Are Aliens Real? If They Are, Science Says They Won’t Look Like What You Expect

Will humanity one day find kindred brethren among the stars? It makes for good books and movies, and recent scientific discoveries have suggested planets in the same habitable range of conditions as Earth may be surprisingly common.

But if life has risen on other planets, the differences between Homo sapiens and our new, otherworldly friends are likely to be greater than Star Trek would have you think.

It won't have humanoid biology.

Are Aliens Real? If They Are, Science Says They Won't Look Like What You Expect

Source: Keith Srakocic/AP

The old sci-fi trope aliens will look a lot like humans, except with some casually rearranged features to make them look exotic, has no basis in science. While the phenomenon of convergent evolution has resulted in many Earth species developing similar traits (such as flight) independently, those features evolved under similar terrestrial and evolutionary conditions.

Wild-eyed tales of little green men have entertained humans for generations. But the only plausible theory for a truly humanoid alien presence in the galaxy might be panspermia, a theory in which some creator either deliberately seeded life on different planets or microbes spread around the universe on space junk. Otherwise, the odds that of all the infinite forms alien life could take, it would mirror humanity, are very low.

It won't look much like Earth life at all, actually.

Source: AVP Wiki

The unique properties of carbon, which forms double bonds with other carbon atoms "naturally and easily" compared to other elements like silicon, form the basis of all organic chemistry, Scientific American wrote. "Carbon is the main component of sugars, proteins, fats, DNA, muscle tissue, pretty much everything in your body."

But life forms with alternate biochemistries based on elements like silicon could evolve on different planetary conditions. Though water is by far the most common and suitable organic solvent available for life on other planets, it's also possible other compounds such as ammonia or hydrogen sulfide could fill the role. Change any of the building blocks common to life on Earth — or simply change any of the local conditions in which those building blocks are assembled — and the odds other living worlds will much resemble ours fades significantly.

Massachusetts Institute of Technology planetary scientist Sara Seager, along with colleagues William Bains and Renyu Hu, built models intended to detect exoplanets where atmospheric gases are out of equilibrium, thus suggesting biological or mechanical interference in its natural chemistry, New Scientist reported.

For example, "On planets with atmospheres dominated by hydrogen, the model predicts that methyl chloride, dimethyl sulfide and nitrous oxide could indicate the presence of life: Plausible amounts of alien life at the surface could produce them in quantities that are detectable."

Life on these planets might have radically different biological plans, from radial instead of bilateral symmetry to only having one cell. Anything is possible.

It might not want to communicate with us, or destroy us, or even have the desire or ability to do either.

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Alien ambassadors welcoming the Earth into a galactic union, or alternately alien soldiers leveling entire cities using war machines brimming with plasma weaponry, are common fixtures in fiction. But even assuming any alien life humanity discovers out in the universe is complex and intelligent, that intelligence may be so thoroughly alien as to make meaningful interaction unlikely.

In fact, given humanity's proven track record of violence, war and mayhem, and our remarkable adaptiveness to a range of conditions, it's possible other species might view us as a threat worth avoiding at all costs, as joked in the video above.

It's also impossible to predict whether an alien psychology, having little in common our own, would view interspecies contact as more than a curiosity. Physiological and cultural differences may pose an insurmountable difficulty.

"There are plenty of creatures here on Earth that are so astoundingly different from us that we can barely comprehend them," sci-fi author Aaron Rosenberg told Popular Mechanics. "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. 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."

{ http://www.educatinghumanity.com/ }

In popular culture, the term UFO–or unidentified flying object–refers to a suspected alien spacecraft, although its definition encompasses any unexplained aerial phenomena. UFO sightings have been reported throughout recorded history and in various parts of the world, raising questions about life on other planets and whether extraterrestrials have visited Earth. They became a major subject of interest–and the inspiration behind numerous films and books–following the development of rocketry after World War II.

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FLYING SAUCERS

The first well-known UFO sighting occurred in 1947, when businessman Kenneth Arnold claimed to see a group of nine high-speed objects near Mount Rainier inWashington while flying his small plane. Arnold estimated the speed of the crescent-shaped objects as several thousand miles per hour and said they moved “like saucers skipping on water.” In the newspaper report that followed, it was mistakenly stated that the objects were saucer-shaped, hence the term flying saucer.

Sightings of unidentified aerial phenomena increased, and in 1948 the U.S. Air Force began an investigation of these reports called Project Sign. The initial opinion of those involved with the project was that the UFOs were most likely sophisticated Soviet aircraft, although some researchers suggested that they might be spacecraft from other worlds, the so-called extraterrestrial hypothesis (ETH). Within a year, Project Sign was succeeded by Project Grudge, which in 1952 was itself replaced by the longest-lived of the official inquiries into UFOs, Project Blue Book, headquartered at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio. From 1952 to 1969 Project Blue Book compiled reports of more than 12,000 sightings or events, each of which was ultimately classified as (1) “identified” with a known astronomical, atmospheric, or artificial (human-caused) phenomenon or (2) “unidentified.” The latter category, approximately 6 percent of the total, included cases for which there was insufficient information to make an identification with a known phenomenon.

THE ROBERTSON PANEL AND THE CONDON REPORT

An American obsession with the UFO phenomenon was under way. In the hot summer of 1952 a provocative series of radar and visual sightings occurred near National Airport in Washington, D.C. Although these events were attributed to temperature inversions in the air over the city, not everyone was convinced by this explanation. Meanwhile, the number of UFO reports had climbed to a record high. This led the Central Intelligence Agency to prompt the U.S. government to establish an expert panel of scientists to investigate the phenomena. The panel was headed by H.P. Robertson, a physicist at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, Calif., and included other physicists, an astronomer, and a rocket engineer. The Robertson Panel met for three days in 1953 and interviewed military officers and the head of Project Blue Book. They also reviewed films and photographs of UFOs. Their conclusions were that (1) 90 percent of the sightings could be easily attributed to astronomical and meteorologic phenomena (e.g., bright planets and stars, meteors, auroras, ion clouds) or to such earthly objects as aircraft, balloons, birds, and searchlights, (2) there was no obvious security threat, and (3) there was no evidence to support the ETH. Parts of the panel’s report were kept classified until 1979, and this long period of secrecy helped fuel suspicions of a government cover-up.

A second committee was set up in 1966 at the request of the Air Force to review the most interesting material gathered by Project Blue Book. Two years later this committee, which made a detailed study of 59 UFO sightings, released its results as Scientific Study of Unidentified Flying Objects—also known as the Condon Report, named for Edward U. Condon, the physicist who headed the investigation. The Condon Report was reviewed by a special committee of the National Academy of Sciences. A total of 37 scientists wrote chapters or parts of chapters for the report, which covered investigations of the 59 UFO sightings in detail. Like the Robertson Panel, the committee concluded that there was no evidence of anything other than commonplace phenomena in the reports and that UFOs did not warrant further investigation. This, together with a decline in sighting activity, led to the dismantling of Project Blue Book in 1969.

OTHER INVESTIGATIONS OF UFOS

Despite the failure of the ETH to make headway with the expert committees, a few scientists and engineers, most notably J. Allen Hynek, an astronomer at Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill., who had been involved with projects Sign, Grudge, and Blue Book, concluded that a small fraction of the most-reliable UFO reports gave definite indications for the presence of extraterrestrial visitors. Hynek founded the Center for UFO Studies (CUFOS), which continues to investigate the phenomenon.

Aside from Project Blue Book, the only other official and fairly complete records of UFO sightings were kept in Canada, where they were transferred in 1968 from the Canadian Department of National Defense to the Canadian National Research Council. The Canadian records comprised about 750 sightings. Less-complete records have been maintained in the United Kingdom, Sweden, Denmark, Australia, and Greece. In the United States, CUFOS and the Mutual UFO Network in Bellvue, Colo., continue to log sightings reported by the public.

In the Soviet Union, sightings of UFOs were often prompted by tests of secret military rockets. In order to obscure the true nature of the tests, the government sometimes encouraged the public’s belief that these rockets might be extraterrestrial craft but eventually decided that the descriptions themselves might give away too much information. UFO sightings in China have been similarly provoked by military activity that is unknown to the public.

POSSIBLE EXPLANATIONS FOR UFO SIGHTINGS AND ALIEN ABDUCTIONS

UFO reports have varied widely in reliability, as judged by the number of witnesses, whether the witnesses were independent of each other, the observing conditions (e.g., fog, haze, type of illumination), and the direction of sighting. Typically, witnesses who take the trouble to report a sighting consider the object to be of extraterrestrial origin or possibly a military craft but certainly under intelligent control. This inference is usually based on what is perceived as formation flying by sets of objects, unnatural—often sudden—motions, the lack of sound, changes in brightness or colour, and strange shapes.

That the unaided eye plays tricks is well known. A bright light, such as the planet Venus, often appears to move. Astronomical objects can also be disconcerting to drivers, as they seem to “follow” the car. Visual impressions of distance and speed of UFOs are also highly unreliable because they are based on an assumed size and are often made against a blank sky with no background object (clouds, mountains, etc.) to set a maximum distance. Reflections from windows and eyeglasses produce superimposed views, and complex optical systems, such as camera lenses, can turn point sources of light into apparently saucer-shaped phenomena. Such optical illusions and the psychological desire to interpret images are known to account for many visual UFO reports, and at least some sightings are known to be hoaxes. Radar sightings, while in certain respects more reliable, fail to discriminate between artificial objects and meteor trails, ionized gas, rain, or thermal discontinuities in the atmosphere.

“Contact events,” such as abductions, are often associated with UFOs because they are ascribed to extraterrestrial visitors. However, the credibility of the ETH as an explanation for abductions is disputed by most psychologists who have investigated this phenomenon. They suggest that a common experience known as “sleep paralysis” may be the culprit, as this causes sleepers to experience a temporary immobility and a belief that they are being watched.