Ok, so lets say intelligent aliens that can space travel turn out to be real. What do you imagine they would look like and what would their goals be? What planet would they be from?
Personally, I like the idea of some sort of fuzzy subterranean gremlins from Mars.
I once had a peculiar dream in which I went to Mars and had to explain Earth's plight to the locals. The Martians were a lot like the humans of Earth, albeit a bit taller, and more strikingly, they did not communicate by either verbal speech or by signing with the hands. Rather, the Martians would insert a pseudo-penis into a pseudo-vagina, and then twitch these organs rhythmically at high speed in a manner reminiscent of a telegraph key. This apparently allowed them to transmit large amounts of data very efficiently.
Definitely the best idea I've ever heard for a unique take on alien life. There is a huge, awesome book to be written about interactions with this species and I won't be writing it. But I hope someone does
I found it a bit difficult to communicate with the Martians, not least because I would endure a very distracting amount of sexual pleasure with every word uttered by or to me. In hindsight I maybe could've made some sort of device to communicate for me, but perhaps that would've been taken by the Martians as a bit cold and distant.
I still think this form of communication is an interesting idea, and I've considered adding it to my conworld, but the problem is that I cannot imagine any real reason why the Martians would evolve to communicate in this way.
I want to believe that Rodenberry knew something and the Vulcans 🖖 are exactly as portrayed.
But I could see them being feathered lizard like bipedal creatures, or perhaps crab like. I think bipedal because dexterity of appendages would be necessary to develop a written language and build precision tools. It seems to be a fluke of historical events that furless mammals were the species to emerge as the highest intelligence.
Goo creatures like Yafet on the Orville would be pretty cool tho.
Yeah, it definitely feels like if cephalopods had longer life spans and began passing on knowledge, there's a good chance they'd evolve to be pretty intelligent over time.
Based on what we understand about the universe I honestly genuinely think that Aliens who could accomplish intergalactic travel would basically have to be some kind of eldritch horror to our eyes. Their biology or perception of time would be have to be so far removed from what we think of as sentient life I think we'd find them beyond comprehension.
I really recommend watching Scavengers Reign for anyone who finds this type of thing interesting! I guess it's probably not scientifically accurate from a speculative evolution point of view, but wow the level of thought and detail put into the alien ecosystem is mind blowing. Really beautiful show.
that show has a weird "biology is magic" thing that vandameer has.
Also it has life cycles that make no sense, like parasites that can live in any species, gestating acid bomb clones instead of pollen, etc. neat show tho
the clone thing is so wild. Like how much energy and mass would be needed to do that when you could just evolve seeds with prickles.
They would be four foot tall desert crabs. They would have at least one hand with extra pinchers so that it gives them complex grasping ability. They would live in colonies. They basically would evolve intelligence to work together cooperatively to gather resources during the wet season and then unfortunately to steal resources better during the dry season. Their complex manipulators would allow them to make tools to improve their lot and eventually create enough surplus calories to develop large brains
Energy beings are the only aliens that could possibly live long enough to make interstellar travel a possibility. Either Robots or some kind of extradimensional being.
If black holes turn out to b a gravitational condensate with no event horizon, you could have FTL and a hyperbolic space time at the same time, since the condensate would have negative energy pressure.
I've actually been wondering what the simplest experimental proof of relativity would be though. I know GPS is one practical application that has to account for the way gravity bends time which is based on light having a constant speed, but that's hard to demonstrate.
they look like us , but more slender , because of gravity , and they look for Art Music and Entertaiment , as they allready have everything else under space communism.
thats also why they would not make first contact.. it would spoil the unique arts and the entertaiment they get.. , since they did first contact with Zobrob 4, they only produce shit...
I think they'd be weird. Like there's no real need for them to have bilateral symmetry, a distinct head that contains respiratory, alimentary, olfactory, auditory and visual organs.
They might rely heavily on senses other than sight and sound, or see and hear totally different ranges from us.
They could lack individuality, or be some kind of hive mind.
I think they'd be really weird, but also I think that due to the size of space, even though I assume one intelligent species at least must be out there, that we'll never meet one.
I'd imagine them to look like some random weird animal. People overemphasize weird sea critters when going down this route; there's plenty of convergent evolution to go around and they might only look as weird as star nosed moles (on a casual glance from the outside; their interior anatomy and bone structure would be weird as fuck).
I don't know why you'd ship actual live beings across interstellar distances. Either implies there's a way around the speed of light, or somebody is really fucking bored. The later is of course more likely.
I don't know why you'd ship actual live beings across interstellar distances. Either implies there's a way around the speed of light, or somebody is really fucking bored. The later is of course more likely.
I can see it for the closest star systems to ours, the dozen or so stars within about 10 light years of the Sun. If we can get a spacecraft to 90% of the speed of light, time dilation cuts the elapsed time aboard the ship down to 43 percent of the elapsed time on Earth. The crew would perceive getting to Alpha Centauri in just 1.84 years.
I genuinely think they'd look more or less like humans with latex prosthetics. Same kinda basic layout with similar advantages and drawbacks, with miscellaneous differences based on their home world conditions. Maybe their butts are in their nipples or they smell through their hair or something, but I think the evolutionary pressures that lead species to the development of technology would end up being remarkably similar to the ones that lead us to develop it.
they're from here, scientific materialism has fundamental limits that cannot readily describe all phenomena, and i bet they look like little grey assholes.
Honestly I'd expect von Neumann probes. Self-replicating machine intelligences. Given the time scales and energy requirements to send big spacecraft capable of sending organic life as we know it safely between stars at high relativistic speeds while still working within the known laws of physics, I just don't see alien spaceships as sci-fi depicts being a thing.