Biological Modifications? Diversity?

[LadyJawz]

In the world of Biology, it seems now days nothing is sacred. Just recently I read about a mouse who was created and can tweet like a bird, among other mice that these Japanese scientists created(each with its own distinct "mutation") and for nearly two minutes data was stored in a atomic nuclei, a beetle shell was discovered that refracts light that might help in Quantum computing, and then theres that arsenic loving bacteria which wasn't to amazing(to me at least)by itself but defiantly a worthy discovery.

When I think about how far the world has advanced since well as far back as I can remember this has always fascinated me, what other kinds of life forms do you think exist? Perhaps in a nearby solar system or at the edge of the universe. We already know life can be diverse, but as far as we can tell "life as we know it" may or may not exist elsewhere. Is Terra just a accident? maybe a mistake? or is there life out there? if so what kinds of modifications might similar species to the ones on planet Earth that are elsewhere have developed? How much diversity can life obtain from the very small to the very large? What would trigger certain things to happen as compared to earth somewhere else in the universe?

Is it so hard to imagine that possibly, some 3.8billion lightyears from us there may be a binary star system with a habitable planet? So what are your views on extraterrestrial life, exo planets that may be habitable, the Geography they might have or the physical effects of the 4 fundamental forces on the biological lifeforms on said planet? and how would life adapt to meet such requirements? What kind of defense mechanisms these creatures might have, Why "this" works and "that" doesn't. Please be creative with your ideas and explain why or how said traits and abilities might be/have occurred.

To start this off, I have a fairly open view of this kind of thing. Although its not beyond my imagination to think of animals that is a land animal but has chlorophyll in its skin allowing it if needed run plant chemical processes for extra needed energy, also a green pigment would help in camouflage.

[trillobyite]

I think 3.8 billion light years is a high estimate honestly. Even 30 light years away astronomers have found a planet that could support life.

The truth is that our minds might not even be able to comprehend the nature of alien life. On one hand, it's possible that life on another planet would develop similar to ours; evolution, survival of the fittest, and the emergence of self-awareness and advanced communication could lead to civilization. On a terrestrial planet under similar temperatures and physical forces, the resulting advanced life might even look humanoid.

On the other hand, the conditions on a planet might be such that certain things so integral to the human experience, such as emotions, might be meaningless to alien life. The senses that they use could involve things we can't even envision, which all our technology fails to notice because we have never conceptualized it. It's like trying to imagine another color other than the ones you already know. We just can't do it. Our imaginations only go so far. I think it's fascinating how many unfathomable possibilities there are.

Even just thinking about plant and animal life, those two kingdoms of biology have entirely different morphologies, chemical processes, and so on. It's not impossible to envision our world with only plants and microbes, and strong enough physical forces to disperse seeds so animals are not necessary. But on our world animals and plants have beautifully co-evolved. It's possible that on another planet there could be multiple intelligent species derived from different ancestors at different points.

[ScylaX]

Our Earth is a simple variation of life system from the infinite schemes that our universe is capable to emulate. Sure science would help us to understand how alien life form works (well, it's still in our dimension so I guess it's possible to comprehend how they live, they), if they have an intelligence, it would be really really interesting to see every aspect of their planet, organization (if they have one), evolution, scientific discovering, etc...

Just like trillobyite said, no human can imagine such a thing and being scientifically correct at the same time, because alien life form development would be WAY different from how we evolved, that means they'd lay on a system that is perfectly unknown to us, and of course you can't imagine something you don't know.
Of course, we couldn't in any way habit a planet where another particular life form is possible, and vice-versa.

Thinking about it, I realize that encountering an extraterrestial being that isn't bacteria or microbe (basically any primary life form) is barely realistic.

[Reincarnate]

First, watch this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=17jymDn0W6U

Then look at this: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...Comparison.jpg

"Hubble Ultra Deep Field image of a region of the observable universe (equivalent sky area size shown in bottom left corner), near the constellation Fornax. Each spot is a galaxy, consisting of billions of stars. The light from the smallest, most redshifted galaxies is thought to have originated roughly 13 billion years ago according to the standard model of cosmology."



Even though our cosmic horizon is 13.7 billion lightyears away, we don't know how big our cosmic ocean is. It's like being a ship at sea -- you have a horizon, but the ocean is far, far greater. Our universe takes this to retardedly huge scales. Even in our own observable universe, there are countless galaxies, stars, and planets -- endless permutations of systems. All we've done is dip a glass into the ocean, look at the water we've scooped up, and concluded that we haven't found any fish yet.

And even with modern-day theories of cosmic inflation, it suggests that the unobservable universe may be at least 10^(10^30) times larger than the observable universe/cosmic horizon.

It'd be statistically laughable and unbearably egocentric to think that we're the only life forms out there when we have this kind of data staring us down -- it's practically without question. However, we're a pretty complex life form -- an intelligent life form. Intelligent life took us a few billion years to evolve, but single-celled life didn't take long at all once the Earth was formed. Simple life is probably very common throughout the cosmos, and it's likely that we don't have to look much further than our own Milky Way galaxy, let alone other galaxies.

The nearest galaxy to us is Andromeda, and it's something like 2 million light years away. Even if you were able to travel at 99% the speed of light, it would take you over 280,000 years to get there and then another 280,000 to get back (even after this, 4 million years would have passed on Earth). Even if life among other galaxies is incredibly common, it's simply so far away. However, the outside of our Milky Way galaxy is something like 100,000 lightyears away, so we're much better off sticking to our own galaxy. However, even our own galaxy is so insanely huge that it'd *still* take us forever to find anyone.

Not only that, but intelligent life may not last long if it's ultimately self-annihilating.

What really gets me going, though, is that thought that intelligent life existed long ago that was far more advanced than we are today. After the early star generations started birthing forth carbon, we could have possibly started to see intelligent civilizations evolve as early as a few billion years after the Big Bang -- and this would have occurred a handful of billions of years before our present day.

[ScylaX]

Well, we aren't originally made to know everything and travel ridiculous trajectories so there will always be things human couldn't find or handle.