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Termyn8or -> RE: More NASA stuff :) (2/2/2011 1:09:33 AM)
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Alien species do exist - right here on this planet. They've found organisms living in the steam produced by underwater volcanoes. Cockroaches can survive many different environments, cold like you wouldn't believe, and you can microwave them and it doesn't even seem to bother them.
One of the reasons roaches can survive getting nuked is that they have alot lower water content in their bodies. Water is not likely to be as abundant on other worlds possible of supporting life. I think if we don't meet our doom first, the first extraterrestrials we find will be insects. And there is no reason to believe that they can't become intelligent. In fact we can't even really prove that our insects are not. Many insects live in some form of a society.
The size of these beings will mostly depend on gravity, with larger ones developing on planets with lower gravity, but yet enough to maintain an atmosphere. Denser planets will give rise to smaller beings. There is limit though, because molecules can only get so small, therefore there is a practical limit on how small a living cell (that we would recognize) can actually be.
On the other end of the spectrum are less dense planets which could spawn larger, and therefore more complex organisms with larger brains. However there is still such a thing as mass which is independent of gravity. They would likely be clumsy and vulnerable to injury, which would limit their viability.
There is a range, outside of which higher development becomes less likely. The mass of a celestial object cannot be determined by it's orbit, only by the orbits of it's satellites. We are having trouble finding planets, it will probably take some time to discover their satellites if any. And we can't just show up even if we had vehicles to get there. If the gravity of the moon was equal to that of Earth, the moonshots would not have been possible. What if it was greater and escape velocity could not be attained ? Would we ever know what the explorers found ?
If one really explores the possibilities, they come to know just how advanced we AREN'T.
T^T
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