If there is intelligent life on other planets, what are the odds that they look like us?

Zero chance.

Yes, zero chance. Human beings are basically an accident of nature. If that asteroid hadn't hit 65 million years ago, we never would've had the chance to evolve.

They may not "look" like us but there's a good chance they'd look like something on our planet.

We do that so actors can play them and they don't have to be all CGI creatures and masks.

But yes, obviously intelligent life that evolved independently on other planets would not look identical to human beings.

Since intelligent life on this planet is so scarce, how will we recognize it on another?

Look like us? Intelligent life? Jesus, I hope not.

There is nothing out there. We are it.

I don't know what they'd look like, they could be intelligent balls of energy or mutant slime, but I like to think they'd be really impressed with our hands.

They all look like Kelly Anne Conway Or Joan Rivers.

Why do humans insist there be something “out there”? Is nothing not good enough? Why is nothing not plausible and something plausible?

The same laws of nature control the entire universe, and in our world we see the same patterns over and over again in all living beings. So it would not be so terribly unlikely to find other planets with life forms familiar to us. Though the contrary is all true.

Just think. Another Nathan fucking Lane.

What does that mean R12?

[quote] Zero chance.

Not necessarily. There have been many instances of parallel evolution in our own history, where certain environments have given rise to similar life forms. It's possible that similar environments to ours are needed for intelligence to evolve, so maybe they will have different numbers or types of appendages or sensory organs, but ones that serve similar functions, and therefore are recognizable.

I approach this in two different ways. I believe that a perfect storm of events occurred on this planet to make life possible and that it probably didn’t happen anywhere else. But then, you think it is close minded to believe that a perfect storm couldn’t have occurred anywhere else and that you need to be open to the possibility that life, in some form, exists somewhere out there and we just aren’t aware of it and they aren’t aware of us,

[quote]you think it is close minded

It’s not.

[QUOTE]If there is intelligent life on other planets,

how on earth would we recognize them?

Yes there is.

No idea.

They are either billions of years behind us or ahead of us. So there’s no chance of meeting because we offer nothing of value.

[quote] I believe that a perfect storm of events occurred on this planet to make life possible and that it probably didn’t happen anywhere else. But

Do you recognize how vast the universe is? I mean honestly none of us do, it is difficult for the human mind to comprehend its size.

It defies all logic that life only evolved on one planet in the entire universe. But that is the problem, the universe is vast, hard to see how we would have contact with them.

Scientists have discovered a number of Earth-like planets in other solar systems. If intelligent life happened here, what's to say it couldn't have happened there?

I've also wondered if dinosaurs hadn't gone extinct, how they would've evolved.

I sure hope they are intelligent enough not to destroy their own planet before finding another one to move to easily.

Let's just hope they don't look anything like Kang & Kodos.

For those of you saying "there's nothing out there," you may be right but, as Stephen Hawkings points out, there's a better chance you're wrong. Life popped up (relatively) quickly after the planet formed. As Hawkings points out, if life is so rare, such a crazy fluke, one would have expected it not to pop up on Earth fairly late, if at all.

Hawkings also believed that aliens would probably closely resemble humans, at least if we had contact with them. The same patterns are repeated throughout the universe over and over, and intelligent space traveling tool users probably had a closely parallel experience to our own.

He also thought, for that same reason, that our meetup with them would probably be a very bad day for us. Look how things went for the Aztecs and Inca when they were visited by "aliens." Those patterns of selfishness and greed probably are also replicated.

He did an entire episode of his show about aliens.