Quote:
Originally Posted by Groundhog
I once read (and can only vaguely remember) a short story by Arthur C. Clarke about a "life form" that was purely electrical.
The nano example is a good one. We can view things through microscopes and telescopes, but that's still a limited range when you consider that things can be (presumably) infinitely bigger or smaller still.
It's definately a point worth considering; life is as it is on Earth because that's how it evolved to the conditions on this planet through trial and chance over a great period of time. On a different life-supporting planet with different conditions chances are things are going to evolve quite differently than how they did down here. What we consider "Intelligent life" might be an Earth-centric view. A "life form" from a different planet might not resemble any kind of life form or intelligence that we can measure or even detect.
I think we are very unlikely to find humanoid-like life forms in the universe simply because we are so much a product of the world we are from, and if things had not gone our ancestor's way all those many years ago, we might never have even been.
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This has always interested me. The form that general, corporeal intelligent life would take. I'm not talking really exotic types, like silicon-based, or nano-machines or energy beings and the like. I am talking about carbon-based types of life like us. Yes, it seems silly to think that all intelligent, carbon-based life would be humanoid, but I also think there are basic requirements for such life that would lead to similarities. Thus, perhaps it wouldn't be so odd to run into humanoid life elsewhere, especially if Earth-like conditions (liquid-water heavy, atmosphere with elemental qualities that can be broken down into energy, temperature range and environmental conditions conducive to life) tend to lead toward that evolutionary result.