[Thor]

Originally Posted by 4X4

I don't know that the universe is too gigantic for us to be noticed yet. That kind of thinking kept educated people believing in flat earths and the Four Elements for years and years.

That kind of thinking? Its just facts, the signals that could be detected by alien advanced species didn't start broadcasting since the 30's into space, calculating the speed of that sound and how far it has reached, we can tell quite accurately how many possible places 'could have heard us' by now.

Its not many

If they find us through other means such as we don't know about certainly our chances are different, but this is just our current best guesses at us being detected in a gigantic universe where our tiny little planet has only recently starting making any noticeable noise that alien life could detect. Its what we are doing with SETI, just the reverse.

And the humanoid appearance? Why not? I tend to think that since we are constantly looking for planets with similar surface conditions, beings on other planets would be doing the same thing. We are pretty well adapted to our environment, so why wouldn't they look similar?

We used to have a theory on life on other planets roughly called the three bears planet, not too hot, not too cold, just right It was roughly that we needed a large gas giant like Jupiter to keep us safe, right distance from a sun, water, etc..

But when we started looking at life closer on earth, found extremophiles which can live in 'extreme' (duh) conditions we realized the potential for life on other planets goes up a ton. Europa is a prime candidate in our own universe as it has a frozen top layer with a vast ocean below. Its got a lot of people excited about us finding life in those oceans, we'd only imagine they would be some freaky looking things that would live out there, much like we find at the depths of our oceans.

Maybe opposable toes... Maybe bigger brains... Just as long as we're not talking about Jabba the Hut. And if a galactic traveler were to look significantly different, they'd probably assume a familiar form so that the freak out factor would be minimized.

Well factors for life could be much harsher on other planets, likely is in a lot with life. So maybe they are much smaller, vertabrates, or aquatic life. Maybe their planet is in heavy fog, and they need no eyes, just use of sonar. Maybe they have 8 legs, or no legs.

The simple problem is our exact situation on earth would not ever occur on another planet, the likelyhood is infatisimaly small. Thats not to say its impossible they would have eyes, nose, or even 2 legs/2 arms.. But its still gonna like freakishly different from us.

As for the assumption that technological brilliance = moral brilliance... Well... I don't necessarily agree with that. I gotta think about it a bit more.

That theory is based on the idea that as a species advances it goes through stages, and at a point where you are so advanced to travel the great expanse of space you would have already been through all the growing pains of primitave species to reach that point.

Again who knows, maybe its wishfull thinking that we expect them to be peaceful, I mean they could look at humans the same we we look at rats