Moontanman

2 hours ago, dimreepr said:

What makes you think that?

The conditions for life exist all over the solar system, IMHO where life can form it forms, the swiftness it appeared on earth after the earth formed suggests life forms easily and the detections on Mars suggests there is life on Mars afterall. 

17 hours ago, mistermack said:

Of course, humanoids wouldn't be new. Jesus of Nazareth was half man half alien, two thousand years ago. He looked human, but had very alien powers, including walking on water, turning water into wine, and multiplying solid objects like loaves and fishes. And regeneration after apparent death.

The Greeks had gods that were humanoid too, but they were just superstitious stories. 

Well gods, like aliens, are created by humans in their own image. 

Would a Centaur like creature be considered humanoid if the raised portion of the creature, human part in mythological centaurs, was indeed more or less human in appearance would that be considered humanoid? John Varley raised this question, IMHO, in his books Titan, Wizard, and Demon. The aliens are so human in appearance that we found them sexually attractive and could mate with them but they were centaurs with three sexes but only two individual sexes were readily apparent. But Gorillas are humanoid but not exactly sexually compatible with us fragile humans. Would sexual attraction cause less than humanoid aliens to be considered humanoid?   

21 hours ago, mistermack said:

Finding signs of life outside of the Solar System would be interesting, but irrelevant, as far as we are concerned. A bit like finding that the centre of Jupiter was made of diamond. Very interesting, but you could never have any contact with it.

The time-frames for travel to other stars is pretty mind-blowing when you start to look at the practicalities. So the extra-terrestrial life that might be of more than academic interest is pretty much confined to the Solar System. 

Since we regularly get bits of Mars landing on Earth as meteorites, it's not impossible that life here was seeded from earlier life on Mars. Or from elsewhere unknowns. It could even be that life was floating around dormant in rocks from previous star systems, that eventually formed the Solar System as we know it. We think that life started about 4 billion years ago, here on Earth, but it could have started 10 billion years ago, or more, on much earlier planets. That's why they are so exited about the recent asteroid samples brought back to Utah. There might be primitive life in them, from earlier worlds.

That's also a reason to be nervous about the samples. They don't stress the possibility publicly, but there could be something in it that could be lethal to current life on Earth. Highly unlikely, but not impossible. 

It rains diamonds in Uranus... I just couldn't help myself. 🙄

3 hours ago, dimreepr said:

No, it's not a matter of time, it's a matter of probability and there's a very bloody big chance (astronomical), that we'll never see it...

Why? ET life is probable in our solar system, why would we never see it? 

I think life outside the Earth has already been found, a new look at old data mixed with new data makes the first Mars landers look for life in a new light. A growing tide of researchers are of a mind that we misinterpreted the data and the landers detected life after all.  

https://www.space.com/nasa-may-have-unknowingly-found-and-killed-alien-life-on-mars-50-years-ago-scientist-claims

4 hours ago, dimreepr said:

Define head?

For instance, a human head is the center of our intelligence, while a squid head is only, roughly, the center of it's body.

As for the topic, humanoid alien's are a human concept/conceit; the chance that equivelent intelligent life is our doppelganger, is astronomically (pun intended) small... 

I agree, in fact I would say that "humanoid aliens" is the biggest flaw in the whole "UFO Aliens" phenomena, they look far too much like us to have come from anyplace other than inside our minds.  

A squid is an example (octopus or cuttlefish is a better example) of an animal with a body plan vastly different than vertebrates. Since there is no reason to think vertebrates are inevitable in the process of evolution, in fact IMHO vertebrates are a fluke and could have easily been passed over by natural selection or simply failed to evolve at all, vertebrates evolved from invertebrates and not the other way around there is no reason to think that the evolution of vertebrates is inevitable or even likely.  

Kinda sad really, antigravity antimatter would have been much more useful and interesting. 

21 hours ago, Genady said:

I am not sure why to call this a head. I'd say it has its eyes, brain and the mouth in its torso.

I've cut up large numbers of squid, I like to catch and eat them, the arms are arranged around the head... hence the name cephalopod. When you cut one up the head becomes obvious but if there are any experts here I would appreciate a call on this... do squids have a distinct head? Personally I'd say an octopus comes closer to your idea but both squid and octopus are highly derived snails. 

12 hours ago, Genady said:

Squid:

I'm not sure what you mean, a squid has a head, that head contains the eyes, the brain, and the mouth... and feet or arms but no braincase! 

17 hours ago, Genady said:

Could help to have more than two pairs of appendages. E.g., insects.

True, a praying mantis is almost the poster child of such an idea. 

15 hours ago, swansont said:

There are multiple species of intelligent life on earth. How many depends on where you place the bar. So it’s too simplistic to wonder what alien intelligence would look like, as if only one species has intelligence.

Good point, another flaw in my question, I was asking about more than just intelligence, I was aiming for technologically advanced as part of the requirements as well as form and intelligence.  

The first real book I remember reading was "When Worlds Collide" and then "After Worlds Collide" probably jr high school, that was the first time I had access to a library. I am sure I read other books before that but I don't really remember much about them.  

On 9/22/2023 at 5:16 PM, pzkpfw said:

Makes me think of Dire Straits, Industrial Disease:

 

 

 

Good one and a great song! 

1 hour ago, mistermack said:

The only creatures on Earth that I can think of, that have, or have had, a humanoid form, are related to us pretty closely through having a common ancestor not long ago, in evolutionary terms.

So even here on Earth, there has only been one line of creatures that evolved in that way. 

How do you define humanoid? 

1 hour ago, mistermack said:

So the chances of a similar form evolving on an alien world and developing to our level are truly tiny. You would need a planet like Earth, with all it's special features, in the goldilocks zone, protected by a magnetic field, and you would need photosynthesis to evolve, and produce forests of tree-like things on dry land. And for that planet not to be hit too often by meteorites while the aliens were evolving. And not too much volcanism. And similar gravity, and a similar greenhouse gas atmosphere. With plenty of water in oceans. 

Basically, you need another Earth for aliens who look like us. 

None of that would necessarily come about because the planet was identical to Earth. Gould suggested that even vertebrates wasn't a sure thing, in fact eukaryotes aren't a sure thing. Eukaryotes are thought to have come about by a symbiosis between vastly different organisms with no guarantee of similar results on any planet.  

1 hour ago, Genady said:

Chances are that they are headless. The brain should be better protected and insulated than ours. More like our heart, lungs, etc.

Interesting idea but odd that nothing like that on a large scale has been found on Earth even in the fossil record. 

37 minutes ago, swansont said:

Dolphins are quite intelligent but don’t look like humans.

But aliens would be any species not from earth. There are millions of animal species here, with varying degrees of intelligence, and most are not humanoid. No reason to expect things would be markedly different elsewhere.

I'm not sure I understand what you are saying. I would assume that on any world with life you would get a myriad of species on at least the microscopic scale ie bacterial level. But once you get to the stage of microbes... what determines where you go from there? 

39 minutes ago, Ken Fabian said:

I think the advantage of tool making problem solving is that it overcomes physical limitations. Perhaps a mutant line of them needed head protection to overcome the vulnerabilities of an enlarged brain with thinned brain case to survive at all but the invention allowed them to survive where their hard headed cousins could not. A bit the way humans need clothing and shelter and fire to overcome lack of insulating fur and the products of invention allowed them to colonise environments even their furred relations could not tolerate.

A separate head and body was already well established in mobile animals in the Cambrian well before anything like a "enlarged brain" evolved.  

41 minutes ago, swansont said:

Insulated is not necessarily a good idea. Keeping our brains cool is important.

That depends on the environment and on Earth life has struggled with both hot and cold temps.  

I think maybe I asked the question in a wonky fashion. Possibly we should be thinking about "is the humanoid form needed to make tools, hunt, process meat and hides, build shelters and such" I am open to suggestions but if this form is needed then our civilization becomes dependant on some wildly unlikely scenarios.   

What would aliens look like? Many people seem to think they would be more less human in appearance, "humanoid" is the term often used. But what does that mean and how likely is an alien to be "humanoid"? 

I guess defining humanoid is the best way to start, a head, a torso, two arms, two legs? By that definition a gorilla is humanoid. 

Stephen Jay Gould, is his book "Wonderful Life" Gould suggested that rerunning the "movie" of life would not result in the same organisms we are familiar with, even something as basic as vertebrates might not exist if the tape of life was rerun. 

This would suggest that aliens that resemble us at all would be highly unlikely. However there is the idea of Convergent evolution where vastly different creatures that occupy similar ecological niches often look like each other. Sharks, Ichthyosaurs, and dolphins are often cited as examples. Would this process be likely to produce alien creatures that look like us, ie humanoid?   

Should we expect intelligent aliens to resemble us? If so how closely?  

The situation is tense in my 'hood. 

I bet Boebert wishes the Beetlejuice video one was a deep fake. 

21 hours ago, TheVat said:

In the old days, ETs were made of Mars-ipan.

@Moontanman

Good one.  Boebert apparently has a different version of events.  

I sense that her basic life goal is to get as much Bad Girl attention as possible.  Probably all started with a distant father whose attention she craved.  Or maybe she's just an idiot.  One shouldn't underestimate the power of innate stupidity, especially if it likes prancing around with an AK-47.

She might claim a different version but it's all on tape!

They looked so fake to me I was stunned to see them presented as real. This whole UAP thing has gone from a sometimes interesting dog and pony show to the "Greatest show on Earth circus" The Garush guy who came out gave me "lying sack of steaming monkey shit" vibes from the beginning. Once they included Skinwalker ranch in the earlier "revelation" and the ultra rich guy who was running the investigation on the government's dime I knew it was just another layer of BS. Then the right wing politicians began to glom onto the idea... nothing but a feeble attempt at distraction from the crazy republican agenda. I am surprised that MTG and Lauren Boebert aren't dancing in circles around a bonfire howling at the moon over this one.    

And yes... I am ashamed to have been sucked in by this.