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What would alien life look like?
#51
RE: What would alien life look like?
(December 1, 2018 at 11:01 pm)Anomalocaris Wrote:
(December 1, 2018 at 10:52 pm)Rahn127 Wrote: For my alien life I'm going to focus on alien intelligent life that is at least at our level of intelligence and civilization building.

First you gotta have limbs that can manipulate objects in your environment.
You gotta have some kind of eyes to see your environment.
You gotta be able to move around in your environment.

I'm thinking octopus like creatures that evolved and changed to survive on land.

I suspect majority of higher life that would reach the level of development suitable for creating and supporting civilization will be aquatic.

The reason is life and complex life are much more likely to evolve and be found in aquatic environments. And marine environment potentially offer vastly more developmental space than land environments.

If my guess is right, then I wonder if the difficulty with making fire and smelting metal in water means most civilization are barred from proceeding down the technical path not by cognitive deficiency, but by inability to leverage energy sources to save labor and provide spare capacity for technical development.

Well there is the thing of new niches to take advantage of. Biology isn't my thing but as I understand it, a niche not taken advantage of is a case of nature abhorring a vacuum. Some life WILL rise up to take advantage of the available niche (the land).
Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former.

Albert Einstein
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#52
RE: What would alien life look like?
The other aspec is simply... What shape/composition might the alien's genetic material be made of/structured.

Will it have a pentagonal sugar back bone.. Or hexagonal?

Will the 'Backbone' of the system be a peptide instead of a sugar?

Will the matrix gentic base use 2 base pairs? Three? Four? Five?
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#53
RE: What would alien life look like?
We will never ever know.
The nearest star system and unexplored planets to our own is over 4 light years away, i.e., over 40 trillion km away.

Star Trek isn't sci fi, it's fantasy
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#54
RE: What would alien life look like?
(December 1, 2018 at 10:56 pm)ignoramus Wrote: question to all.

We came out of the water, developed 4 legs for mobility, then only used 2 as we stood up.
Why couldn't we develop a bigger brain whilst running faster on 4 limbs? Too run away faster? (An evolutionary advantage.)

You can only be as intelligent as your environment allows. There is a limit to how intelligent you can be with only 4 legs and no opposable digits.
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#55
RE: What would alien life look like?
(December 2, 2018 at 9:30 am)Cherub786 Wrote: We will never ever know.
The nearest star system and unexplored planets to our own is over 4 light years away, i.e., over 40 trillion km away.

Star Trek isn't sci fi, it's fantasy

Are you this certain when pronouncing all your idiocies or just some?

(December 2, 2018 at 12:18 am)AFTT47 Wrote:
(December 1, 2018 at 11:01 pm)Anomalocaris Wrote: I suspect majority of higher life that would reach the level of development suitable for creating and supporting civilization will be aquatic.

The reason is life and complex life are much more likely to evolve and be found in aquatic environments. And marine environment potentially offer vastly more developmental space than land environments.

If my guess is right, then I wonder if the difficulty with making fire and smelting metal in water means most civilization are barred from proceeding down the technical path not by cognitive deficiency, but by inability to leverage energy sources to save labor and provide spare capacity for technical development.

Well there is the thing of new niches to take advantage of. Biology isn't my thing but as I understand it, a niche not taken advantage of is a case of nature abhorring a vacuum. Some life WILL rise up to take advantage of the available niche (the land).

Yes, but I think the odds remains that majority of life, and intelligent life, based on biochemistry broadly similar to ours will be aquatic.

(December 1, 2018 at 10:56 pm)ignoramus Wrote: question to all.

We came out of the water, developed 4 legs for mobility, then only used 2 as we stood up.
Why couldn't we develop a bigger brain whilst running faster on 4 limbs? Too run away faster? (An evolutionary advantage.)

I would think if the creature’s survival strategy relies primarily on running faster, then the evolutionary impetus would not fall primarily on increasing intelligence.

It seems to me intelligence is at a highest survival value when the creature could neither outrun nor out-fang its environment.
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#56
RE: What would alien life look like?
(December 2, 2018 at 9:30 am)Cherub786 Wrote: We will never ever know.
The nearest star system and unexplored planets to our own is over 4 light years away, i.e., over 40 trillion km away.

Star Trek isn't sci fi, it's fantasy

 As I posted before. A sufficiently large 'Nuclear' (Put, put) style orion ship can reach said planets with 80 or so years. (Off top of my head I always confuse whether that's 80 years 'Ship' time or 80 years 'Planet' time)

 IF the American's had built even a modest version of 20 thousand tonns or so AND with the valve and mechanical computers of the day back in the 1950's then launched said giant robot at Alpha Cent. Well we'd be pretty close to receiving telemitry from said giant probe almost today.

Neat, huh? Great 

Not at work.

(December 2, 2018 at 9:55 am)Mathilda Wrote:
(December 1, 2018 at 10:56 pm)ignoramus Wrote: question to all.

We came out of the water, developed 4 legs for mobility, then only used 2 as we stood up.
Why couldn't we develop a bigger brain whilst running faster on 4 limbs? Too run away faster? (An evolutionary advantage.)

You can only be as intelligent as your environment allows. There is a limit to how intelligent you can be with only 4 legs and no opposable digits.

 Well... you can adadpt other extremities for manipulation. The invaders depicted in Niven/Pournelle's "Footfall" were basically inteligent pachyderms. Little elephants with multi-branching probiscus. Big Grin

 Pretty sure the "Puppetiers' from same writers effectivly used their 'Mouths' on the end of their 'Heads' as manipulating organs as well.

Life is weird. Alien life is probably even weirder. Big Grin

Not at work.
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