Alien Physics

Why do we identify Aliens with ourself? I mean, we all think it's white or green
and about a metre of so high, with regular hands with 3 fingers on it, feet they
walk on, big black eyes and a michael jackson like nose. Why do we think Aliens
look like this? They just might look like a pool of # or like a Lion or Tiger. It
might just be a rock from a meteor or maybe an Alien is liquid with no particular form.

I'd say because humanoid forms are far less threatening than, say, a six footed behemoth as big as a house.

So you say, that we make ourselves believe Aliens aren't a big issue just because we would be afraid elseways?

Aliens in general are based on human bias.

For example, we talk about alience comming from planets... when there is far more space, nebula, gas, plasma, and other bodies out there. The truth is, if there are other intelligences out there, they probably are so drasticly unlike us, we wouldn't even know them when we saw them.

Imagine a nebula 10 light years across, fluxing with plasma and electricity... it could be a living, thinking creature, and we'd never see anything more than a cloud of gas with lightning in it.

Well, personally I'm going with witness accounts...

I've never seen an alien.
There are no proven authentic photos of an alien.

Therefore, all we have to go on regarding their appearance is eyewitness testimony. The majority of such testimony is usually of one or two types, "Greys" or "Nordics". Now, in addition to this, people have reported everything from fuzzballs, robots, Bigfoot, etc. coming out of UFOs, but they are pretty few and far between....

In addition, we then have to factor in the credibility of the witnesses, to further weed down to fairly good solid cases, to then see what's actually being witnessed.

If people were reporting big purple blobs with pink wings, then our idea of aliens would be big purple blobs with pink wings... Of course, skeptics will argue with psycho-babble mumbo jumbo and media influence, etc., and this is likely a factor in some cases. Still, I'd really like to believe that the witnesses are honestly describing what they saw.

We certainly can't argue against bipedal being a successful form on our planet....

Originally posted by Xar Ke Zeth
I'd say because humanoid forms are far less threatening than, say, a six footed behemoth as big as a house.

i would'nt say that, if this post is referring to aliens in popular culture then in movies etc
i think its because characters would have a hard time connecting to a fearsome alien than a six footed behemoth as big as a house.

I'm a bit curious, how does physics fit in with the topic, since the threads titled "Alien physics" I thought it was something else completely.


But yeah, the reason that we imagine greys when we hear aliens, is because, like Gazrok said one of the most reported species by so caled abductees, and the first real (as in reported and has a high chance of being true) was the Hill case, in which the aliens they came in contact with looked like grey aliens.


I personaly think alien life will sometimes be resemblatory to us, and other times be so, well, alien we wont be able to comprehend it, and possibly not even recognise it as life.

The reason why we see humanoid aliens in alot of Movies and TV shows is simple. Because its cheaper , You put a human in a costume or some fake ears and forehead whatever is so much cheaper then CGI.

As for eye witness accounts of aliens. There have been some reported aliens that are much more Alien then the Greys. Praying Mantisl like, Reptile like ones etc... Even the Chupacabra some claim is a alien and its description is like no known animal on earth.

But still people try to described it along lines of animals we know. Like saying it had legs like a Kangaroo for example or quills like a porcupine. People try to explain it by comparing it to things other people know. So a "Praying Mantisl like" alien might have in its genes related to a insect but thats just how a human would describ it.

Originally posted by Leon Bokhove
They just might look like a pool of # or like a Lion or Tiger.

That reminded me of this:


I guess we associate Aliens to our form because the humanoid form is the most efficient. There's a lot of things about the human body which could be updated and advanced upon but the general form is a good working model.

When you see movies like Alien etc, you do have to ask youself how a species like that could engineer things with such an arkward body.

I think the human form is the basic model for what is natures most logical design, after all, human form is based on the Divine proportions and harmony seems to be one of the keys to the Universe.

Originally posted by TheShroudOfMemphis

I think the human form is the basic model for what is natures most logical design, after all, human form is based on the Divine proportions and harmony seems to be one of the keys to the Universe.

I thought you were talking about J-Lo for a second!



Nature is full of examples of similar themes and repeating patterns.

For example Galaxies , Solar systems , and Atoms all organize in similar fashion.

Any technological civilization that would be able to visit Earth would likely have recognizable features, because to build machines they would need some form of hand to manipulate tools. Walking upright frees limbs up for manipulation of tools also. Having both eye's in front of your face allows you to judge distance and see what you are doing with tools ect.

We also know that a technological civilization has to develop on a planet , and that fact would mean that both us and them would have developed under similar evolutionary circumstances in general.

I'd be very surprised if a visiting Alien looked exactly like us, but I'd also be surprised if we couldn't recognize similarities between them and us.



[edit on 10-9-2005 by lost_shaman]

bipedal aliens are purley a figment of human imagination. as was stated before, a lifeform from the outer reaches would most likley take the form of a liquid, gas or solid. us humans are just wishful thinkers that have to many hours invested in television.

all the ppl that have become abduction describe them like white or gray
and about a metre of so high, with regular hands with 3 fingers on it, feet they
walk on, big black eyes and a michael jackson like nose

Originally posted by PKD
bipedal aliens are purley a figment of human imagination. as was stated before, a lifeform from the outer reaches would most likley take the form of a liquid, gas or solid. us humans are just wishful thinkers that have to many hours invested in television.

There is no evidence to back up a statement like that. There is as much chance that a alien could be a humanoid in shape as a pile liquid. We have no concrete evidence of any alien life so A humanoid alien has as much evidence backing it up as any other design which is none.

Infact scientist are starting to get behind the ideal that life on earth might have came from eles where in the univerese. They happened to find Organic compounds in a comet with the Deep impact probe.

There might be a good chance the reason life appeared on earth seemingly over because thats just what happened. That life on earth was seeded by a comet impact.

So really all life on earth my be very close some alien life because it might be a direct decendant of alien life.

Does this mean, that if another big meteor will manage to hit the earth again,
all current civilization will be gone and it starts over? That's kind of a simular story!

Don't know who said that in one breath. Seems to me abductees had basically the same sort of horrific description to mark some alien faces they had seen.

I believe the Wienners (twins) -- "Alaghasi Incident", under Ray Fowler's research might be the most important abductee dilemas that has ever been documented. Any researcher who knows or is aware of Ray Fowler knows he's dedicated to meticulous fact accumulation.

An amazing situation in my opinion.

Dallas

Originally posted by Leon Bokhove
Does this mean, that if another big meteor will manage to hit the earth again,
all current civilization will be gone and it starts over? That's kind of a simular story!

Its only a matter of when not if. The earth has been hit many times by huge asteroids. The Impact know as the ''Great Dying'' 250 million years ago was one of the worst I can remember off hand. Roughly 9 in 10 marine species and 7 in 10 land species died pretty much over night.

I recently saw a show that recreated a impact on that scale a 300 Kilometer asteroid I think which earth has been hit by before. The destruction was unimaginable Every ocean on the planet evaporated even the salt in the oceans evaporated. It was a pacific ocean strike and the whole of Japan and much of asia's coast were just wiped from the earth.

It had the effect of sterilizing the entire surface of earth of life. Though some underground simple life managed to live. Scary stuff that will happen again sooner or later. I just hope its not for another 60 million years or so.

Like a few of the posters above, I'm of the mindset that most people think of aliens as humanoid because that's not only what witnesses have stated, but also because that's the easiest thing we can relate to. For many people, it's difficult to let the imagination take over--we actually get taught that it's a bad thing to be too creative like that.

Not to knock the posters who mentioned this, but I don't think that the human body is necessarily the most efficient; I personally haven't seen any examples to the contrary, but I'm sure whatever designed us (even if it's random chance) could create something much better as well.

Albeit far on the reaches of imagination, there are other possibilities to being able to engineer complex machines than through a humanoid form. There may be some species that uses telekinesis, thereby freeing them from needing to walk upright. There may be an advanced insect race that builds vast cities and ships using only their jaws.

Frankly, I'd be more surprised to find a race that is closer to humans in appearance than one that is more insectoid. Our arrogance as a species leads us to forget that there's not only many more insects on this planet, but that they've been around much longer than just about any other type of animal. By some perspectives, they may even be viewed as more intelligent--bugs very rarely seem to have race riots, or wars because of different religions. That's a different topic altogether though...

Originally posted by MCory1
By some perspectives, they may even be viewed as more intelligent--bugs very rarely seem to have race riots, or wars because of different religions. That's a different topic altogether though...

You dont know ants that well do you? Some of the most prolific insects on the planet. Infact if you put all the humans on a scale and all the ants on the other side it would be a equal weight.

But anyway Ants are very violent creatures they have wars all the time. Race riots hmm try putting some black and red ants together. Some ants even raid the nests of other ants and steal their babies to turn into slaves, the "slave maker ants.

To quote some famous myrmecologists

"The foreign policy aim of ants can be summed up as follows: restless aggression, territorial conquest, and genocidal annihilation of neighboring colonies whenever possible. If ants had nuclear weapons, they would probably end the world in a week."

Bert Holldobler and Edward O Wilson, Journey to the Ants

Nature aint so nice and sweet as people make it out to be sometimes

[edit on 14-9-2005 by ShadowXIX]

Originally posted by ShadowXIX
But anyway Ants are very violent creatures they have wars all the time. Race riots hmm try putting some black and red ants together. Some ants even raid the nests of other ants and steal their babies to turn into slaves, the "slave maker ants.
[edit on 14-9-2005 by ShadowXIX]

Actually, I did know about that, just forgot about it while I was posting. I guess it seems more innocent? I don't know how to explain it, maybe just cynical about human nature in some respects. But I do know that I've never heard an ant claim to be "civilized" as it joined its colony on a rampage. Maybe the brutal honesty gives them a bit higher esteem. If you see ants on the "warpath", you know they're not going to try and make it seem like a police action or peace-keeping mission.

You have to admire their ablity to live in such a perfect communism though. They greater good of the colony taken to extreme. While human societies send their young men to war, weaver-ant societies send their old ladies. All for the greater good of the whole. The old females are the least important to the colony so they are on the front lines.

It seems to work much better for ants then humans though. Karl Marx had the right idea but wrong species


About the human design I have to agree with you. With the exception of the human brain and human hand its not a very impressive design. Insect designs are just so much more superior to the humanoid design.