We’re used to seeing aliens as green or gray humanoids with lean bodies or stocky predators with sharp teeth and animal instincts rather than intelligence. However, scientists are confident that if aliens really exist, they are unlikely to look like these characters. Instead, the unique environment of the moons or exoplanets that these aliens call home may make their physiology completely different from that of Earth.

What might aliens look like?

• Adam Frank, a professor of astrophysics at the University of Rochester, says some aliens may have evolved to fly only in the skies of their own planet because of the dense planetary atmosphere.
• Or, in the case of high-gravity planets, the aliens could become tougher, “more like elephants,” he said.
• Perhaps life is evolving towards living underground. If a planet has high levels of radiation that are not absorbed by ozone, this can lead to underground life that uses soil as protection. In this case, simple multicellular life may resemble fungi. Although we usually see the fruiting body of the fungus above ground, most of its life actually takes place below, in a branching network of roots. Even on Earth, more species live underground than on the surface.
• The study, published in 2019 in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, suggests that in the event of excessive ultraviolet (UV) radiation, aliens may glow red, blue or green to protect themselves. Like some corals, these organisms may have proteins or pigments that can absorb some of the UV energy, causing them to glow in safer wavelengths of the visible spectrum.
• Another potential adaptation, according to Frank, could be aliens whose metabolisms are very slow due to the cold temperatures of their home worlds. Saturn’s largest moon, Titan, is a great example of a very cold world that scientists predict could host extreme life forms living in methane seas. Earth sloths are an example of an animal with an extremely slow metabolism; Their metabolism is only 40-45% of that of other animals their size. As a result, they move very slowly.

As a result, we can only speculate because we have no idea under what conditions hypothetical alien life would evolve. Because evolution is mostly random, it is affected by unpredictable mutations in genes, changes in the environment, changing needs of the organism, and more.

One or another species can live near the ground for thousands and millions of years, but if a dangerous predator appears in this area, animals may develop wings or begin to burrow into deep burrows as a safety mechanism to save themselves from extinction.

Similarly, evolutionary changes are influenced by climate, food availability, availability of breeding methods and many other factors.

Could aliens look like humans?

Anything is possible on a global scale. Some scientists suggest that there are millions of habitable planets in the universe and that life could develop on many of them. So hypothetically the conditions could match; After all, it happened once, so why not again? However, the probability of this is so small that it is almost non-existent. Humans have become this way thanks to millions of years of random evolutionary change.

If, say, 100 million years ago, our distant ancestor had gone to live in water for some reason instead of staying on land, then we would probably look completely different and would not have a large brain and intelligence. . Things would be different if the planet had been colder or warmer at one point, if it had a thinner ozone layer, if there were two or more moons in the system, or if the planet was further away from the star.

Scientists say extraterrestrial life most likely exists in the form of microorganisms. At least within the solar system.

Life is much more likely to be single-celled. For most of the time, only microbial life existed on Earth. Even today much of the biosphere is microbial.
says Sarah Rugheimer, professor of astronomy and astrophysics at York University in Toronto.

Detecting life of single-celled organisms on other planets can be a difficult task because they do not emit radio signals into space. But scientists recommend looking for other signs that microbes may have left behind. For example, gases produced only by organic life in the process of its vital activity.

It is also worth noting that some scientists put forward the idea of ​​​​the existence of life based on silicon, not carbon like ours. It is extremely difficult to imagine what this could be. Can it evolve? Did it need the same natural conditions as us? We don’t know. Perhaps, for such life to exist, it does not need oxygen but methane or another gas that dominates its planet.