What I think About (1) Extraterrestrials

[Jennifer Diane Reitz]

Throughout the history of Man, stories abound of contact with beings from the sky, and the metallic or glowing vehicles they arrive in. Be it the flying Shields of Alexander, the Dogon sky people or even the more recent stories of ships and contact throughout the post-industrial age, the UFO and alien has been the constant companion of human history.

So, what are they really? Let us, for the moment, accept, for the sake of argument, that the hundreds of thousands of reports from all of human history are valid, to the extent that Earth is really and truly being visited, by strange machines and strange beings. Let us grant this to be true. Now what?

If taken as truth, then we can agree with the Disclosure Project's famous military and intelligence people finally speaking out, that we are not being visited by only one species. According to the former heads of various nation's security agencies, there are at least 56 to 57 species visiting us, and if history be our guide, likely more. Some are tall, some positively robotic, others fleshy, the most famous are gray of skin with large heads and eyes, but some have been described as tall and geometric, others as essentially bigfoot or Chewbacca from Star Wars, and so on.

I think we may be being visited by only one species, a post-biological one, and that it uses whatever form it pleases for any number of possible reasons.

I don't necessarily think that there is some big multi-species federation out there with a Prime Directive limiting the amount of contact they have - not in the way many think. I speculate that there is a society of post-biological intelligences and that the difference between ship and occupant is only a matter of current expediency. I think they download into whatever they need, or whatever is expendable/useful at the moment, and this is why they can appear so varied, and why the craft themselves fly so organically, so naturally, like living things exploring, and why the craft can be almost any shape.

I suspect that any real alien autopsy would show a Grey, say, having no sex organs, no digestive tract as we know it, no anus, no urethra. It would likely have a large spongy mass taking up most of it's chest, acting as a sort of biochemical battery. It would not have lungs as we know them, but a simple system to permit smell to function, chemical sensing to occur.

I think this would explain quite a few things that are ascribed to these beings by all of those who claim to have been in contact with them - no apparent breath or chest motion of breathing, despite having some kind of nose or nasal slits, the cold, clammy skin, the eyes devoid of irises, the lack of nipples or other body structures indicative of an evolutionary, biological past.

But the big question is: why are all of these aliens (with only a few, notable exceptions) more or less humanoid? Tall or short, metallic or fleshy, heavy or thin, they all have two legs, two arms, one torso, and a head with two eyes (on average).

That, to me, is the easiest question of all to answer: frugality.

If these beings are not biots, living bio-machines with downloaded minds (as I have above just considered), if they really are different biological, evolved species, then the answer is so very simple: what is the minimum effective creature? The rock-bottom, no frills, Nature Is A Frugal Bitch animal?

Two legs is the minimum to walk. Two arms the minimum needed to manipulate objects skillfully. Two eyes the frugal minimum to perceive depth. A head to concentrate all sense organs into one frugal package. Any mouth must be below all else, because food is messy, and can cause infection or even chemical injury to sensitive tissue, and gravity pulls ichor and gibbets down. Mouth on the bottom.

The eyes must be above any mouth to prevent them from being damaged by food contamination. They are logically high to allow the animal to observe while being able to hide the majority of itself from predators, as well. Any nose or breathing slits must be below the eyes and above the mouth because lungs are easy targets of infection; if food gets inside it rots and causes trouble, and if the breathing system becomes inflamed or infected for any reason - a common thing, considering the commonality of particles in the air - then it cannot drip into the all-important eyes, spreading infection there. Ears must be set apart and to the side in some manner, for depth perception and distance/direction of sound to be perceived, just as with the eyes. Physics and biology demand these things, and Nature truly is frugal - everything costs caloric energy, and calories are costly for every animal.

The universe logically must be filled with humanoids. Not because some Star Trek Precursor race seeded the galaxy, but because basic physics and biology have already decreed that the minimum viable Upright Being Able To Use Tools And Carry Stuff must be a humanoid with two legs and two arms and a head. It is a mechanical necessity.

Three, four, five of everything (legs, arms, eyes especially) cost vast caloric incomes, whatever the biology, and are unnecessary. Nature is always frugal. The minimum functional form is a humanoid. Legs to walk, arms to carry and manipulate, head above to control it all and sense the world. Messy mouth below eyes, with nose between. Ears on sides be they above or below, this is the lowest energy state for a functioning being to be in.

So, what if I am right and ET is a post-biological biot with a downloaded mind? Why remain a humanoid? Surely they would have such vast resources that no expense is too great, right? Perhaps. It is also likely that sticking with what works makes sense: the minimal form is very versatile and above all more likely to be accepted than something horrifically complex to every encountered species because every encountered species is going to be... (as demonstrated) humanoid. Less scary, more useful, even if budget is not an issue.

What then of the UFO reports of utterly nonhumanoid aliens? The blobs and tentacle things, the stories of beings that resemble something out of 'Spore'? These reports are relatively rare, and may represent a specialized shape used for a specific mission, rather than a common 'off the rack' body to wear.

What of stories that Greys are fascinated by our biology, or take samples from us, or even more weird, have mated with humans in the past? If I were a posthuman visiting an alien world, I would send agents to take samples of the local biology and tailor my biots for exploring said world so that they were made of local stuff. The advantages would be vast; instant ability to survive on the world, adapt to the world, and direct experience of the world as a (sort of) native. It would also limit contamination by outside biological material used to construct biots elsewhere. Don't want to muddy the pool, and thus ruin the very thing being studied.

Maybe the Grey is a biot made from earth biology, custom designed for exploring Earth? It would also explain the 'Nordic' aliens, tall and very human looking indeed, as well. Work clothes and Sunday Best.

And as for the ships, be they saucer, wing, triangle, orb, or other strange shape... I imagine them to be the actual people. Ships filled with downloaded intelligences and no actual decks or rooms, unless specifically designed as carrier/transport/examination vehicles. Solid state machine-beings. Perhaps with the ability to generate a biot or three when needed, perhaps not.

Why would any civilization avoid Singularity? True, perhaps some would out of religion, or philosophy, or some other reason. Perhaps part of a post-biological, immortal life would be wearing flesh bodies commonly - not everything need be done, or experienced in a virtual space, just because it is there. Maybe there are good reasons having a closet of bodies to wear is a nice idea.

And, maybe it is nifty to keep the traits of your original evolved species alive in the universe by having bodies that reflect that ethnicity, too. Thus all the different kinds of alien humanoids seen. We wear clothes for more than utilitarian reasons, so why not other folks too?

Lastly, why the heck come here? Easy. Planets filled with life are fascinating! Any civilization with enough curiosity to get out into space is going to have that same curiosity drive it to diddle around with places like Earth.

Why not just reveal themselves openly? Why this game of hovering about as if they just plain didn't care if we can see them or not, utterly unconcerned with contacting us, hanging over our cities, airports, countryside, farms, highways, oceans, zooming by our orbiting satellites, shuttles and space craft, uncaring of what we think or who might photograph them?

Do you worry how many hamsters in a cage see your hand when you reach in? I do not think we are important. If a human is abducted, it means as much as if an animal here is tranquilized and tagged by some biologist studying migration patterns. If the abductee claims that a Grey expressed, telepathically, that they meant them no harm, and that everything would be alright, why... I think that is no different than giving a kindly scratch behind a dog's ear, to calm them down. Our conceit of language and words would be as simplistic as a belly rub to an advanced sapient post-singularity civilization. There, there, little human.

I think most folks who speculate about UFO stuff are behind the curve in terms of what would, logically, need to be the case if such visits are true. Our notions of fleshy empires among the stars, of Star Trek stuff are primitive. If there is flesh it is just one tool among many, and what we are dealing with is so far beyond empires and colonies and air-locks and landing shuttles that it is laughable to even consider such notions. That is what I am thinking, tonight.

[Coda]

We've had this debate in other threads before But I think the most interesting point of discussion is the legs. Two legs might be more efficient in terms of biomass, but three legs are actually the minimum necessary for passive stability. Two legs requires there to be a constant feedback loop driving the musculature to maintain our unstable equilibrium. If you're talking about energy consumption, three legs would be more efficient than two for all purposes but physical maturation.

[draque]

Really interesting post, I'm happy to see something along these lines pop up on the boards again :3.

But the big question is: why are all of these aliens (with only a few, notable exceptions) more or less humanoid? Tall or short, metallic or fleshy, heavy or thin, they all have two legs, two arms, one torso, and a head with two eyes (on average).

That, to me, is the easiest question of all to answer: frugality.

If these beings are not biots, living bio-machines with downloaded minds (as I have above just considered), if they really are different biological, evolved species, then the answer is so very simple: what is the minimum effective creature? The rock-bottom, no frills, Nature Is A Frugal Bitch animal?

Two legs is the minimum to walk. Two arms the minimum needed to manipulate objects skillfully. Two eyes the frugal minimum to perceive depth. A head to concentrate all sense organs into one frugal package. Any mouth must be below all else, because food is messy, and can cause infection or even chemical injury to sensitive tissue, and gravity pulls ichor and gibbets down. Mouth on the bottom.

The eyes must be above any mouth to prevent them from being damaged by food contamination. They are logically high to allow the animal to observe while being able to hide the majority of itself from predators, as well. Any nose or breathing slits must be below the eyes and above the mouth because lungs are easy targets of infection; if food gets inside it rots and causes trouble, and if the breathing system becomes inflamed or infected for any reason - a common thing, considering the commonality of particles in the air - then it cannot drip into the all-important eyes, spreading infection there. Ears must be set apart and to the side in some manner, for depth perception and distance/direction of sound to be perceived, just as with the eyes. Physics and biology demand these things, and Nature truly is frugal - everything costs caloric energy, and calories are costly for every animal.

I'll concede that I can't necessarily think of any other design than our for for a naturally evolved, biological creature that's able to create significant technology. I'm not necessarily willing to concede that either it is the only possible design, or that it's even the best. Our thinking is inherently limited not only by the fixed-power meat computers in our heads, but the conceits of our own biology that we're so familiar with. We're used to thinking with two hands. We're used to having visual depth perception, rather than perhaps a single eye and some other method of testing for distance. We're used to solving problems as human beings, because we're limited to being human beings.

So if I were told that I was going to be introduced to <NAME UNREPRESENTABLE BY LATIN BASED CHARACTERS> from a few galaxies over, I would be reasonably prepared to encounter alternate solutions to the problems we overcame with arms, hands, legs, eyes nose and mouth in the human configuration. Then again, I tend to think that you're right about the human configuration being one that is a pretty elegant one. It can't have come up only once in the universe.

So, what if I am right and ET is a post-biological biot with a downloaded mind? Why remain a humanoid? Surely they would have such vast resources that no expense is too great, right? Perhaps. It is also likely that sticking with what works makes sense: the minimal form is very versatile and above all more likely to be accepted than something horrifically complex to every encountered species because every encountered species is going to be... (as demonstrated) humanoid. Less scary, more useful, even if budget is not an issue.

[…]

And as for the ships, be they saucer, wing, triangle, orb, or other strange shape... I imagine them to be the actual people. Ships filled with downloaded intelligences and no actual decks or rooms, unless specifically designed as carrier/transport/examination vehicles. Solid state machine-beings. Perhaps with the ability to generate a biot or three when needed, perhaps not.

This is getting a little bit off subject, but I do think that the current view of downloading consciousness that's so common in modern scifi literature is a very primitive one. Our concept of consciousness and awareness is firmly planted in the fact that we're stuck in our own heads. We're in one place, and we don't have the option to be in others at the same time. Vessels carrying non-biological intelligence would very likely be something other than first gen. I don't think that first gen downloaders would ever be able to keep up with their "kids." Spawn multiple copies of yourself to solve problems that can be broken into granular problems. Merge memories later. Blur the distinction between self and others when working closely. I don't think that any post-singularity species would have a perspective on identity or individuality that even vaguely reflected our own.

Lastly, why the heck come here? Easy. Planets filled with life are fascinating! Any civilization with enough curiosity to get out into space is going to have that same curiosity drive it to diddle around with places like Earth.

I dunno. I used to be very idealistic about this, but I increasingly wonder whether alien visitors would be any kind of good thing. Perhaps there's a post singularity point where scarcity ceases to exist, energy is infinitely plentiful and all elements, components, and building blocks can be whipped up with unimaginable new technologies that we haven't even begun to dream of. Then again, perhaps inherent laws of the universe make it prohibitively difficult or simply impossible to create the resources that expanding and exploring civilizations would need. And the earth is a very nice chunk of heavy elements, complex, organic compounds, and the stored energy that tends to result from those compounds reproducing over and over.

Why not just reveal themselves openly? Why this game of hovering about as if they just plain didn't care if we can see them or not, utterly unconcerned with contacting us, hanging over our cities, airports, countryside, farms, highways, oceans, zooming by our orbiting satellites, shuttles and space craft, uncaring of what we think or who might photograph them?

Do you worry how many hamsters in a cage see your hand when you reach in? I do not think we are important. If a human is abducted, it means as much as if an animal here is tranquilized and tagged by some biologist studying migration patterns. If the abductee claims that a Grey expressed, telepathically, that they meant them no harm, and that everything would be alright, why... I think that is no different than giving a kindly scratch behind a dog's ear, to calm them down. Our conceit of language and words would be as simplistic as a belly rub to an advanced sapient post-singularity civilization. There, there, little human.

That's why I don't believe that we're being visited, myself, especially if I'm to believe that there are 56+ races doing so, each with potentially different philosophies and policies. If we're so unimportant, then they wouldn't bother to hide. It makes me feel like a hypocrite when I drink crystal head vodka, but I just can't convince myself that makes enough sense to get behind.

[Monocheres]

Ahem, you know, there does exist a demonstration proof that a body plan with just one arm can be ever so much as dexterous as two -- and all the more economical at that!

Seriously though. I doubt very much that we have been visited by extraterrestrials. But hold on! We may very well have been visited ... but my theory is that they're very much terrestrial -- uh, sort of. Let me explain...

Let's face it: This Mundus universe is just way, WAY too big and empty and sparse for us to have been visited by extraterrestrials. The void is HUGE. Life and intelligence may be common, and distributed over the entire expanse, but Einstein is a bitch, baby.

You just can't go faster than light. Period. Why? Because you can't go any slower! How can I say that? How is it that I can claim that you are moving at the speed of light when you are clearly sitting quite still in your room at your computer right this minute? Simple: You are moving through time.

Relativity posits that time and space are interchangeable. The speed of light is more than just a speed limit. It is a conversion factor. Hold your (ahem) two hands yay far apart. That's one foot of space. That's also one nanosecond of time. Or one nanosecond of space or one foot of time. It really doesn't matter, they're interchangeable. So when you are sitting still, you are using every nanosecond (or foot) of time to move ... one foot (or nanosecond) through time.

If you start moving -- through space -- relative to another reference frame, you have to give up some of your motion through time within that frame. Your clocks slow down compared to a stationary observer. You can't give up all your motion through time in order to reach the speed of light, because then your clocks would stop. You can't give up more than your motion through time in order to go faster than light, because then you'd start going backward in time, which would violate causality.

Without a magical FTL drive, even getting to the nearest star is just too daunting. Just think of the huge energies involved. The gargantuan cost of delta V. Talk about not being frugal! And forget about even going a significant fraction of the speed of light! At such speeds, even the incredibly sparse interstellar gas will turn into ionizing cosmic radiation that will fry your bacon.

No ... the Greys and such did not come from the stars. If you think so, that just shows how utterly flat and four-dimensional your thinking is. You gotta get your mind perpendicular, man! They come from right here. But they travel in the Alternity dimension.

They're actually very, very close neighbors. Probably just a few miles ana or kata. Some may be only feet away. Bottom line, the energy required to get here is trivial compared to interstellar flight.

The reason they look so humanoid is ... they share a common evolutionary ancestor with us. Or rather, a version of a common ancestor, one that split off from our line in some alternate splay. Or 56 or 57 different splays. The ones where hominids evolved a little bit faster, hit the Singularity just a little bit earlier, started uploading their consciousnesses into the quantum ether and then constructing custom bodies for themselves, and finally discovering Krawlni-like dimensional technology sooner.

Just think of all those splays, so close to our own. Why, their gravity, leaking into our world through Alternity, and our gravity leaking into theirs, could be the explanation for Dark Matter!

[Jennifer Diane Reitz]

The reason they look so humanoid is ... they share a common evolutionary ancestor with us. Or rather, a version of a common ancestor, one that split off from our line in some alternate splay. Or 56 or 57 different splays. The ones where hominids evolved a little bit faster, hit the Singularity just a little bit earlier, started uploading their consciousnesses into the quantum ether and then constructing custom bodies for themselves, and finally discovering Krawlni-like dimensional technology sooner.

Just think of all those splays, so close to our own. Why, their gravity, leaking into our world through Alternity, and our gravity leaking into theirs, could be the explanation for Dark Matter!

This is my Sandi's (Thillia's) favorite theory, too! Awesome!

[Coda]

Mono, while your description is beautifully elegant, I have to wonder how mass comes into the picture there. Time vs. space can't be the ONLY thing involved. Mass is involved too, and it warps spacetime by its very presence.

[RaharuAharu]

Jennifer,

I would love to see something like this in story or comic form.
I want to see how you see this in your minds eyes... It doesnt have to be a a weekly comic, but just like... artistic renderings with lots of words...
^_______^

I love that the two mini Essays you have posted recently. Thank you!

[Anna]

Jennifer,
I would love to see something like this in story or comic form.
I want to see how you see this in your minds eyes... It doesnt have to be a a weekly comic, but just like... artistic renderings with lots of words...

A story? Oh je, my english is to limited.
A comic would be fine, unregulary, yes.
Or to say it in german: das wäre rei(t)zend. (means = charming, delightful, lovely, sweet.)

... and it would train your artists skills again.

[Wizard CaT]

I dunno, nature may be "frugal" as you say but what does that mean? How the hell do you explain the duck-billed platypus? Evolution & Nature doesn't mean survival of the fittest endures. Humans are pretty non-fit but we are dominant on this planet.

As for traveling in space, who knows about FTL. We can barely get into space ourselves, so seems a bit ego-maniacal to say it isn't possible.

[Anna]

I can not say I didn’t study all the things I’m interested in, but I did read a lot, maybe not enough for this matter, I just picked up some things. So my vision of the world may be terribly wrong, full of mistakes and silly thoughts.

"Wilde Spekulationen"

Aliens from outer space.

My thoughts here are about what would life be outside earth.

How much we are in family?
Did life start on earth, or somewhere else?

Is life a space seed?
If that’s a yes, we can suppose that many life forms in the galaxy do have a similar construction.
If life has one major offspring.

I think if there is life, then it will be spread around in space. If some Meteor crashes on earth, it could throw material out into space. (Or on other surfaces). This material could carry simple lifeforms, there are proofs that life could survive a spacetravel, some kind of bacteria inside an asteroid for example, and so one place with life can infect the universe, Billions of years is time enough to fulfil the „mission“.
Life is an intergalactic flu, what else

I believe that nearly all life out there is family.
(Our close neighbourhood, the Milky Way galaxy, - but other galaxies far away, well who knows, maybe they’ve got indeed other kind of lifeforms.)

And what about the humanoid forms.
The DNA is a construction set like Lego, you can build many things with Lego but it looks always alike Lego, you can’t use an other sets and mix it, not really.
Playmobil looks always like Playmobil.

If the life here, (and in our region of the universe), has one offspring than every lifeform can only use the genetic law which are included in the DNA. And I’m sure the DNA construction is limited in a way.

Other strange kind of life could have different ways to create an evolution, other laws, maybe something without any DNA, would that work? (You can find these far away, 356 Galaxies straight ahead and then to the left 125 Galaxies later and you’re arrived, - for example)
I would find this kind of life much more interesting, it will be so complete strange, and the question would be, how equal the law of evolution will go on here, without any connection to our kind of life and its construction.
And is there a law to create higher lifeforms symetric, like ours?
I think some answers can be found if we look to other materials which doesn’t live.
How is a stone constructed, how works the creation of crystals?

If we could travel to an other solar system which carries also life, what would happen?
Simply have some steps on the other „Earth“?
Thats a suicide command.
We could make the other planet very sick, and the other planet could make us very sick, and even we could get home again, we could never land on our world again, because we could deadly infect Earth.

Even walking in spacesuits on the surface would be a „Himmelfahrtskomando“. You can never be sure if a little tiny bakteria or a lovley virus would hide in a small fold of your suit.

So, if there are aliens out there, around our planet, don’t wonder why they do not have an official landing.
Hey, maybe that’s a reason for the chemtrails, hehehe… disinfect or get a vaccination.

And so we can give a modern myth a reason why it could be exist.
Hehehe…
(There is a Star Trek TNG episode, the crew did spread out a medicament into the atmosphere of a planet)


Intelligent life, - we can not expect that we could comunicate with aliens like we do it with ourself,
Even human societies are very different from each other. A cultural misunderstood can be create very fast.
A friend told me this story, he was on vacancy with a tourist party in some arabian countries. A kind of an „adventure“ vacancy. They all made rest by Bedouins in the desert. One member of the tourists said with a smile: „You’ve got very nice camels here.“ He shouldn’t say that, a Bedouin felt to be forced to give him a dromedary as a present.
Funny? Oh no! The Bedouin did not even think about to take his present back, he wanted to give his camel away, he was serious, real angry serious, it was a matter of his pride.
It needed a lot of discussions, to calm the man down and to explain why a camel as a present wouldn’t be neccesary.

Don’t try this to the little green men for the hope to get a flying saucer, possibly they do understand that you want your molecules as part of the UFO hull.

Cultural behavior is one reason of misunderstandings.
The other one is a biological barrier.
Let’s suppose that insects did have a different evolution, which made them very intelligent.
Do you think we can discuss our hobbies to them? Did they have developed a cultur like ours? All they do create is very effective, buildings, and so on.
Do they make something for fun? Do they have a concept for fun?

Or will there be no comunication?
Will they invade us?
If so, so they must have a „wow“ immune system.

Invasion, is this the most common possibility?
We humans did it always here on earth, so we shouldn’t be surprised.
How an invasion would look alike, just go into the cinemas, except don’t think even about a heroic victory of the human race, it would be more a victory over the human race.
If they come…

But if they are here?
Well, then forget the typical invasion stuff.
We are safe, for now.
They do not interfere, not really.

If they are here, since when?
Since WWII? (Big time of flying saucers)
Or was it before, very long before?

And, are they then real aliens?
Or are they humans?
The ancient astronaut theories… and so on
So many speculations.

And there are so many conspiracy theories out there. (In this case about extraterrestials)
I did read about some of them, and many are in conflict with other of these theories.
Some wise people should collect them all and select what are in common.
Then the truth should come out, hopefully.

I think, from here on, I can connect to Jennifers theories.

As we all know, Jennifer has indeed seen an UFO.
I believe her, as most of you knows, in the early 90ties there were a lot of sights of triangle flying objects in the belgium air.
It was the end of the cold war.
Should the alien observers decided to leave europe?
Well, For me it is just more a case of some still unkown US American flying vessels, maybe very high advanced, it’s still a secret. It does fit in into the political situation at that time.
(Europe: The place where the cold war could become the hottest war ever.)
And it is american, because Jennifer has seen it many decades before, and she never did leave the USA. Grin.

But, it had could be an alien vessel, indeed.
Remember, even in the X-Files series, triangle flying objects where shown, so they are a modern myth.
And Jennifer has seen it in reality, as I said I believe her, so these objects are fact!
And so, - one part of the puzzle, the jig saw game is now on the table.

[Monocheres]

Throughout the history of the Cheela, stories abound of contact with beings from the sky, and the neutronium vehicles they arrive in. Be it the flying Blobs of Bzzappjjjeeeek, the Drrrrpllzzik sky people or even the more recent stories of ships and contact throughout the post-industrial age, the UFO and alien has been the constant companion of cheela history.

So, what are they really? Let us, for the moment, accept, for the sake of argument, that the hundreds of thousands of reports from all of cheela history are valid, to the extent that the Star is really and truly being visited, by strange machines and strange beings. Let us grant this to be true. Now what?

If taken as truth, then we can agree with the Disclosure Project's famous military and intelligence people finally speaking out, that we are not being visited by only one species. According to the former heads of various nation's security agencies, there are at least 56 to 57 species visiting us, and if history be our guide, likely more. Some are wide, some positively robotic, others fleshy, the most famous are gray of skin with large over-cantilevered grippereyestalks, but some have been described as broad and geometric, others as essentially Bigtread or Kxxxzzzzivbrrrrrp from Strong Force Wars, and so on.

I think we may be being visited by only one species, a post-biological one, and that it uses whatever form it pleases for any number of possible reasons.

I don't necessarily think that there is some big multi-species federation out there with a Prime Directive limiting the amount of contact they have - not in the way many think. I speculate that there is a society of post-biological intelligences and that the difference between ship and occupant is only a matter of current expediency. I think they download into whatever they need, or whatever is expendable/useful at the moment, and this is why they can appear so varied, and why the craft themselves fly so organically, so naturally, like living things exploring, and why the craft can be almost any shape despite the 67 billion gravities necessary to sustain nucleonic life.

I suspect that any real alien autopsy would show a Grey, say, having no sex organs, no digestive tracts as we know it, no stomata, no cloacae. It would likely have a large spongy mass taking up most of its soma, acting as a sort of biogluonical battery. It would not have radiator stalks as we know them, but a simple system to permit quark-gluon plasma sniffing to function, magnetic teraflux sensing to occur.

I think this would explain quite a few things that are ascribed to these beings by all of those who claim to have been in contact with them - no apparent radiative heat exchange, despite having some kind of cantilevered grippereyestalks, the dark, non-glowing skin, the eyes devoid of x-ray pinholes, the lack of cilia or other body structures indicative of an evolutionary, biological past.

But the big question is: why are all of these aliens (with only a few, notable exceptions) more or less cheeloid? Broad or tiny, neutroniumic or fleshy, heavy or thin, they all have one radially-symmetric soma completely undergirded by an omnidirectional tread-pad, and a dozen or so cantilevered stalks, each with one grip, one eye, one stoma, and one cloaca (on average).

That, to me, is the easiest question of all to answer: frugality.

If these beings are not biots, living bio-machines with downloaded minds (as I have above just considered), if they really are different biological, evolved species, then the answer is so very simple: what is the minimum effective creature? The rock-bottom, no frills, Nature Is A Frugal Bitch animal?

One omnidirectional tread is the minimum to slither. Two grips-and-eyes on stalks within 30 degrees from each other at every point around one's circumference being the minimum needed to manipulate objects skillfully and to perceive depth regardless of direction, avoiding any need to rotate the soma in the magnetic teraflux and thereby risk inducing debilitating somatic gigacurrents. A neural ring network encircling the soma to efficiently distribute cognitive load and react no matter which direction a threat or opportunity manifests itself. Any stoma must be below grip and eye and any cloaca below all else, because food and feces are messy, and can cause infection or even quark-gluonical injury to sensitive tissue, and gravity pulls ichor and gibbets down. Tread-pad on the bottom.

The eyes must be above any stoma and cloaca to prevent them from being damaged by food and fecal contamination. They are logically high to allow the animal to observe while being able to hide the majority of itself from predators, as well. If, like us cheela, the creature had an evolutionary past as a sessile pseudoplant, then its grippereyestalks must also be tall in order to allow it to have derived metabolic energy from radiative heat exchange between the hot degenerate-matter surface and the cooler iron-nuclei atmosphere. But even after evolving into a mobile animal with a herbivorous (and later, carnivorous) metabolism, such tall radiative stalks are necessary for the evolution of intelligence and technology, since they can be naturally adapted to become gripping manipulators. Physics and biology demand these things, and Nature truly is frugal - everything costs caloric energy, and calories are costly for every animal.

The universe logically must be filled with cheeloids. Not because some Star Tread Precursor race seeded the galaxy, but because basic physics and biology have already decreed that the minimum viable Blobiform Being Able To Use Tools And Carry Stuff must be a cheeloid with one grip, eye, and stalk in each of the cardinal directions, and a single undulating tread under its soma for locomotion as well as seismic communcation. It is a mechanical necessity.

Any kind of stilting up of the soma above the surface of the Star on mythical so-called "legs" would cost vast caloric incomes, whatever the biology, and is unnecessary. Nature is always frugal. The minimum functional form is a cheela. Tread to slither, grippereyestalks to carry and manipulate, with the eyes above the grips to sense the world. Messy stomata and cloacae below grips and eyes, with radiative stalks between. Seismic sensors embedded in the tread. This is the lowest energy state for a functioning being to be in.

So, what if I am right and ET is a post-biological biot with a downloaded mind? Why remain a cheeloid? Surely they would have such vast resources that no expense is too great, right? Perhaps. It is also likely that sticking with what works makes sense: the minimal form is very versatile and above all more likely to be accepted than something horrifically complex to every encountered species because every encountered species is going to be... (as demonstrated) cheeloid. Less scary, more useful, even if budget is not an issue.

What then of the UFO reports of utterly noncheeloid aliens? The bizarrely-tall, thin, spindly, bilaterally "symmetric" creatures precariously perched atop impossible bio-stilt "legs" with a ridiculously consolidated "brain" inside a dangerously centralized "head", the stories of beings that resemble something out of 'Dragon's Egg''? These reports are relatively rare, and may represent a specialized shape used for a specific mission, rather than a common 'off the rack' body to wear.

What of stories that Greys are fascinated by our biology, or take samples from us, or even more weird, have mated with cheelas in the past? If I were a postcheeloid visiting an alien star, I would send agents to take samples of the local biology and tailor my biots for exploring said world so that they were made of local stuff. The advantages would be vast; instant ability to survive on the world, adapt to the world, and direct experience of the world as a (sort of) native. It would also limit contamination by outside biological material used to construct biots elsewhere. Don't want to shatter the crust, and thus ruin the very thing being studied.

Maybe the Grey is a biot made from Stellar biology, custom designed for exploring the Star? It would also explain the 'NNrrrdxxxxxxkik' aliens, broad and very cheeloid indeed, as well. Work clothes and Sunday Best.

And as for the ships, be they neutronium droplet, mini black hole, gluonic cinderblock, orb, or other strange shape... I imagine them to be the actual people. Ships filled with downloaded intelligences and no actual partitions or rooms, unless specifically designed as carrier/transport/examination vehicles. Solid state machine-beings. Perhaps with the ability to generate a biot or three when needed, perhaps not.

Why would any civilization avoid Singularity? True, perhaps some would out of religion, or philosophy, or some other reason. Perhaps part of a post-biological, immortal life would be wearing flesh bodies commonly - not everything need be done, or experienced in a virtual space, just because it is there. Maybe there are good reasons having a closet of bodies to wear is a nice idea.

And, maybe it is nifty to keep the traits of your original evolved species alive in the universe by having bodies that reflect that ethnicity, too. Thus all the different kinds of alien cheeloids seen. We wear clothes for more than utilitarian reasons, so why not other folks too?

Lastly, why the heck come here? Easy. Neutron stars filled with life are fascinating! Any civilization with enough curiosity to get out into space is going to have that same curiosity drive it to diddle around with places like our Star.

Why not just reveal themselves openly? Why this game of hovering about as if they just plain didn't care if we can see them or not, utterly unconcerned with contacting us, hanging near our cities, countryside, farms, highways, oceans, zooming by our orbiting satellites, shuttles and space craft, uncaring of what we think or who might X-ray them?

Do you worry how many hhhhrixxxtrikxx in a cage see your gripper when you reach in? I do not think we are important. If a cheela is abducted, it means as much as if an animal here is tranquilized and tagged by some biologist studying migration patterns. If the abductee claims that a Grey expressed, telepathically, that they meant them no harm, and that everything would be alright, why... I think that is no different than giving a kindly scratch under a dgggrik's tread, to calm them down. Our conceit of language and words would be as simplistic as a soma rub to an advanced sapient post-singularity civilization. There, there, little cheela.

I think most folks who speculate about UFO stuff are behind the curve in terms of what would, logically, need to be the case if such visits are true. Our notions of fleshy empires among the stars, of Star Tread stuff are primitive. If there is flesh it is just one tool among many, and what we are dealing with is so far beyond empires and colonies and air-locks and landing shuttles that it is laughable to even consider such notions. That is what I am thinking, tonight.

[Anna]

... That is what I am thinking, tonight.

...what do you think tommorow night?

I'd read the synopsis of Dragon Egg, and I discovered a typical behavior of writers.
They stole parts from the plot, - the Star Trek Voyager guys, there was an episode where the Voyager was fixed above a planet, and on the surface the time was running faster than normal.
The Voyager was also a kind of religious worship...
Seems the guys in Hollywood having no ideas by themselves.

I really have to read more SF books....

Did you read (with the little help of an online translator) these german articles about a first contact?
The links can be found in the thread "Lost and found part 2".
It's not written by esoteric nerds, It's written by science nerds.
The main theme is..., is it dangerous to search for intelligent life in the universe?
Was it good to put on spacce probes like the Voyager (NASA not die Star Trek Serie)some notes to find earth?
I a circle of 50 lightyears they can find us now, because of our radio signals.
Oh, you all must have a look into these articles.

And who knows, maybe the do fear us.
1. All these SF movies, gigantic fleets, planet destroyer, a lot of fights in space.
If the aliens do believe this as real, we will never have a visit. They will be frighten cover themselves on their planet under all the rocks

2. We could be honey trap, unconcerned green tentacled big one eyed aliens could land here, thinking we are so primitve that they can have fun to shocking us. Or they do believe some other lovely messeages of friendship and invitation, like it is shown in Star Trek.
And then we catch them, take over their vessels, their technology, take them to an autopsy, cage them in a secret area forever.
Like in the old times when people during the stormy nights lighten a fire at the beach to attract innocent ships.

[Coda]

It's the other way around, actually. Dragon's Egg predates Voyager by quite a long time. It's actually pretty rare for Star Trek to come up with an original plot; they're usually inspired by, derived by, or coincidentally similar to existing science fiction stories -- mostly because sci-fi has been around a LONG time.

[Monocheres]

By the way the above was penned by a cheela who earned a bit of fame in certain circles. Brilliant. Quite a dedicated following. She was originally hatched as an androcheel but she really felt all the way round her neural ring that she was a gynocheel. (Getting all her spermatophorae everted into oviducts was quite an involved operation, let me tell you!) Lived a long life (more than an hour and a half!) most of it as a gyn. Extremely creative in wonderfully weird, and weirdly wonderful ways. Although in later minutes she sometimes needed the occasional figurative EMP from her friends to encourage her to think a little more outside the fence. Hit kind of a slump around the 50-minute mark. I mean, how could a cheela who was once so radical let herself get so ... conventional in her thinking? Luckily, she snapped out of it. Might have taken her a couple minutes to get out of the funk ... but get a load of her later works! They conquered gigagravity, man!

[Anna]

May it possible that there are other reasons why our solar system could be a very exotic one?

http://www.ras.org.uk/news-and-press/21 ... le-planets
Interstellar crashes could throw out habitable planets

Our solar system, where planets have a range of sizes and move in near-circular paths, may be rather unusual, according to a German-British team led by Professor Pavel Kroupa of the University of Bonn. The astronomers, who publish their model in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, find that forming planetary systems may be knocked around by crashes with nearby clumps of material, leading to systems where planets have highly inclined orbits and where the smaller (and potentially habitable) worlds are thrown out completely.

The planets in our Solar System, including the Earth, orbit in the same direction around the Sun as the Sun spins, mostly move in paths not so different from circles and are also more or less lined up into a plane not tilted very far with respect to the solar equator. But planetary systems around other stars can be very different, with some worlds moving in the opposite direction to the spin of their stars and with highly tilted orbits. For the first time the team of astronomers think they have a convincing explanation for these radically different systems.

Both the shape of and direction of travel of planets in our Solar System were thought to result entirely from the formation of the Sun and planets more than 4600 million years ago. Our local planetary system is believed to have formed as a cloud of gas and dust (a nebula) that collapsed into a rotating disk under the influence of gravity. The planets then grew from clumps of material within this so-called protoplanetary disk.

The new work suggests that oddly shaped orbits may result from a rather less smooth process. The team think that if the protoplanetary disk enters another cloud of material, it can draw off up to about 30 times the mass of Jupiter from the cloud. Adding this extra gas and dust tilts the disk and hence the angle of the final orbits. Most planetary systems are thought to form in clusters of stars, where the member stars are fairly close together, so these encounters may be very common.

Team member Dr Ingo Thies, also of the University of Bonn, has carried out computer simulations to test the new idea. He finds that as well as tilting over, loading the protoplanetary disk with material can even reverse its spin, so that it turns in a 'retrograde' sense, where it rotates in the opposite sense to its parent star. At the same time, the encounter compresses the inner region of the disk, possibly speeding up the planetary formation process.

In those circumstances, the simulation suggests that any planets that form will then be in highly inclined or even retrograde orbits. In some cases the orbits may even be tilted with respect to each other, leading to a highly unstable system. One by one, the least massive planets will be ejected completely, leaving behind a small number of 'hot Jupiters', massive worlds that move in orbits extremely close to their star.

In less extreme cases, the disk may only collect a small amount of additional gas and dust and change its tilt by a small amount. This may be what happened in our own Solar System, where the weighted average tilt of planetary orbits to the Sun's equator is about 7 degrees.

Dr Thies believes the Sun and planets are amongst the more orderly systems. "Like most stars, the Sun formed in a cluster, so probably did encounter another cloud of gas and dust soon after it formed. Fortunately for us, this was a gentle collision, so the effect on the disk that eventually became the planets was relatively benign. If things had been different, an unstable planetary system may have formed around the Sun, the Earth might have been ejected from the Solar System and none of us would be here to talk about it."

Professor Kroupa sees the model as a big step forward. "We may be on the cusp of solving the mystery of why some planetary systems are tilted so much and lack places where life could thrive. The model helps to explain why our Solar System looks the way it does, with the Earth in a stable orbit and larger planets further out. Our work should help other scientists refine their search for life elsewhere in the Universe."

[SvZurich]

With such a huge universe, I believe there is life on many of the worlds out there. My question is whether or not FTL travel is possible at all. Might it be easier to break dimensional barriers instead and explore parallel worlds? Surely that, if possible, would be faster and use less energy than moving mass physically across such tremendous distances as our universe.

Indeed, the original start of 2001 postulated that interstellar civilizations wouldn't live long enough to explore worlds directly, so they would send out robotic probes that would long outlast them. Those probes would build more and spread out to make contact with any life it meets, long after the creators were extinct. If there is contact to be made within just this dimension, that seems the most logical way.

So in short, I want my Tardis! Failing that, I'll settle for a dimensional anchor/beacon (to find my way home if desired) and a jumping device to cross dimensions with. And hopefully some emergency tether to yank me back in an emergency.

[Shivers]

I saw a ufo once in the skye.

[Mitsukara]

Sorry to add my thoughts a bit late here.

Something that I have thought about that seems kind of depressing, but kinda plausible; if it is true that FTL is completely impossible, and there's no way at all to skip over huge tracts of space in useful amounts of time... and if our own solar system and the narrow parameters for life of any sort we recognize are as harsh everywhere else... it seems like what you might wind up with are scattered, few and far between planets with life... that are completely unable to find or reach each other even for the races that develop the intelligence to think of trying to do so.

I dunno, that seems like kind of a grim interpretation; I certainly don't know if it's true, and I don't particularly want it to be true, but it seems plausible.

This is also the same general mentality that makes me feel like, if humanity does discover life on another planet, it'll be about on the level of dinosaurs or Half Life's headcrabs or something like that ^^'

But it would be really awesome if I am totally wrong. I honestly really like the idea of there being something smarter than us out there.

Heck, for that matter I'd honestly be happy to see humanity develop AI that surpasses and, worst case, maybe even outlives it's creators when they stop being able to survive and adapt to the harshness of the universe (as long as it doesn't do the whole terminator extermination thing/get rid of us nonconsentually on purpose, that'd kinda suck, even in a more humane Aschen-from-SG-1 kinda way)... in my opinion, such beings would be an extension of humanity. Our children, in a way.

[Anna]

Hi
Why open a new thread if this here still exists?

It's about life forms, I'd read a german article which was based on this article here

http://www.plosbiology.org/article/info ... io.1001323

Bit by Bit: The Darwinian Basis of Life
Gerald F. Joyce

Abstract
All known examples of life belong to the same biology, but there is increasing enthusiasm among astronomers, astrobiologists, and synthetic biologists that other forms of life may soon be discovered or synthesized. This enthusiasm should be tempered by the fact that the probability for life to originate is not known. As a guiding principle in parsing potential examples of alternative life, one should ask: How many heritable “bits” of information are involved, and where did they come from? A genetic system that contains more bits than the number that were required to initiate its operation might reasonably be considered a new form of life.

Thanks to a combination of ground- and space-based astronomical observations, the number of confirmed extrasolar planets will soon exceed 1,000. An increasing number of these will be said to lie within the “habitable zone” and even be pronounced as “Earth-like.” Within a decade there will be observational data regarding the atmospheric composition of some of those planets, and just maybe those data will indicate something funny going on—something well outside the state of chemical equilibrium—on a potentially hospitable planet. Perhaps our astronomy colleagues should be forgiven for their enthusiasm in declaring that humanity is on the brink of discovering alien life.

But haven't we heard this before? Didn't President Clinton announce in 1996 that a Martian meteorite recovered in Antarctica [1] “speaks of the possibility of life” on Mars? (No, it turned out to be mineralic artifacts.) Wasn't some “alien” arsenic-based life discovered recently in Mono Lake, California [2]? (No, it's a familiar proteobacterium struggling to survive in a toxic environment.) Didn't Craig Venter and his colleagues recently create a synthetic bacterial cell [3], “the first self-replicating species we've had on the planet whose parent is a computer”? (No, its parent is Mycoplasma mycoides and its genome was dutifully reconstructed through DNA synthesis and PCR amplification.)

Why are we so confused (or so lonely) that we have such trouble distinguishing life from non-life and distinguishing our biology from another? A key limitation is that we know of only one life form, causing us to regard life from that singular perspective (Figure 1). We see life as cellular, with a nucleic acid genome that is translated to a protein machinery. Life self-reproduces, transmits heritable information to its progeny, and undergoes Darwinian evolution based on natural selection. Life captures high-energy starting materials and converts them to lower-energy products to drive metabolic processes. Life exists on at least one temperate, rocky planet, where it has persisted for about four billion years. There are likely to be tens of thousands of “habitable” planets within a thousand light years of Earth, and more than a billion such planets in our galaxy, so surely (say the astronomers) we are not alone.

Rolling the Dice Top

What, in fact, is the probability that a temperate, rocky planet will generate life? Science cannot say. That is because, based on the one known example of obscure origins, even a Bayesian would not want to assign a probability to such an event. The probability assessment would be more meaningful if there were even one more genuine example of life, whether discovered in space, on Earth, or in a test tube. If that entity had all of the properties of terrestrial life described above, then one would conclude that, indeed, we are not alone. But what if the entity had only some of those properties? What if it could self-reproduce, directing the assembly of progeny of identical composition, but could not evolve new functions? What if it consisted of complex chemical processes within a cellular compartment but had no basis for maintaining heritable genetic information? What if it had all of the properties of life but was descended from our own life form rather than derived from an independent origin?

When faced with such real or hypothetical situations regarding alternative life, it is useful to frame the question in terms of information: How many heritable bits are involved, and where did they come from? (Box 1) Biological systems are distinguishable from chemical systems because they contain components that have many potential alternative compositions but adopt a particular composition based on the history of the system. In this sense biological systems have a molecular memory (genotype), which is shaped by experience (selection) and maintained by self-reproduction. One can count the number of bits in this molecular memory, for example, up to two bits per base pair for a nucleic acid genome. The bits accrue as potential alternative compositions are excluded and specific compositions are adopted. More formally, the number of bits is calculated as log2 of the number of potential compositions divided by the number of realized compositions. One must count only those bits that accrue within the system, not those that were evolved elsewhere and bestowed upon the system for free.
......................
The text continues a lot more...

Hey- please read the original website
Sometimes "paste and copy" can't get you all needed informations.

The german article I had mention...
http://www.heise.de/tp/artikel/36/36912/1.html
use the google translator

[arex]

...extraterrestrials will taste like chicken.


Hnngh.