Alien, I mean really Alien.

[Randallw]

Wow, did this thread take off. I bow to Captain Kwok and others superior knowledge, as I explained I am no expert I was simply trying to put forth some limited knowledge I had. So my numbers might be wrong but I seemed to remember it was a proportion such as 5 out of 20. It could well be 3 out of 15, but I'm pretty sure the number of fossils was less than 20 "types". The types I was referring to are (using my simple example)
1. creature with a backbone and 4 limbs.
2. creature without a backbone.
3. Creature with a backbone but 3 unsymetrical limbs spaced around torse (like Cygnans from Jupiter theft).
4. Creature with 20 legs and backbone (sort of like a centipede but not an insect).
5. creature with a tubular body and circular mouth studded by teeth in 3 sets (like a lamprey).
6-20 various other types.
basically think of 20 really alien variations on possible forms, but only (in my example) 5 survived.

I read this in a magazine many years ago and it stuck in my mind. The magazine could have been Popular Science, National Geographic or Time for all I know. I apologise for being unable to provide links or detailed information, really I was hoping for someone with more knowledge to elaborate on what I knew. For the person who wanted to know the 3 types of Monotremes, they are 1 type of Platypus and there are 2 type of Echidnas.

[Captain Kwok]

RandallW:

Are these real examples of lifeforms from Earth's past? Or possible forms that life could have taken?

[Randallw]

They are real. basically someone found a set of fossils from long ago (whenever simple life was forming, but a bit above amoeba and such) they looked at this set of fossils and it was "Ok, I recognize these ones with the backbone and legs, but what are all these fossils with no bones or odd numbers of legs?". (ME) Then again how do you have a fossil with no bones?. I seem to recall the circumstance was there were all the different forms of life coexisting in a lake when a cliff fell on top of them.

[Atrocities]

Originally posted by Captain Kwok:
...and what do you base this on? Your own pessimistic view?

Nah, I'm hoping that one of the Mars rovers will accidently stumble upon some microfossils to spite you.

All in good humour of course.

I would love to be proved wrong CK, but I won't be. I have spent a life dreaming about other planets and such and over the course of it, I have gained a new appreciation for our world and how rare and unique it really is. Doing essays on it, and researching the probability of life on other worlds and how life began here has lead me to my "own pessimistic view" of things. I am not alone, and more and more people are coming to understand just how rare our little blue planet is.

I am not trying to be negative CK, I am simply stating the fact that there is no life like us out there. If life exsists it will be ooze and geew.

[Randallw]

Originally posted by PvK:


Aliens from another evolutionary history might think in extremely different ways.

PvK

I may be getting OT, but I started this thread so I get to bring up new stuff.
Does anyone know of the dicovery where fossils from a billion years were found. Now we are one "form" in so far as we have a Skeletal system AND a backbone AND symetry (2 arms, 2 legs, 1 on each side). I am no expert so I will say in my example there are 5 forms of animal still living, we mammals and 4 others (such as worms, with no backbone or skeleton etc). Anyway in the example I mentioned there were 20 "forms" of animal found. Thats the 5 current ones, and 15 "types" that are extinct. basically 1 billion years ago there were 20 possible templates for the creatures that would occupy the earth but 15 got covered with a landslide and only the other 5 survived (I am simplifying this alot, and my numbers might be wrong, but I am trying to point out something). So what if instead of the 5 that survived, 5 others survived. The earth might be populated by animals with no backbone and 3 legs and a head with an extendable mouth.

[capnq]

The most alien aliens that spring to mind for me are the kif in C. J. Cherryh's Chanur stories. The main thing I remember about them is that the rare times they communicated, the "translation" was a two-dimensional matrix of words, rather than "normal" sentences.

[Renegade 13]

I basically agree with you Atrocities. I think that IF life is found on other planets:

1. I will be long gone.
2. It will at the most be plant life, or something similar, not sentient life.

[QuarianRex]

Originally posted by Atrocities:
CK I have to tell you that our being here is an accident of epic proportions. The simple fact that life evolved on Earth is such a rare event that chances of it occuring twice or more in the universe is so great that if you took the number 1 and put 0 behind it to the point that it could circle the universe a centrillion times to the billionth power you might be within 1% of the chance.

This planet is so rare that it equals 1 10th of a grain of sand compared to the entire galaxy. And we are wasting it away.

No CK, life does not exsist "out there" it only exsists here.

Holy bitterness Batman! You might want to rethink that whole uniqueness aspect though. Just look at our own solar system. Just in this one tiny corner of the universe there were three potential candidates. Earth seems to have won out (yeah us!), but Mars seems to have had a good start (plenty of water, just needed a little more gravity/sunlight), and even the hellhole that is Venus seems to have had some promise (before its greenhouse effect went all coo-koo).

Think about that. Three possible candidates all around one little star that is distressingly mundane. Chances were pretty good for life to develop in this system. The odds may not be so bleak for others.

[Captain Kwok]

Don't forget about Europa! There could be a nice big sea under that icy exterior. And you know what they say about water...

[Tanus]

Atrocities:

While I believe you are correct in that we may never meet another sentient species, I find that I cannot agree that it does not exist.

It is generally accepted that there are approximately 200 Billion stars in the Milky way galaxy. Furthermore, most scientists agree there are approximately 100 Billion galaxies (some suggest upwards of 125 billion). Seeing as our milky way is of average size, a pessimistic view holds that there are 20,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 stars . While the chance of life springing up in any one star system is remote, there are a huge, huge number of stars.

If you wish to believe that no life exists elsewhere, well, not much I can do to change that. You're entitled to your opinions, as am I