Alien Evolution

Wasn't sure what to give the name without having people think I have a scientific article.

So you believe that because our features are so mechanically successful, that it prevented the likelihood of another group of Primates to emerge?

Why would anyone think life that developed elsewhere would be in any way like ours? Let alone like primates.

Originally posted by SearchAndDestroy Hmm never even thought of that. Wouldn't some form of DNA need to be necessary? It's the genetic code that gives us our structure isn't it?

It's theorized that RNA, TNA, and GNA may all be sufficient to form a basis for life, but seem to have evolved into DNA life. Under different conditions, who knows what would happen?

It's also been conceived that life need not be carbon and protein based at all; silicon has been proposed as one possible alternative.

Then there's the possibility that life need not be chemically based at all - some have suggested that memes fulfill most of the qualities of a life form, or at least those which apply to viruses - they evolve and mutate often through transcription errors (just like genetic life), they perpetuate themselves and so on. They also organize themselves in more complex structures just like cells form organisms, in this case called memeplexes.

Life might also occur in environments completely alien to our way of thinking about life - one thought is that life need not be solar-based at all, but could derive energy from geothermal sources entirely, meaning that life could exist inside any planet or large asteroid, even ones far removed from any star, provided there was geothermal activity. It's even been suggested that life on Earth was not originally dependant on solar energy.

The big question with any radically different sort of life, though, is whether we would recognize it as life. It's possible that there are forms of life that are radically different from our own living with us right now, that we wouldn't necessarily be able to distinguish from inorganic processes. Especially microbial life forms; right now, they can't be sure there aren't non-DNA based microbes because the test to determine whether something is organic or not at that level involves searching for ribosomes.

Originally posted by JanusRook Also I believe viruses are still alive since they technically reproduce

Viruses are not considered life, primarily because they do not have a stimulus-response mechanism. Moreover they are not capable of independant replication - viruses are assembled by using structures within compromised cells of living organisms to manufacture new viral particles. Nor do they grow, which is a fundamental definition of life. Viruses are more like a kind of proto-life, a biological machine.

Viruses are more like a kind of proto-life.

Except that viruses can evolve and transmit their dna, thus meaning that they evolved from living bacteria that cannabalized other bacteria around it. Meaning if viruses are not alive, that non-life has evolved from life, which should not be logically possible.

There's no way of proving that viruses are living or non-living, since it depends entirely on your definition of living, about which there is no firm agreement anywhere. (Personally I go for them being living.)

Let's look at this logically. If the universe is infinite then there are infinite aliens. As such at one point, or at all points, aliens are meeting us. If the universe is not infinite but is expanding, and time is infinite, then everything is infinite distance away. As such we will never meet aliens. In fact, we're all already dead, so we wouldn't make good hosts anyway. If the universe is finite, as is time, then perhaps we should sit down over tea and discuss how that came to be.

Thinking in alliens and similar topics. I have inaugurated a site about the world of the future. Could you please help me with the taking off of that site by posting in there some ideas and top�cs? I would be very glad you could accompanied me in this adventure. The address is

http://www.tauzero.org/future-world/

Originally posted by Kalevipoeg Haha..., that humanoid alien doesn't have genitals in that picture. Humanoid aliens? It would seem thousands of times more probable that the image of the common alien has more to do with something like a Jungian archetype and your sub-concious than common reality. But when you look at the picturing of such humanoid/primate-like looking aliens, when was the first time a big eyed and slender grey alien was drawn or seen. Was it before or after movies pictured them as such that people eye-witnessed them in their space ships. Did the movies create such an image or did the movies take the image from people who had witnessed them before?