• Question: How would you describe an alien(E.T).

    Asked by 373sptm42 to Guy, Christine on 2 Mar 2018.
    • Photo: Christine Simpson

      Christine Simpson answered on 2 Mar 2018:

      That’s such a tricky question- you’re really testing us!

      I’d say it’s very hard to describe what aliens in general are like because the possibilities for how life can form are so varied. The way the extra terrestrial life will look will probably be determined by where we find them- so if it’s in a hot place, like on a planet near a star, they’ll probably be adapted to deal with that by using light and heat to make their energy, or if it’s on a cold planet with lots of water, they might look like the fish we see on earth in our deepest oceans.

      Hollywood Sci-Fi films were pretty adamant they’d be green or grey human shaped creatures with antenna and big black eyes, but that’s not something we have any evidence for yet. I can’t wait to find out though!

    • Photo: Guy Rixon

      Guy Rixon answered on 6 Mar 2018:

      I think they’ll look like fish, or possibly lobsters 🙂

      My hunch is that life on other planets is going to be mainly in the seas. This is to get away from the intense radiation on those worlds. All planets get a lot of radiation from the stars they orbit. It’s enough to kill unprotected people or animals quite quickly. Earth’s magnetic field protects us and lets us live on the land surface. But Earth only has a magnetic field because it has a rotating, liquid iron core, and it only has one of those because it has a massive, close-in moon. No big moon, no field, no life outside the oceans. Mars has this problem (and no oceans to hide in either, these days). AFAIK, not many earth-sized planets have moons as big as ours.

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