Are the aliens from "ALIENS" going to be more alien than real aliens?

[plant]

What would intelligent aliens look like? Would we be unsurprised?
Is there any way to be objective about this?

Could you say that it is likely that all 'animals' (carbon based or not) would develop a (protected) head containing the brain and sensory organs? And limbs to move around... i.e. something vaguely octopus/horse-like.

Would it see? smell? feel?

Would it eat and excrete? Would it lay 'eggs'?

Could you say that it would likely be between 50cm and 50m in size?

Maybe they'll be intelligent photosynthesizing plants instead- that would be cool...

[Swift]

I think the short answer is we have no idea and there is really no way to know.

[kzb]

The aliens in Aliens are actually a bioweapon, or so I believe. That is, they were genetically modified creatures, made by some ancient race for warfare against some other ancient race(s). I don't think they were meant to have evolved naturally.

I think for a technological intelligence, vision is necessary, as is some organ or organs that can manipulate the environment like our hands, or perhaps the elephant's trunk. It's inevitable that it eats and excretes: even photosynthesising organisms do this.

Everything else on your list is negotiable I think.

[Zo0tie]

What would intelligent aliens look like? Would we be unsurprised?
Is there any way to be objective about this?

Could you say that it is likely that all 'animals' (carbon based or not) would develop a (protected) head containing the brain and sensory organs? And limbs to move around... i.e. something vaguely octopus/horse-like.

Would it see? smell? feel?

Would it eat and excrete? Would it lay 'eggs'?

Could you say that it would likely be between 50cm and 50m in size?

Maybe they'll be intelligent photosynthesizing plants instead- that would be cool...

Aliens would probably be more alien than anything we can imagine. Just look at the lifeforms on our own planet especially the oceans and you will be amazed at the variety of forms, manipulators, sense organs. And that's just on our own planet.

The Aliens in the movie were designed to absorb some of the genetic information of their hosts and thereby become better parasites of that particular organism. Attack a human and your larvae become more humanoid. Attack a dog and you become more dog like. So there's no telling what the 'original' alien looked like.

[tnjrp]

What would intelligent aliens look like? Would we be unsurprised?

Basically, there are two schools of thought among the astrobiology crowd: the humanoid school and the "whatevernoid" school.

The former argue for necessarily very closely convergent evolution -- that is, that any intelligent alien would very closely resemble a human: "one head, two arms, two legs... that could be anybody", or in other words, think Star Trek -style odd skintones and funny foreheads at the most exotic.

The latter recognizes that there are probably some "evolutionary imperatives" (such as ability to sense electromagnetic radiation AKA "sight", bodily symmetry in some form etc.) that an intelligent alien would most likely need to have, but beyond that evolution is just too undirected a process to produce more fairly hairless apes on other worlds. So something that at least outwardly appears rather like the Xenos in Alien series might be in the cards, as well as possibly even more exotic-looking sapients.

The problem is that tho both can support their view with science, we don't have any samples of alien life to work with yet so it's still very speculative work they are doing. So, after long and careful deliberation, one must come to the inescapable conclusion: "I dunno".

[ravens_cry]

Unless evolution can invent telekinesis, I would imagine that complex tool using social intelligence will have manipulators of some sort. Of course, a manipulator can be anything from the human hand, the elephants trunk, the ravens beak claw combination, the squids tentacles and arms or something else entirely. The insects jaw developed from arms apparently, what about the reverse? What about group intelligence, a favourite of science fiction, is that actually possible?
In short, we don't know, though the ability to take an use other creatures DNA to adapt sounds pretty unlikely, given that we don't even know if other creatures will even have DNA. It sounds worse then trying to run Amega software in Windows XP without an emulator.

[astromark]

'Swift' said it and, I agree. I feel the need to add that you should always consider the fiction writer as making the Aliens just a little real to be more frightening... or both.. When those films were made SGI was just finding its way. They were hideous and frightening but, With the advancements made today you could have anything you might imagine..
I would add that I imagine aliens that are more different than we have yet imagined. I can not see why they might resemble a upright biped at all.

[Ilya]

I think for a technological intelligence, vision is necessary,

Are you sure? Sonar could work too, if they evolved in a very foggy atmosphere.

Although I don't see how such aliens would ever develop astronomy.

[ravens_cry]

Or for that matter, in a dark world, like a tidal forces heated moon around a gas giant.
Vision, we don't need no stinkin' vision!

[IsaacKuo]

Are you sure? Sonar could work too, if they evolved in a very foggy atmosphere.

Although I don't see how such aliens would ever develop astronomy.

The same way we developed radio astronomy. First we developed the radio. Then we tried to figure out where the background noise was coming from. This would lead to, among other things, the famous Horn Antenna.

On a related note, I once wrote up a series of speculative thoughts on a hypothetical blind aquatic alien species--similar in body layout to sea pigs. Their main sense was touch.

Their first ranged sensor was a form of sonar, where an oil filled lens would focus sounds. By chance, some sonic lenses were transparent enough to also focus "heat" from volcanic vents. Of course, this isn't really focusing "heat", but rather light. (In the Europa-like underground ocean of their homeworld, life had no compelling reason to evolve light sensors.) This would lead to their first telescopes, although they wouldn't get a chance to see the heavens until after they dug their way to the surface.

[Githyanki]

Remember that HR Giger designed the Alien to be frightening to scare movie-audiences. Actual "Alien-ness" wasn't really considered. I mean, if you try to model an "Alien" in a program, those things have a real hard time walking.

Also, the "Face-hugger" seemed to be designed perfectly for human faces. A face hugger would have a difficult time with a dolphin.

[John Xenir]

However for as anything too strange would seem frightening, at least for most people. Just being something totally out of ordinary would spark fear.

[Zo0tie]

On a related note, I once wrote up a series of speculative thoughts on a hypothetical blind aquatic alien species--similar in body layout to sea pigs. Their main sense was touch.

Their first ranged sensor was a form of sonar, where an oil filled lens would focus sounds. By chance, some sonic lenses were transparent enough to also focus "heat" from volcanic vents. Of course, this isn't really focusing "heat", but rather light. (In the Europa-like underground ocean of their homeworld, life had no compelling reason to evolve light sensors.) This would lead to their first telescopes, although they wouldn't get a chance to see the heavens until after they dug their way to the surface.

Heh! I also speculated on a blind alien race around Jupiter only in my case it was the moon Io and the organisms were silicon carbide critters living in the (now disproven) liquid sulfur lakes then believed to to exist beneath the surface. I came up with a whole alien 'biochemistry' and wrote several partial stories but never published them. They were able to sense and produce high voltage discharges and used high temperature superconducting loops to store electrical energy obtained from the jovian magnetosphere radiation belts. Outside of their liquid sulfur homes they used short range SQUID (superconducting quantum interference detection) to perceive objects and hopped about on one leg which is a very good way to travel on a low gravity world. In my first story they had no knowledge of the outside universe until silly humans came around and tipped them off to the electromagnetic spectrum. At that point they learned,...FAST! I sketched a few drawings while collecting my thoughts. Here's one. As you can see the concept is somewhat tongue and cheek.

[MentalAvenger]

Anatomy of an alien

The popular vision of an ET Alien is rather the same everywhere, but with mass media, that is not surprising at all. In fact, it is to be expected, since media is largely involved in creating news, not reporting it.

Let’s look at ET. His head is large and bulbous, so that it can contain a larger brain. His fingers are long and slender, indicating that he no longer does manual labor because he has developed devices to do all of his work for him. He is small and fragile, because his technology has relieved him of the need for physical strength. His eyes are large, probably because he is into visual rather than physical activities. He wears no clothes, because he has progressed past the need for modesty. He carries no tools or weapons because his superior intellect allows him to control humans without physical interaction.

What can we discover about the ramifications of these physical properties? Look at our own evolution, and it is clear that each of these attributes is a natural evolutionary extrapolation of what we would look like if we continue to evolve along our current evolutionary path. Since it is natural for most people to assume that in order for ET Aliens to visit us they would have to be far advanced, this is then a natural expectation of what ET “should” look like.

If there had been no UFO flap, and no “sightings” of “abductions”, and people were asked to describe what an ET Alien would probably be like, they would all most likely come up with an “alien grey” or something very similar.

There is one other factor which is never talked about. If we assume that ET Aliens would naturally be far more advanced than we, it would be extremely unlikely that ANYONE would EVER propose that ET was “insectoid”, or “reptilian”, or a “bug-eyed monster”. It would be unthinkable, not to mention treasonable, to assume that any of those could be superior to us. The only entities which could possibly be superior to us is……….our own evolved selves.

Stereotypical ET Aliens are clearly the creation of the projection of our own advancing evolution. They are really the only likely form our imaginations would create, but they are certainly not what nature would be likely to create on a distant world. I would be greatly surprised if distant independent genesis and evolution produced beings that so closely resembled humans. As has been discussed before, there is no compelling reason that evolution should choose this form over the thousands of other possible forms in the complex chain of evolutionary development. Perhaps you can provide a compelling argument for independent parallel evolution.

[Githyanki]

I've always assumed the, "Greys" were simply evolved humans who invented time travel.

[plant]

i don't think they'd be 'carbon' based- and certainly not 'DNA-based'.... but

i think we could say they'd be multicellular?
that they'd have specialised groups of cells - 'tissues'
that they'd evolve via natural selection
that their sense organs would be clustered in one region (i.e. have a head), which would be close to the 'brain'.
hard to imagine any organism smaller than a frog developing intelligence enough to communicate via the EM spectrum.... unless alien neurons are more functional than ours.....


obviously i'm talking about 'primary' evolved intelligences- not alien 'AI' which would also be possible....

[Noclevername]

If their neurons (or equivalent) cells are that much more efficient, they won't need brains or heads-- the reason our thinky parts and sensors are all clustered together is because our nerve impulses are so sluggish that the organs that use them are grouped close to cut down on the transit time. A species with rapid-transist electrochemistry could have a distributed neural net and still beat us at Jeopardy.

[Zo0tie]

My hypothetical Ionian aliens had a purely electrical nervous system which made them faster thinkers and a distributed neural net similar to microscopic water hydras. However internally they didn't have cellular structure as we know it. Essentially they could be likened to silicon based giant germs.

Our multicellular structure evolved to compensate for the relatively fragile nature of lipid based cell membranes. A single cell the size of a human would immediately collapse into goo due to gravity. Of course the very insoluble nature of lipid membranes makes transport of nutrients, wastes and oxygen a problem. The last 500 million years of evolution has been about multicellular lifeforms evolving more efficient structures to compensate for that limitation. If the chemistry of an alien body had different strengths and weaknesses evolution of life forms could be radically different. Many people have no idea how radically different our body plan is from even terrestial organisms.

[eburacum45]

.
Stereotypical ET Aliens are clearly the creation of the projection of our own advancing evolution.

You are quite correct. The most probable reason for this stereotypical image is the fact that, since the late 19th century, popular SF has mixed together attempts to predict the future of Mankind with attempts to imagine the appearance of extraterrestrial intelligent species. The two have become inextricably mixed together for more than a century.

In reality these two topics have very little relation to each other, and should ber considered separately.

[SkepticJ]

The morphology that aliens start out with probably isn't how they'll stay.

Within the next few centuries, humans will be able to look like anything we want. Instead of ad hoc evolution, we'll intelligently design ourselves. We'll become our technology. Our finger tips will pluck individual atoms. We'll have trillions of fingers. Our eyes will see everything. We'll look like trees.

[Noclevername]

I've heard it put forth-- can't recall the whos and wheres-- that "ET/Greys" are based on blurry recollections from infancy... A baby's eyesight, including color perception, is still developing, and adults tend to lean close to babies or reach towards them, making their heads and eyes seem disproportionately big and fingers extremely long.

[Noclevername]

i don't think they'd be 'carbon' based-

Carbon is one of the most common elements in the universe. It's also extremely effective at forming complex molecules. Carbon compounds common to Earth life have been found in distant nebulae. It's safe to say that carbon makes a perfectly good, easy to find building block for water-based life. It's already proven its effectiveness on one planet, and that planet's mostly silicon and metals.

[agingjb]

Indeed, we know very little about all the possibilities for complex systems, but it would hardly be surprising if we did, among other things, encounter phenomena based on carbon chemistry. How much further can we go in speculation? Well polypeptides are very versatile, and something not too distant from DNA might serve as an information holder. But we do soon go off into unfounded guesswork.

[SkepticJ]

I've heard it put forth-- can't recall the whos and wheres-- that "ET/Greys" are based on blurry recollections from infancy... A baby's eyesight, including color perception, is still developing, and adults tend to lean close to babies or reach towards them, making their heads and eyes seem disproportionately big and fingers extremely long.

Probably not right.

They're just the modern form that aliens take. Once a meme gets into a culture, it spreads if it has appeal.

Modern aliens date from the '70s. Look at the ones from the '50s, '40s, '30s--they're all different.

Pop-culture aliens are just modern spooks. We've always had sleep paralysis and hallucinated things, alien abduction is just "more scientific" than having ghosts and demons haunt you when you can't move.

[Hernalt]

Could silicon be the basis for alien life forms, just as carbon is on Earth?
"But when carbon oxidizes--or unites with oxygen say, during burning--it becomes the gas carbon dioxide; silicon oxidizes to the solid silicon dioxide, called silica. The fact that silicon oxidizes to a solid is one basic reason as to why it cannot support life. Silica, or sand is a solid because silicon likes oxygen all too well, and the silicon dioxide forms a lattice in which one silicon atom is surrounded by four oxygen atoms."

That being said, sand an important ingredient in clam chowder.

[Inclusa]

Should we laugh at our lack of imagination?
Hence my signature.

[Jens]

With respect to the aliens in Aliens, they seem very earthean to me. It almost seems like a humanoid with a sort of fish head, some kind of fish that is found in deep water, like this. I would venture that real aliens would be much more "alien".

[ravens_cry]

Well, the Aliens were initially humans in a suit, so that basic form had to be built on. The thing that would be the strangest to me is if we encountered what TV Tropes calls "Rubber Forehead Aliens", Aliens that look like humans with a little extra latex.

[IsaacKuo]

Well, the Aliens were initially humans in a suit, so that basic form had to be built on. The thing that would be the strangest to me is if we encountered what TV Tropes calls "Rubber Forehead Aliens", Aliens that look like humans with a little extra latex.

How about Kzinti style cat people? I mean, it's one thing to strangely resemble one Earth species. But to strangely resemble a mix of two Earth species? (Build and proportions of a human, but fur, coloration, and features of a cat.)

[ravens_cry]

That would surprise me a little less as long as they only appear like a cat/human cross. There are many creatures that are rather unrelated that have been called by the same common name because they most reminded people people of that animal. Civet "cats" and feline cats come to mind. For a long time, Panda Bears were considered this. So a human sees an alien, and the human mind, like always, tries to analyse and categorize, but fails so it goes to analogy. "It Looks like someone mated a donkey with a watermelon while eating calamari." is the best the poor soul can come up with.
But when the species is out and out said to descend from cats, that gets a little silly.
I understand why we use humanoid aliens in visual medium. It's much easier to relate to something that looks human then as alien as it could. Even Avatar, which could have made it's Mare-ii Soo aliens look any way it wanted, stuck to the basic humanoid form in appearance. Really, considering how many limbs other endoskeletal life had on that planet, they probably should have had another set of limbs themselves.
I wonder how common, if any, the centauroid body plan will be. That is, a low slung, non biped, body plan with separate manipulators, the most obvious known example being an elephant.