A look at alien life and what it means.

Subject: An Objective (and occasionally comedic) Opinion on the Likelihood of Extraterrestrial Life Forms and Their Character.

Discussion:

First let me start by saying that everything here is my opinion and does not represent the opinion or stand of anyone mentioned, linked, or referenced. All Work here is my own, with the exception of references used, which are of course, property of their respectful copyrights, and used here for study/debate purpose only and no profit is warranted or expected.

Most individuals have their own personal stories about alien encounters, UFO Sightings, Weird lights, Spaceballs viewings, and unexplained events accountable to aliens. I am in no way trying to dismiss or explain away anyone’s personal experience. I am not attacking their morals, or sanity, and this is in no way a personal attack on those who have had experiences. I will however attempt to logically and with due effort attempt to analyze the very nature and likelihood of alien existence.

1.

Occam’s Razor: This states that when you are looking for an answer, the most simple answer is the most likely to be correct. Keeping this in mind, let us look at the possible means of intergalactic transportation of the human species.

Option 1: Develop hyper-light craft that can travel beyond relativistic speeds and thus making intergalactic travel possible within a lifetime.

Option 2: Develop some sort of cryogenic device that is self automated, enabling sub-light travel that takes many times the human lifespan possible through an automated reanimation process.

Option 3: Remove the human element and develop self-replicating bioengineered robotics in order to transmit data.

I am sure there are more options available, and we may discuss those at a later time, but for now lets take a look at these three options and their feasibility.

For option 1, the pro’s would be obvious. Warp-9 hyperdrives, taking people across the galaxy in short timeframes, allowing Star Trek like voyages to occur would be optimal, however not practical. The consequence of travelling at such high rate of speed means that in the instant that it took you to get there, it feels like an instant to you but do to time dilation and the Lorentz Contraction, by the time you blinked, civilizations on your homeland would have experienced thousands of years passed, and forgot about you, and more than likely not even speak the same language

Time Dilation

Lorentz-Fitzgerald Contraction

language evolution

Not to mention the amount of energy needed to propel at any length a small craft at hyper-relativistic speeds is far beyond our grasp at the moment, however, just as anything is possible in the universe, so is the ability to generate that kind of power output.

For option 2: we still run into the same problems as with option 1, just a different path. Where as time dilation was the culprit for the first option, the fact that you are still travelling hundreds even thousands of years before a reanimation occurs. The language barrier still exists, and now we have even more issues. What about system upkeep? I suppose that you could have someone reanimate every 6mos to a year or so to do routine maintenance, but then you are exponentially increasing the chance of incident with the increase number of freeze/thaws.

cryonics


Option 3 would more likely be a viable way to explore space, colonize other regions of the galaxy/universe, and even observe without interference any other planet. I mean it may be beyond NASA to observe quietly, afterall, if they don’t understand something, they hunk rockets at it  lol. BUT with the emerging science of Nanotechnology and Nanobots, this is a more than possible means of space exploration.

Nanobots
self replication

Nanotechnology or more precisely, molecular nanotechnology is concerned with making nano scale assemblers. Without self-replication, capital and assembly costs of molecular machines become impossibly large.

Simply place nanobots into a craft, supply renewable RNA and DNA samples, throw in an incubator and a genome code, send it into space.

But how does this apply to other aliens???

Simple really, we as humans are fast to consider ourselves unique. (yes I get it we are special, we are lucky, but…) in reality we are simply a product of our environment. We as humans are best equipped to survive in an earth-like atmosphere, but overall we have what it takes to operate as a function. We have optical sensory and data storage capability; we have auditory sensory and transmission capabilities, and also data storage for that information. We have built in analysis tools, and construction tools. We are strong enough generally to do what is necessary to provide adequate shelter, and we are able to run for extended periods of time in less than ideal environmental conditions in effort to self preserve. HOWEVER we are not equipped to deal with even smaller variations to gravitational pull, oxygen content, temperature change, and radiation flux. What is interesting is that we have these things in our genome.

supergenes, not levi’s either
want super strength? The answer is here

These self replicating nanobots could travel to other planets, examine with sensors the makeup of the atmosphere, gravitations, terrain, and so forth , then pull from a pool of basic DNA, make changes to the appropriate genecodes in order to develop a sustainable life-form that is designed to do the appropriate task, send it down, and wala!

Not to mention the very lifespan and cellular makeup could be arranged so that the lifeform would have a 1, 2, 7, 30 day life span, and is super susceptible to decay, or simply encode a self termination gene upon mission completion.

For exploring and data collection, the prime life form would need large optical sensory, long large capable hands for further examination and tool use. They would also only need small limbs, weak muscle structure(afterall no need for long term shelter provisions or heavy lifting), little to no auditory and oral capabilities(there interest would not be to intermingle), and weak respiratory systems(large lungs=long lifespan)

bigger things live longer lives

You still may be wondering what this has to do with things alien to earth. Well as I said, life itself as we do and do not know it, is likely to be products of their environment, with basic genomes capable of producing rapid evolution and adjustment to environmental changes. Any where in the universe one would expect to find beings similar to ourselves, dispite the outward physical differences, who want to explore, and they would take (presumably) the same course of simplest action that we would.

Even if these creatures had lifespans of thousands of years, they would still need means of exploring things millions or billions of light years away.

NOW- think about the aliens that we have had described to us by witness? Small green men are described as having large eyes, small arms and legs, large hands, and minimal interaction with humans (for the most part).

In my own conclusion it would seem more plausible, and likely, that the aliens tha we see on earth are not a true representation of their species, but instead engineered tools for obtaining and disseminating data.

-Wx