Aliens: Tools of the most evil Satan or just cosmic hawks who want to blow us up.

[Dequibenzo]

Well... okay, I guess that could work. I suppose it is hard to have tidal pools without tides, but the main reason animate life came out of the oceans is that there was food on land, in the form of plants. I don't know enough about it to argue the point effectively. However, I can say that the only thing special about Earth's moon is that it's pretty large in comparison. Most moons are captured objects or formed from rings, but ours came from an impact, so it's unusually big, which does in deed make for a strong tidal influence. But the same is true for Charon and Pluto, and, more importantly, every single moon of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. Especially Jupiter's Gallilean sattelites- Europa, Io, Ganymede and Callisto, three of which we think could be very good candidates for ancient or even present life to exist. Moons of jovian gas giants have quite a bit of tidal influence being exerted on them by the planets they rotate, and it's predicted that most of the planets in the galaxy are gas giants, plus there would in deed be tides on their moons if there was liquid water. Therefore, if tides are in fact important to evolution as you say, it still doesn't rule out non-earth like planets (or moons) for intelligent life.

[tybie_odd]

everybody's got some pretty neat theories! I like talking about the Unknown, because no-one can ever say you're wrong and prove it!

Anyone ever wonder if there are or were or will be someday a creature that can transfer its soul into a machine and live for thousands of years? I think about that now and then.

If your soul is away from your body, does either part die? do we even have 'souls'? If we do, are they really in a seperate spiritual realm or are they just parts of physical nature we don't understand?

In a game called Aidyn Chronicles there was a supposedly advanced alien race, who ironicly had no souls. They had no art, no music, no dance. The highest medical treatment, yes; and the most efficiant agracultural system, but their only inspiration was survival. No love, no dreams, no curiosity.

lol...I think I'm getting in over my head now! I oughtta step aside and listen to you guys some more i feel like you know what you're talking about

[LuxoJr]

That UFO video is pretty pissweak. There's no way the guy with the camera could zoom to such an obscure point so quickly and accurately. And he manages to track its position perfectly after the composite image 'flies' over to the right.

"Hey, I just noticed some obscure tiny blob thing next to one of the world's largest buildings! You think you can pick it out with your camera from your position behind me?"

[Danny]

Originally posted by Sydney
Anyway, why do I think intelligent life only exists on earthlike planets? I've mentioned this before in an older topic, but the moon causes the tides. The tides are what encouraged earth's diversity of life, they compete, intelligent life is born, bla, bla, bla.

It's not just earthlike planets that have moons...

If what they found on the rock from Mars indicates life, and it formed on Mars as did earth's on earth, then that's a pretty good indication that life is carbon-based, and not some cosmic mist.

As Ian said, Mars is very similar to Earth. What this evidence shows is that earthlike planets give rise to earthlike life, not that earthlike life is the only form of life, and nor that life can only occur on earthlike worlds...

As a side-note, the one crucial difference between Mars and Earth is that Mars's core contains considerably less Iron than Earth's, so Mars's magnetic field was never very strong. This was the reason that it suffered so much orbital bombardment and lost most of its atmosphere, which in turn is why it is so cold... If Mars had had a core similar to Earth's, it is more than likely that it could have ended up very earth-like indeed...

Okay, Sydney, I think I see the point you are making here. Correct me if I'm wrong, but you seem to be saying that life requires hardships in order to develop to an advanced level. I think that this is a very good point (although I think not strong enough to be able to generalise in this way), but you are thinking too specifically. There are many ways in which life can be subjected to similar regular hardships as Tides and Seasons, and the nature of these hardships will be reflected in the life that develops.

I think you and I are looking at this from difference perspectives. You seem to be looking at what examples of life we have and seeing what they require in order to survive/evolve. That's fine, and probably the most cautious approach to take, but you have to bear in mind that life on Earth evolved the way it did because it evolved on Earth, rather than assuming that life must evolve the way it did here, which was why it evolved here...

(Meh, sorry about the poor wording there, it was difficult to get what I was thinking into words...)

[Dequibenzo]

I think I get what you're saying, Danno. Life on Earth does fit the circumstances that we see here almost perfectly, but it's such a close fit that on even a planet similar to Earth, the small differences would be enough to create totally different life, right?

I think my big difference with you guys is that I think there is no such thing as a "Perfect fit" for a life form to it's environment. Darwinian evolution, by nature, works off of random mutations, and when one proves beneficial, it sticks around. So, yes, life is specialized, but not customized- it does have advantages, but it isn't perfect, so there is room for difference. It's impossible to say that a completely different set of organisms couldn't still form the same ecosystem that we have now. Same machine, different parts, so to say. So, even on a planet EXACTLY like Earth, life could've evolved differently, according to my theory. Not to mention all those small but important variations real planets could have from Earth, or even major differences. Who knows?

The argument is wether or not life like ours is a standard in the universe. I'm just saying that, if there are a trillion different possibilities for a life form out there (and that's probably an underestimate), that means life like ours has a one-in-a-trillion shot, and all the other 9 billion, 9 million, 9 hundred and nintey-nine thousand, nine hundred and ninety-nine are possibilities in the "other" category. To put it another way, if we were racing horses, Sydney, even if yours is pretty fast on one kind of terrain, I still have almost a trillion other horses on my side, and just as many different tracks that are slight variations to yours to race you on, we have to race every single one of them, and you can't lose even once, because you're saying that your horse will win EVERY TIME. It's just not likely.

[Danny]

I agree with you totally, I was just adding another argument in parallel to yours... I was just saying that Life doesn't necessarily require an environment identical to Earth's in order to survive, so that Life could well evolve to be not only superficially different (which is what your argument is mainly geared towards pointing out) but fundamentally different...

[Dequibenzo]

Originally posted by Danny
I agree with you totally, I was just adding another argument in parallel to yours... I was just saying that Life doesn't necessarily require an environment identical to Earth's in order to survive, so that Life could well evolve to be not only superficially different (which is what your argument is mainly geared towards pointing out) but fundamentally different...

Exactly, well put. We have both the chance for minor (in the evolutionary sense, that is. To us it's still pretty major) change in similar planets, and unpredictably enormous change in dissimilar ones. Who knows? Maybe life can even exist off of planets, in mineral rich nebulae and the even the cold of space, in which cases it would be fantastically weird. The bottom line is nobody knows anything at all about extraterrestrial life, which is what makes the search that much more enticing.
But isn't it fun to sit down with a book of human facial anatomy, tweek this and elongate that, and come up with a brand new world full of strange creatures? Aliens are truly the modern day sea-monsters and dragons. They fuel minds that are both imaginative and philisophical, which is a wonderful combination.

[Danny]

Originally posted by Dequibenzo
But isn't it fun to sit down with a book of human facial anatomy, tweek this and elongate that, and come up with a brand new world full of strange creatures? Aliens are truly the modern day sea-monsters and dragons. They fuel minds that are both imaginative and philisophical, which is a wonderful combination.

Amen to that.