"Luminous beings are we . . . not this crude matter."

Definition of extraterrestrial:
out-side, or originating outside, the limits of the earth (a. k. a. Terra).

Definition of extraterrestrial beings (a. k. a. aliens):
Life forms that live outside of Earth, some in different galaxies, that probably look very different from humans. If you take the literal definition, this means it can be anything from bacteria to a Wookie, and still be called extraterrestrial.

Guess who? You're right! It's MC², at your service. Science fiction has implemented extraterrestrials, a. k. a. aliens, very interestingly. In some series, like Star Wars, aliens are very numerous. In others, like Foundation, humankind is the only intelligent race that populates the galaxy. Here we explore what kind of culture extraterrestrials might have, how they might have evolved, and the possibility of them actually existing. And, of course, we talk about what they might look like. Just click on one of the links on the side and you'll be magically whisked away to another page dealing specifically with the implementation of extraterrestrials in that series. Have fun!

Are they out there? That question has been asked for ages and scientists still can't tell us. There have been many sightings of "UFOs" over the ages. To give you a general idea, there was 60,000 UFO sightings in '99 alone! Unfortunately for us SciFi geeks, most of them have turned out to be spoofs and people trying to get media attention. None of them have been proven to be true fact. Some are plausible, while others are not.

The really interesting thing is that society seems to have a very fixed idea of what extraterrestrials should look like. Evolution leaves much to chance. Say two fish are born in a small pond with two different mutations. The first fish is much more fit for life in the small pond, while the other has a mutation which makes it less fit. Normally the first fish would eat the second one for breakfast, but this is a dry year, and the pond is drying up. The second fish finds it can survive for brief periods outside the pond. In fact, it survives just long enough to flop over to the large lake next to the pond which doesn't dry up. While the first fish dies and never gets to pass on this trait to its descendants, the second fish survives, this odd fish who can travel from land to water, and possibly the ancestor of all life on earth today. Imagine our world today if that year had been rainy. You take away this or that event anywhere in the course of history, and you wouldn't even be here reading this text!

They are usually green, are either humanoid or have multiple body parts that humans have too, and fly around in saucers! I mean, come on people, saucers?! Consider this: the evolutionary process a species must go through to become intelligent and capable of surviving probably can only take place in very specialized environments (like Earth). If you think about it, our planet has very ideal conditions for not only humans, but thousands of other species to evolve on. Dwell on that for a second or two, then consider this: we have not found any signs of life as we know it (I'll get to that in a moment) because no other planet we have found has these ideal conditions, or even close to them! Compare the magnitude of species on our planet to the null, none, nada, squat, 180º from infinity we have found in our exploration of the galaxy. Granted, we haven't explored very much, so there still could be billions of planets with ideal living conditions on them still out there. But my opinion is that there is not many at all, maybe 100 in our galaxy. Then consider that most species will not make it to our level of intelligence, or could be eaten by other creatures that their amazing planet has produced. It took three-billion years for Earth to go from single-celled organisms to multicellular complex organisms. Obviously, it is not a likely event. But once we got multicellular, Earth experienced a rapid explosion of diverse life. Once complex life develops, tremendous diversity is likely to arise. But back to my point. If you have so little planets with the right conditions, you can't expect the ones that are out there to be exactly the same as ours. So the environment they evolve in must be different, which leads to different evolutions. Or maybe another kind of animal, let's say water-based, becomes intelligent before the land based animals (the opposite of our situation on Earth). Then the evolutionary process will be very different. One of the members of Team18 expresses a very interesting opinion, one which I agree with fully now that I have seen it. Quoted directly, it is:

"I think aliens do not have eyes or legs or arms or even heads and a body because all of those body parts are part of the human anatomy, not the universal anatomy! They might have body parts that we can't even picture, because we can picture what we have seen and only that. Look at the wide diversity of body parts, shapes, and sizes on our own planet, and you'll get only a fraction of the diversity we would get from a different planet. Makes you think, doesn't it?"

Who knows what size they may have evolved to? It is possible that our size is the ideal size, the product of years of evolution, but this is not likely. Look at how humans have changed shape over our history since prehistoric times. We have been getting bigger. Will this continue? If it does, this indicates that bigger is a better size for evolution on our planet, but what about on other planets? What if the size of a milk carton is a much better size on planet X? Then creatures will evolve to that size, obviously.

For my final point, I want to point out that the life we are searching for is too restricted. If you look at the lightspeed travel page, you'll see a discussion on other dimensions. Maybe the species have evolved in hyperspace, who knows? Or maybe there is a whole civilization on the subatomic level (I'm just speculating here!). One of the fascinating discoveries of our time is that the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, one of the main tenets of quantum mechanics, tells us that energy fluctuations may occur that exist for such infinitesimal time intervals that they're impossible to measure. When we try to measure small, or quantum, quantities, the simple act of measuring disrupts the system. Maybe these random fluctuations are the firing of their spaceships! Does every species have to breath oxygen? In Star Wars, a subspecies of the creatures known as Gands breath ammonia. Does every species have to breath at all? Another subspecies of the Gands doesn't breath, instead feeding their metabolism by eating. They speak by drawing in gases and expelling them through the voicebox.

Chew on these points for a while, everyone. Next time you here the word "extraterrestrial" or "alien", remember this site. Who knows, maybe they're out there, waiting for us, somewhere in hyperspace . . .