Science fiction often presents us with alien life forms that resemble terrestrial organisms. However, this does not have to be like this. In 1976, in the Astrophysical Journal Supplement , Carl Sagan and Edwin Salpeter imagined aliens resembling huge hot air balloons that lived inside the clouds of Jupiter, where they were harassed by missile-shaped predators that fed on them. According to astrobiologists, the appearance of aliens depends directly on the physical and environmental conditions of the planet on which they live. Thus, for example, in worlds with a gravity greater than that of Earth , the aliens would tend to be squat , quite the opposite of those with a weak gravity , where they would present stylized limbs . In a supposed world covered in ice and water, organisms would probably need some type of appendage to adhere to some source of heat, such as hydrothermal veins that spread across the ocean floor, and a mechanism to capture food, similar to a species organic network.
What might the life forms of another planet look like?
No, the strange rings surrounding a binary star are not an alien megastructure
As if it were rings in the trunk of a tree, this image from the James Webb telescope has provoked all kinds of comments.
Enceladus could still harbor extraterrestrial life
Enceladus' underground ocean is rich in phosphorus, a new study suggests. One of Saturn's largest and brightest moons has long been one of our top targets in the search for life.
Searching for extraterrestrial civilizations over 60 years and zero results
Carl Sagan was one of the great defenders of the SETI program. After more than 60 years without finding a single bit of evidence, is it worth continuing to search?
7 places to look for extraterrestrial life
Before we start looking for extraterrestrial life forms on distant exoplanets, where might we find them in our own cosmic neighborhood?
Could an advanced civilization have existed millions of years before us? (Silurian hypothesis)
We want to do with you a curious mental experiment with its own name: the Silurian hypothesis in which we presuppose the possibilities that a civilization had existed before we appeared.