Monday, November 23, 2009

Life is Strange



I've always thought that self-perpetuating life probably exists in other places throughout this relatively infinite Universe. However, I also think that beings from other world wouldn't necessarily physically look like us at all.

Sending messages to the stars or trying to communicate would suddenly seem ridiculous if alien life appeared & floated out of a spaceship looking like the sea cucumber in the photo above. We would be in no position to expect direct communication with abstractly weird beings from another world. What if they didn't deal with sound or light at all, but communicated & navigated using subtle manipulations of gravity fields? We wouldn't even know they were sentient without evident technology.

On the other hand, it's possible that space/time traveling aliens would be able understand us- like we are deciphering communication between bees & other animals. If there are alien beings advanced enough to be visiting us, they probably see Earth like a zoo & just use their 4-dimensional technology to pop in & out of our world like people drive a jeep through a safari.

UFO's aside, It's amazing to see all the new images of life that science and new technologies are discovering on all scales. This is a set of microscopic images that I saw on io9 that is crazy:


The videos, like algae dividing, are almost surreal. These things are happening everywhere & at all times around us, but seem really strange because they exist on a scale beyond our immediate perception. Here is the full gallery from the Olympus Bioscapes contest:

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