If the truth really is out there, and we are not alone in the universe, what would the aliens look like? There's a burgeoning group of astrobiologists who maintain that life -- should we find it -- on other planets might bear very little resemblance to the carbon-based life forms we might expect. After all, such life would have to evolve in environments likely to be very different from our own -- say, Titan, Saturn's largest moon.
Bigger than our moon, and more than 10 times further from the Sun than Earth, the moon's surface temperature is a shiver-inducing -180 degrees Celsius -- so cold that any surface water has long ago transformed into permafrost, and it is shrouded in an atmosphere of thick orange fog. The only liquid on Titan is liquid methane; and liquid of some kind is an essential ingredient for life.
So what might an alien who lived on Titan be like? At the RAS National Astronomy Meeting this week, astrobiologist William Bains declared that it would be... a wee bit stinky:
"Hollywood would have problems with these aliens. Beam one onto the Starship Enterprise and it would boil and then burst into flames, and the fumes would kill everyone in range. Even a tiny whiff of its breath would smell unbelievably horrible. But I think it is all the more interesting for that reason. Wouldn't it be sad if the most alien things we found in the galaxy were just like us, but blue and with tails?"
Yeah, tell that to all the Avatar fanboys who think Neytiri is smokin' hot, tail and all. Compare the humanoid, rather attractive Navi race of fiction to Bains' vision of alien life on Titan, based on his study of the extreme chemistry on that moon. Any life would need to have liquid-methane-based blood instead of water, for starters, which radically changes its metabolic chemistry. The molecules would have to be smaller than the molecules that comprise life here on Earth, which severely limits the "building blocks" available.
And such a metabolism would be much more chemically reactive, according to Bains, hence the very real possibility of explosions. Energy would also be scarce, given the fact that the sun's rays are a fraction of a percent as intense on Titan as on the surface of Earth. There goes my second favorite theory of alien life: giant lizards or insectizoid life forms. Per Bains: "Rapid movement or growth needs a lot of energy, so slow-growing lichen-like organisms are possible in theory, but velociraptors are pretty much ruled out."
Lichen-like? As in moss growing on rocks? Sounds like we're looking at The Blob territory, doesn't it? And that is far less attractive than the Navi. Of course, that assumes the kind of life we'd find if we went to Titan instead of waiting for Titanites to come to us.
If aliens found their way to Earth, we could expect them to be at least as intelligent as humans, according to bona fide alien hunter Seth Shostak. Although we may want to stock up on air freshener and flame-retardant suits or something. (And via PZ, here's a handy pictorial guide on dealing with "first contact.")
Tags: Alien Life, Astrophysics, Humor, Moons
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