:30-12:00 and 1:00-3:30 (Harned 135)
STS 361 Mars Exploration
Mon, Wed, Fri 9:00-9:50 (Harned 143)
Recent Courses
Physics
209, Astrophysics
So at least he has some idea what he is talking about. He was even asked the same question in
another feature https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/2019/11/if-alien-life-exists-in-solar-system-may-look-like-this-aurora-hydrothermal-vent/
Then we have Dr Harry
E. Keller whose biography reads: “Dr. Harry Keller founded Smart Science®
Education Inc. in 1981 and incorporated in 1983. After 15 years of providing
contract consulting services mostly to Fortune 500 companies, he and his
partner created the Smart Science® technologies to provide high-quality science
learning experiences to students through the Internet. The system now has 200
online experiential science lessons with real experiments and hands-on
measurement covering all major sciences for grades 3-14, and its core
technologies have been patented.”
Rosenberg: “has
written novels for Star Trek, StarCraft, Warcraft, Exalted, Stargate Atlantis,
and Warhammer, as well as other franchises. He also writes educational books,
young adult novels, children's books, and tabletop role-playing games.” Not really
the man I’d go to for a scientific perspective on the subject which I what we
really need. But this is all speculation anyway.
Campo is SVP
Programming, Production, Dev & Content Strategy, WarnerMedia truTV, Food
Network, CBS, NYU Media & Tech Professor. Hmm, so not heavily involved in
exobiology.
Kevin James Anderson
is an American science fiction author. He has written spin-off novels for Star
Wars, StarCraft, Titan A.E. and The X-Files, and with Brian Herbert is the
co-author of the Dune prequel series.
Nnedi Okorafor is
a Nigerian-American author of Africanfuturism and Africanjujuism for children
and adults. Her works include WHO FEARS DEATH (in development at HBO into a TV
series), the BINTI novella trilogy, THE BOOK OF PHOENIX, the AKATA books and
LAGOON.
This means we have at least two scientists and a media man
and sci fi authors. When it comes to
this subject it is all speculation and based on what we know of life on Earth. Incidentally, having written some Star Trek
material is not really counted as experience in exobiology J
I had expected that Popular Mechanics might by-pass
popularism and being trendy and head straight to biologists who are active in
the field. It is a pity then that they let the ball slip for the most part. If
we find life on any planet or moon within our solar system (and the chances
seem likely) then it will be microbial or bacterial. I think that we can rule
out these visiting Earth in a flying saucer any time soon.
As I have previously noted; for decades I scoured CE3K/AE
reports for non-humanoid entity reports because
the scientists with the loudest mouths told us that is what we should expect –not humanoid forms. Then, others chimed
in and stated that the humanoid form is what we should expect –amongst these experts (“X”= The Unknown and “Spurt”
is a drip under pressure) were the former “non humanoid” loud mouths.
The problem is that we only have one Petri dish to base
everything on –life on Earth (and even that has not been fully studied because
more new species are still being found each month). We have bickering going on amongst scientists
–a lot of whom are hoping and praying that we never come across alien life
through fear. Not one scientific “name” has so far looked into the CE3K/AE data
to assess it because “UFOs are silly season stories” –yet there is the official
French space agency unit that looks at reports.
In the latest book I posed the question; who do you report a
UFO landing to? A German journalist looked into this a few years back and he
found that there appeared to be no official policy on the scenario. I contacted
NASA as well as the European Space Agency and asked if there was even a
theoretical plan for any alien craft landing on Earth and someone needing to
phone an official and calmly report: “Uh, I have a sort of First Contact
scenario here…help?” Nothing.
On what happens if an alien signal is received or craft is
detected out in space there I a bureaucratic protocol –cited in full in Beyond
UFO Contact.
What is really required is for biologists and naturalists to
look at every possible scenario in which intelligent life might develop and
what it might look like and from there we have a basis to develop things
further.
Above: walking plants, dinosaur type creature and opther basic forms of lifeare talked about but when it comes to intelligent life... see https://www.sciencefocus.com/space/what-would-alien-life-actually-look-like/----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
With CE3K/AE reports what we really need are trained
psychologists who could accompany investigators and would know what to look for
because in the past sleep paralysis and hypnagogic states have been accepted as
‘evidence’ of real events. The point is not to label someone a “nut” but, if
genuine and experiencing altered states then they can be referred to a doctor
if they wish.
Again, and I know people get fed up with me stating this but
witnesses/percipients are human beings not cash
cows for TV or books. Those Ufologists who screech the loudest over this
because they “do” are usually the ones who do not.
I cannot even guess at how many reports are contained in my
world wide data base but I’m guessing “thousands” about covers it. They are not
all genuine –some are hoaxes- others are misidentifications, others involve “Psychological”
explanations and most single witness reports tend to be given a low credibility
rating unless there are exceptional circumstances. Many –very many- were never even investigated but accepted as
genuine on a single or several press clippings. If we throw most of those out
we might be left with 100 or so cases. Two 1973 cases –Eupora, Mississippi
being the main one- were never investigated because of a racist attitude by the
investigators.
But I’ll stop there before I go off on yet another rant. I
will end by7 stating that we really need to step up on the exobiology side of
things.
https://astrobiology.nasa.gov/research/astrobiology-at-nasa/exobiology/
