Scientifically Plausible Aliens (io9 article)

[Xavier Onassiss]

This article is one of the best I've seen at io9. (I know, that might not be saying much.) I like the way it addresses the basic questions about alien species' origins, instead of just slapping some prosthetics and/or make-up on their (human) face, giving them a ridiculous costume and adding "color" in the form of an Earth culture/historical period no real alien would have heard of.

 

If you're writing up an alien species for Hero, and trying to make them scientifically plausible, or just not completely implausible, this article might be helpful.

 

 

 

The last thing the galaxy needs is one more species of talking felines genetically engineered for perfect buttocks. No more energy beings, no lizard-people, no space barbarians, no insectoid hive-minds, no warrior-soul with a lumpy forehead and a laser-katana, and no lecherous octopoids, who inexplicably react to any given situation in pretty much the same way as a hollywood action hero....

 

-- Jack of All Trades, Haymaker 49

[Kraven Kor]

Re: Scientifically Plausible Aliens (io9 article)

 

"The last thing the galaxy needs is one more species of talking felines genetically engineered for perfect buttocks"

 

I cannot disagree more

 

But yes, this has been the main reason I can never get any sci-fi writing project off the ground. No matter how hard I think about it, I can't come up with anything original, anything non-cliched, end up hating what I am writing, and give up. Whether it be for alien species, FTL technobabble, etc.

[Xavier Onassiss]

Re: Scientifically Plausible Aliens (io9 article)

 

"The last thing the galaxy needs is one more species of talking felines genetically engineered for perfect buttocks"

 

I cannot disagree more

 

But yes, this has been the main reason I can never get any sci-fi writing project off the ground. No matter how hard I think about it, I can't come up with anything original, anything non-cliched, end up hating what I am writing, and give up. Whether it be for alien species, FTL technobabble, etc.

 

Well, don't forget what Picasso said: Good artists create; great artists steal!

[Clonus]

Re: Scientifically Plausible Aliens (io9 article)

 

This article is one of the best I've seen at io9. (I know' date=' that might not be saying much.) I like the way it addresses the [i']basic[/i] questions about alien species' origins, instead of just slapping some prosthetics and/or make-up on their (human) face, giving them a ridiculous costume and adding "color" in the form of an Earth culture/historical period no real alien would have heard of.

 

If you're writing up an alien species for Hero, and trying to make them scientifically plausible, or just not completely implausible, this article might be helpful.

 

 

Probably not. Insights like "It will have to have senses" and "It won't look like the life we know" don't say much.

[novi]

Re: Scientifically Plausible Aliens (io9 article)

 

I would add one caveat to that, which is that any planet with bodies of water and complex multicellular life will have fish-like creatures. It is a shape that just works. As evidence, I submit that whales and dolphins are descended from hooved mammals, but now possess a streamlined shape similar to fish that never bothered with that land-dwelling fad.

[dmjalund]

Re: Scientifically Plausible Aliens (io9 article)

 

I put my realistic aliens through the 'octopus test' given that ever macroscopic feature of the octopus evolved completely separately from us, my test is as follows:

 

Does it look as different to us as an octopus?

 

Does it look as different to the octopus as we do?

 

if you can answer yes to both questions, then you have yourselves an alien alien.

 

all you have to do next is work out a path of evolution considering features it needed at each ecological niche in turn and then you have a realistic alien.

[Xavier Onassiss]

Re: Scientifically Plausible Aliens (io9 article)

 

Probably not. Insights like "It will have to have senses" and "It won't look like the life we know" don't say much.

 

Far from being a useless question, "What senses does an alien use?" gives us a number of extremely useful insights: how it defines its personal space (does its primary sense have any range), how it communicates (if it's deaf, spoken language is out -- use something else), how it finds its food (is it a long-distance hunter or does it strike up close?), and that's just off the top of my head. Determining how an alien perceives the universe goes a long way towards defining its consciousness, and therefore, its behavior.

 

In short, you're mistaken.

[Cancer]

Re: Scientifically Plausible Aliens (io9 article)

 

Another reason carbon wins over silicon: there's more of it. By the latest numbers, in the Sun, carbon is about 7.6 times more abundant than silicon. Both are, however, primary nucleosynthesis products, so unlike a lot of the heavy metals you wouldn't have to wait for a third generation of stars to get much of them in planets.

 

There are a couple of planets now known orbiting metal-poor stars. The tendency of metal-rich stars to be more likely to have planets remains, at least so far.

 

The discovery of bacteria that made use of arsenic when starved of phosphorous is interesting in terms of pointing out that biochemistry may be less rigid in its requirements than I would have guessed, but As is down by a factor of about a thousand compared to P on a cosmochemistry basis.