What are the chances that if alien life exist on different planets, they are similar to our own flora and fauna?

What are the chances that if alien life exist on different planets, they are similar to our own flora and fauna?

Are some features universal, due to the laws of physics or convergent evolution, regardless of which planet they evolved on? ie: alien organisms that need sight for survival will usually develop eyes that would be functionally and structurally similar to various eye types we can find on our own planet?
Obviously, it's possible to use echolocation, rely on a sense of smell, or not need eyes at all due to living underground or caves, but considering that most animals and even plants do have eyes or at least photoreceptors points toward the logical conclusion that sight greatly improves the chances of survival. Well, more like input and information of the environment to be precise, but let's move on.

So, with that, can it be said that if we visited a different planet and there was life on it, it would be logical to expect to find organisms that are remarkably similar to our own?

If they have sight, it would he optimized to the black body spectrum of their star, so maybe they could be able to see in infrared or UV but not in our visible range. They could also "see" with some kind of radar or sonar instead.


Touch and smell won't necessarily be the same as ours. Maybe they have a combination of both or even something totally different to understand their interaction with the environment.


Their size couldn't be too big because of the square cube law, and also not too small because you need a minimum amount of space for a "brain" analogue.
They could have a symmetric shape (for example most animals on earth have a two fold symmetry, left and right) because it's just simpler than being asymmetric, but I wouldn't bet on this one.
The thing that interests me the most however is if their evolution process is the same as ours, ie survival of the fittest. It would be great if it's something different.

I think it's safe to say any intelligent life we find will say their star is white and that they use base 10.

Regarding the size part, I'm excluding possible mega creatures a la Solaris sea and also swarm civilizations of mini individuals who have no free will, like ant colonies. Both of these could actually be possible.

BIG BIG SUKA VERY BIG AND VERY SUKA

>So, with that, can it be said that if we visited a different planet and there was life on it, it would be logical to expect to find organisms that are remarkably similar to our own?
We have no idea, making any claims on the matter is illogical and unscientific. Maybe our instance is the niche for life to arise as/in - maybe they could arise in literally anything, as long as certain occurrences line up, there might be extreme variation - maybe we're very rare and some other common "type" of instance is prevalent in the universe - maybe extremely rare occurrences have to specifically line up through all development, at certain times, leading up to and through the development of life; making it a a 1 in a dozen galaxies sort of rarity, with the former examples applied to this one, just with this setting.

Literally baseless speculation, we don't know and we'll likely never know. Even if we find 1000 separate instances of life, what if there are 1000 million separate instances that are completely different, setting a different norm, that we will never know of? To me, it is a tiresome and self-defeating exercise without actual data.

We could decide that sensing light and later, decent eyes is the standard. Seems pretty logical, right? But maybe it's not? What evidence do we have to say it is? From our perspective it seems like a natural conclusion, but we have no way of knowing if this is true and - as I said before - even if we find 1000 instances where this is the norm, we have no way of checking every instance of life to have every existed, everywhere. So what's to say there aren't 1000 million where this is not the norm and where sensors of light and more complex derivations; sight, is not perhaps, not existent at all?

Couldn't we make guesses based on divergent evolutionary paths on earth? If a trait developed independently in two different evolutionary lines on earth, we could assume it's somewhat universal and would likely evolve elsewhere, at least on earth like planets.

Multicellular organisms developed multiple times independently on earth so if eukaryote like cell developed on another planet, we could assume multicellular organisms would follow.

Eyes developed independently multiple times on earth so we could assume some sort of sight would be common among alien life.

Photosynthesis developed multiple times as well. In fact we humans are kinda plant-like too, in that we need sunlight to synthesise vitamin D. I find it highly probable that on other planets lots of organisms would exploit the radiation of their sun in multiple ways such as producing energy too.

>if their evolution process is the same as ours, ie survival of the fittest

Natural selection is universal. it simply means that anything better adapted to survive, will have an easier time trying to survive, and will have offspring, thus spreading those good adaptations throughout the gene pool. There is literally no other way to do this.

'Survival of the fittest' is misleading. 'Fit' in an adaptation sense can mean anything; A sloth is fit because it eats low energy but abundant food and has a very slow metabolism to match. Any kind of helpful trait will be selected for.

If there is an atmosphere they will have smell, if there is a star they will have sight, and if there is dense atmosphere they will have hearing.

Whats really interesting is alien sense like sensing magnetic fields or detecting changes in gravity or some shit.

Intelligent aliens can rise from anything that has appendages for tool use, it doesnt have to be primate shape, it could be a hexapod creature like a centaur shape and have grasping appendages.

Our bipedal body shape emphasized speed making most of our ancestors brutes who were absolute morons compared to the average human retard. The body plans I imagine wont be so speedy meaning the ayys would have to be smart to survive especially if they live in an open area like the alien equivalent of a grassland or something.

>different planet
>different gravity
>different atmosphere
>different chemicals
>different sun distance
>different everything

I would say the the odds are pretty fucking bad.

>Upside down head
This planet has shit taste in embryonic development

>>different chemicals
The same ones actually.

If life never progressed past using RNA to hold all information on this planet we would see some very interesting stuff.

reminder that aliens are just a meme and life on earth is a one time fluke

Indeed

If their genetic material is susceptible to UV radiation like ours is (as I'm assuming) how would they cope? Would they just live underground or would they all have very tough exteriors or evolve some very good biochemical repair mechanisms or what?

Earth life has such extreme variety that it's hard to imagine an alien that fits our definition of life and isn't pretty similar to SOMETHING on Earth.

>look at prehistoric creatures from our planet
>Look heavily dissimilar to creatures today
>Speculate about other planets having similar looking life
>Even assuming DNA is the only valid form of life this wouldn't have a high chance of occuring
/Thread

>Upside down head
>This planet has shit taste in embryonic development
Yeah it's not an ideal representation of a viable alien life form. I mean just think about it, whenever it opens its mouth, chews or bites on its prey, it affects its vision. Imagine headbanging whenever you eat something, it's a serious handicap. Also it has like...18 eyes assuming bilateral symmetry. It's redundant. They're also placed in a way that doesn't even alert the organism of danger from all sides.

>if there is a star they will have sight

0%

It can be equally possible that there will never be life anywhere else, ever. Just earth. That earth itself was the longest shot possible.

Here's an idea. What would like look like if it weren't cellular? That's a possibility.

Alien life could look dramatically different than life on Earth.

That's going to depend on your definition of "cellular." Whatever its genetic material is contained in could pretty much be considered a "cell" IMO.

Likelihood of finding flesh devouring bacteria > intelligent life with ability to travel through the galaxy

Same physics everywhere so where conditions are similar, life will be similar.

What we don't know is just how different it can get, but we can be sure it can be very similar, perhaps even indistinguishable from an earth animal.

Any creature that Flies or Swims will be so heavily bound by the laws of drag that they will most likely be more similar than any other creature.

Fish birds and small flie like creatures will be fucking similar anywhere they arise.

Based Redpilled but actually blue pulled and didn't even know it

Meant for Not

20-30%

>10

Isn't our use of the number 10 based on us humans having 10 fingers? I highly doubt an alien race would use base 10 unless they also developed their society while counting on 10 fingers.

Yes, alien life would be made up of cells. Cells are the most basic form of life, and we all have the same amino acids to build proteins from, so the structures might be very similar.

In fact, I wouldn't see it as too much of stretch to postulate that some disease could cross over from an alien race into humans, however infinitely slim that chance may be.


As I see it, it really depends on what kind of alien environment we are talking about. Are there plants on this planet, that create oxygen and does this planet permit life on a rocky surface? Find something close enough to Earth, and I would find it easy to imagine bipedal creatures with hands that might look a lot like us.

Take a less similar planet, and you get jellyfish in the ocean. Maybe something like mushrooms, too.

How different can things really be, when the conditions are right for life to evolve?

...

We use base 60 for Time.

And don't forget pic related

>obsessed yuropoors shitposting again

But why would an animal need appendages that fit tool use?
I think the only examples for land-living creatues on earth with such appendages are tree-climbers.
Maybe living in trees is a necessary step for an animal to evolve into civilized beeings

Fixed

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>The thing that interests me the most however is if their evolution process is the same as ours, ie survival of the fittest. It would be great if it's something different.

Maybe all animals can share DNA in this way; allowing for far greater diversity

...

Aliens always look too 'cool' in speculative art. In reality they're probably wearing cargo shorts or some shit.

Every base is base 10

Is this an elaborate bait, or a real amerifat?

This is true

ITT -- We plot a curve based on one data point.

>We plot a curve based on one data point.
What does that even mean? Is that another meme science theory like normal distribution?

We have one example of how life evolves on one planet. We have zero data beyond that.

>organized [sic] logically by maximum value
Is this just autism telling you 'small' month numbers go before 'large' day numbers?

Prove me wrong. Please.

As a spec-bio fan I hate the aliens in OP's pic.

but we are pretty good in extrapolating
besides, we know planets without life

We actually have loads of data points.
Every species both living and extinct is an example of how life can turn out.
For most a lot of the dimensions have the same of similar values and all have the chemistry of DNA in common.