i fucking hate Supermassive Black Hole. shit song. no way was that first.

If you prefer, undifferentiated-Hydrogen-gas-cloud-with-important-yet-imperceptible-density-variations-and-a-little-Helium-with-a-touch-of-Lithium was first.

Please stay on topic peeps. You can surely discuss your banter in odd chat? Or make a Dr. Seuss thread?

Oddchat doesn't work for me =(

Ok, astronomy...here's an interesting article I picked up http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases...0107145634.htm

BTW OP; What do you define as an alien?

just life somewere other than earth

So even if said life form isn't capable of thought it still qualifies?

Well then somewhere in our universe - most likely not in our solar system - there is a good chance there's an organism of some sought without a brain or equivalent organ.

You do realize that because all life on earth has evolved from an single organism we are related to anything with a cellular structure. So we humans, some few billion years ago, shared an ancestor with fungi. Now see how different fungi is from us humans, imagine what a non-related organism would look like.

We're more like fungi than plants. But we're eukaryotes: prokaryotes such as bacteria and archaea are more different still. We also share kin with viruses, I suspect, but that kinship probably goes back to before our ancestors were technically living units.

THe notion of us being fungi is quite amusing in my head =D

Reproduction via spores would rock!!! Wait...no it wouldn't!

I feel compelled to mention Orks.

Same here actually...first thing that came to my mind. Is that really sad?

First thing that came to my mind was the assertion that spread through university that I reproduced asexually through spores.

How many girls did you get pregnant BM?

None. But many developed serious pulmonary disorders as a result of breathing near me.

Dang. Well, honesty is healthy.

May I ask...do you think bacterial life is the most common life in the Universe BM or do you expect other, perhaps simpler lifeforms have evolved that perhaps exist in a silicon form for example rather than carbon.

Bacterial life is already pretty simple, indeed, many organelles in eukaryote cells are bacteria-like structures and are probably descended from them. If life elsewhere in the universe arises like ours, bacterial life is most likely. Bacteria where the only form of life on Earth for nearly 3 billion years, while multicellular life has existed less than 600 million. Life arose very quickly on Earth, suggesting it is likely, or at least easily achievable under the right circumstances. Multicellular life, conversely, seems much less likely (though that may be more due to the time it takes for bacteria to prepare the atmosphere for more complex life).

But I could not honestly claim that alien life, simple as it may be, will be bacteria. I only have a sample size of 1 to work with.

But I do doubt the candidacy of Silicon as a basis for the molecular structures of any form of life. It is proposed as an alternative because, sitting directly beneath Carbon in the periodic table, it can form four covalent bonds just like Carbon, required to form the sort of complex structures Carbon can. However, as you may have noticed, Carbon produces a great many kinds of substances: Hydrocarbons, Carbohydrates (sugars), proteins, nucleic acids, lipids (fats and oils), tiny monomers and hugely long polymers. By itself, Carbon makes rocks. Conversely, silicon, in all its forms, makes rocks. And that's pretty much it. Glass also. Some of them, crafted in impossibly complex, tiny and delicate ways, are incredibly useful to us, but they are still rocks.

Hmm, I've always been intrigued by the possibility that life may take the form of amorphous water based creatures, perhaps with protein coats? I just think that if there was enough ammonia and a build up of amino acids, it seems even more likely than carbonic lifeforms.

Firstly: most life already is an amorphous body of water in a protein coat. Secondly: amino acids are carbon-based molecules.

Damn it your right. You know you could agree with me, that would make me look clever! XD

I'm hoping for huminoid aliens but I'ld settel for anything else.

whatever it is I'm hoping we find it on gliese581d

Ya, but I think we should try to not be assholes to each other on Earth before we worry about finding aliens.

the best we can do is not be assholes ourselves, most people (at least I think most people) are already doing that, so why not look for aliens

Is that an alien or an asshole?

Chances are that any intelligent alien species we find will be assholes to each other too, unless perhaps they are some sort of eusocial colony species.

We might even find that the intelligence is emergent not from cooperating neurons but cooperating individuals.

Highly improbably; practically impossible.

thats why I would settle for anything else

How do we know the history of bacteria on Earth? Do monocellular blobs of jelly fossilize?!

We can all agree that cells were the first life on earth simply because there is no simpler living creature Nate.