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REAL ALIENS!

Here's one idea of what an alien landscape might look like. This illustration is from
There's an Alien In My Backpack, Book 9 of my I Was A Sixth Grade Alien series.

During my work on the book series I Was A Sixth Grade Alien it was my job as illustrator to imagine what alien life might look like. Of course for the sake of a mass-market audience, my aliens couldn't get 'too' weird. Most people have their own version of aliens (guided mostly by Hollywood ) those big bug-eyed guys from Alpha-Centuri, or cute E.T. types, or some form of little green men. These 'aliens' are always so similar to ourselves because it's comforting for us to think that life on other planets must exist within the realm of our own understanding, our own experiences.

But would they really look like us? Would they communicate in ways we could understand? Would they feel emotions, curiosity? love? Would they be asking the same questions?

Would they look at stars in the night sky and wonder about life? And what would life on an alien planet look like? Since no conclusive proof of alien life has ever been found, we have no frame of reference. We can only guess.

A black garden ant, when greatly magnified, can look like an alien creature.

Astrobiologists (scientists who study the possibilities of alien life) are left with the same questions and guesses. But they can make a BETTER guess by studying a world that they know for a fact is just teaming with life... our own Earth.
Thousands, millions of life-forms inhabit every corner of the world. Each has it's special place on Earth, it's history of growth, it's evolutionary patterns and metamorphosis. The individual history of each life-form, including our own, can give us clues to what alien life might look and act like. So what are some of the things we might learn about alien worlds from Earth?

Life is tough.
Life has much broader limits than we thought it did. It's not so fragile; it's resilient and resourceful. Terrestrial life requires only three things:

Energy,

Water, and

Organic compounds.

If a world has these three things, we've found that life will find a way to evolve, no matter how harsh the environment.

Europa, one of Jupiter's moons, may house liquid water under its frozen surface. Scientists estimate this ocean may be a hundred miles deep. Compared to the couple of miles deep oceans on Earth, maybe the largest and deepest in the solar system.

Water is found in the form of comets, and planetary icecaps. Comets also contain carbon compounds, and many have collided with planets and moons. Water might also be found in underground seas on a not-so-distant moon like Europa, one of Jupiter's moons. Europa's frozen ocean may be the largest and deepest in the solar system. Mars and other planets have volcanoes, which spew forth organic carbon compounds, the very building blocks of DNA, of life.

These volcanoes can also be a source of ENERGY.
On our own planet's volcanoes and thermal vents harbor thousands of life-forms. Scientists estimate that Europa's frozen ocean may be a hundred miles deep. Compare that to Earth's oceans, just a couple of miles deep.

Alien life is likely to evolve in liquid water, like here on Earth. Alien life may look similar to one of our own earthly, deep sea creatures.

Europa's ocean may even support life, heated by geothermal energy in the form of large vents generated by the planet's core. But what about energy from a Sun, like the kind that sustains us? There are a billion, trillion stars, so solar energy abounds throughout the Universe.

With these simple things, life can take shape and evolve. The diversity of life on our planet is wondrous. If there is a chance, life will find some way to exist, even in the harshest and most unaccommodating of environments.

So if the Universe has these three things in abundance, energy, water and organic compounds, it's reasonable to speculate that life may be quite commonplace. Imagine life on a planet with even more extreme environments; heavier or lighter gravity, entirely dark ecosystems, creatures evolving with completely different organic chemistry.

Life is highly adaptable and diverse.
Take a look at our own world. Until just a few years ago, scientists assumed that life could not exist without sunlight, or in subfreezing temperatures.

Giant tubeworms live near heat producing vents deep in our planet's oceans. Similar creatures may live in equally harsh alien environments.

Yet within a few short years, all of those assumptions have been shattered. We've learned that life exists on the coldest parts of the planet. Worms have been found in frozen methane ice off the seas of Mexico, and eyeless fish deep in the lightless caves of our own country. Antarctica, the coldest place on the planet, was long thought to be devoid of life. Recently scientists have discovered a whole world of life forms living beneath the surface.

Tubeworms, blind fish, and other bizarre creatures have been found in places thought too extreme for life to exist, giving hope that life is tough enough to evolve on even the harshest of planets.

In the darkest parts of the deep ocean, where no light from the Sun can penetrate, where there is no oxygen to breathe, giant tubeworms, blind crabs, ghostly white shrimp, and a host of other creatures, have all survived for millions of years. They gain their 'energy' for survival not from sunlight, but from large vents on the ocean floor.
And they survive in temperatures reaching 700 degrees farenheight, temperatures we thought were too hot to promote life.

At present, there are over 1.75 million known species of life on Earth. Life exists in extremes, in icy cold, in pitch darkness, in solid rock, in intense ocean pressures that could crush us in an instant. Yet in all of these extreme environments, life still manages to flourish, to persevere.

This deep-sea swallower lives in the pitch black depths, some 3,000 feet under the surface of the Pacific Ocean.

Over millions of years, life has learned to adapt. It never ceases to be a grand experiment. Life forces things to change and grow, it adapts defenses, fur and scales, camaflouge and strength, intelligence and reason, all of the byproducts of evolution.

But evolution leaves a lot to chance, so it's mixed with natural selection and random mutations. All of these things are tried in different mixtures until only just the right mixture is left. That which allows for survival.
Whatever mixture doesn't work ... dies.

If it's happening here on Earth, couldn't it be happening on other planets? Would the evolution of alien life work along the same Darwinian patterns and guidelines as it has on Earth? Would nature constantly grow through natural selection and random mutation? Many scientists think so. But what would the end-product of that selection look like?

With its enormous, hinged mouth open wide, the sea swallower engulfs larger prey.

Will it have 'senses' like Earth animals?
Probably, though not every animal here on Earth has five senses, nor are they used in the same way, or have the same degrees of sensitivity. Elephants hear in 'ultrasound', too sensitive for our own ears, some dogs have a sense of smell a million times stronger than our own, some animals smell with their tongue, some creatures see in colors or light that can't be seen by our eyes.
The lunar Moth, for example, sees in ultraviolet. There are species that can't smell or see at all.

This helmet jellyfish was once a common surfer, riding tides from open sea to shore.

These senses and adaptations are special gifts of evolution and random mutation that have allowed species to survive in an ever-changing world. But sensory organs might look and work vastly different from the ones we have experience with, since alien environments may be that dissimilar from Earth.

Imagine a dark world, with a thick atmosphere of fog or dust clouds, too dense or thick to see through. Imagine an intelligent being living on such a world. It might have no eyes, relying on a form of sonar, like a bat, or long feelers and antenna. It's sense of smell and it's sensory organs could be greatly enhanced. It might smell for miles, and in ways that we never could.

Alien life may take the form of aquatic "Floaters," powered by geothermal vents in the Earth's core (above, left,) or they may look similar to our own ocean-dwelling creatures (above, right.)

New worlds are discovered practically every day.

Imagine artists from such a planet. Would they create in paint?
They have no eyes, so visual art would be completely unfamiliar to them. Maybe they would create new scents and perfumes. Studying new worlds requires new ways of thinking.