Personally, I like the idea of some sort of fuzzy subterranean gremlins from Mars.
Elon arrives and they prank him to death.
Sexual content
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 think the term you meant is tactile sign language, rather than contact sign, but I get what you mean.
I dunno what they'll look like but let's hope they don't have universal translators.
Cows: "There they are, the ones I told you about."
Humans:
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.
Yafet on the Orville
RIP Norm
But as an actual response to the bipedal thing I think some sort of cephalopod like animal is also a distinct possibility.
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.
I think the biggest hurdle is the ocean environment. It is hard to create lasting change in the environment so there is a limit to how much intelligent action can contribute to reproductive advantage. As it stands they are probably near human level intelligence just specialized in ways we can't communicate with.
There does seem to be a correlation with lacking natural tools being a pressure to develop
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.
Another gripe I have is how quickly they utilized the local flora/fauna for things. It took generations of humans to figure out what mushrooms wouldn't kill you, or what bark would slightly alleviate inflammation. These motherfuckers are using a land skate as a gas mask after being there a quarter.
I thought of a neat way to hand wave all that tho. A throwaway line about how the planet was a dumping ground for bio weapons. It would provide an explanation for everything.
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
Alien planet of corvids. Highly capitalist like ferengi. They just love how shiny gold pressed latinum is.
they would look like you and me. undetected, they would walk among us in bodies resistant to fire and magic.
they are the Dutch and we must resist them at all costs.
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...
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.
Some close encounter stories talk about robots and there's a theory that grey aliens are androids, or something.
Natural hibernators with a medusae like tellemere protection factor could work.
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.
i would guess pretty close to earth.
phospholipids naturally occur and form "cells"
amino acids naturally occur and form "proteins"
Solar energy is abundant so life forms will need to make us of it, photosynthesis will probably be used to move electrons first
glucose is so easy to make things from
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.
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.
