Complex Numbers

Life

To follow up my last "there are probably no spacefaring aliens" post, here's some speculation about what extraterrestrial life might look like.

http://www.cracked.com/article_26213_4-awesome-theories-about-what-real-aliens-w...

It's Cracked, so this is more about amusement - and if you're cynical, clickbait - than science. But there's still some interesting stuff.

And if we ever do run into something along the lines of what's been dubbed the "Octomite," we'll have to make sure we don't show them all of our television shows, in which our noble heroes immediately destroy anything that looks remotely like that.

Too late. One line of reasoning speculates that we haven't met aliens because they know damn well we're xenophobic. Hell, they probably are, too. It's kind of a byproduct of natural selection.

Humanity, along with all other life on Earth, is carbon-based. Carbon is great at bonding and forming long molecular chains, and it's often been assumed that carbon is a requirement for metabolism and other important functions that make life work. But "carbon chauvinism" has been disputed more and more over the years, which we're sure has led to some sarcastic comments about Silicon Justice Warriors.

Yeah, look, what's methane? CH₄. The C stands for carbon. Methane might - might - stand in for water (though it lacks some interesting properties that make water unique), but it's still fucking carbon.

The next alkane after methane is ethane (hey, I learned this stuff before I knew how to read). Ethane is two carbons and six hydrogens. Replace one of those H atoms with an OH radical and what do you get? Ethanol. You know what would be cool? If we found ethanol-based life forms. Hey, it's not as crazy as it sounds. Astronomers have legitimately found entire clouds of ethanol floating out there in the galaxy. I bet it's even aged nicely.

One theory is that life was brought to Earth by a meteorite that slammed into the planet, and so the only genetic material we could work with was what was available on that rock.

Again with the life-came-from-elsewhere hypothesis. Still doesn't answer the question of how life got going in the first place. There are some thoughts on that subject (and they don't involve the supernatural, the presence of which would ask more questions than it answers), but there's no consensus I'm aware of.

In any case, the speculation is fun.