What do alien life forms look like, and what is the ultimate evolutionary goal of intelligent life forms?

Many netizens have asked about this question. It is a very brain-burning question with no standard answer. No one has ever seen so-called alien life forms, and we can only imagine them based on the appearance of life forms on Earth. Now Spacetime Communications tries to discuss this issue from the perspective of the concept of life on Earth, for everyone to discuss and share.

General understanding of what life looks like/

Life on Earth mainly refers to organisms, including microorganisms, plants, and animals. These living things have the ability to reproduce, metabolize, grow and develop, genetically mutate, age, get sick and die, and respond to stimuli.

These organisms are bred and evolved according to the earth's environment. They are organisms based on carbon as organic matter, so they are also called carbon-based life. Therefore, on Earth, life is a special phenomenon that is different from any other organic and inorganic matter.

But the problem is that in the universe, the earth is just a very ordinary yet special existence. The cosmic environment varies greatly. It can be said that life forms conceived and evolved in other environments are definitely different from life on Earth, and may not even be carbon-based life.

For example, some scientists believe that there may be some kind of life on Titan, but the atmosphere of Titan is mainly nitrogen and has almost no oxygen. There are liquid lakes on the surface, but they are not water molecules formed by the combination of hydrogen and oxygen, but liquid methane. The surface temperature is -179°C.

In such an environment, if there is life in the methane lake, it is definitely not carbon-based life, but alkyl life that relies on absorbing methane for survival.

Outside the solar system, the planets have a variety of environments, so there may be many forms of life. Many people believe that there may be silicon-based life, phosphorus-based life, boron-based life, sulfur-based life, etc. The appearance of these lives may be completely unexpected and completely different from the appearance of life on Earth. As for their specific appearance, we cannot even imagine them now.

Some studies believe that carbon-based life is the life form with the best connection ability and stability. Other substances such as silicon-based have insufficient thermal and chemical stability, making it difficult to form complex and changeable organic groups, and are easily completely destroyed by various proton solvents. Common solvents such as water and ammonia cannot serve as carriers of these lives, so this type of life is extremely difficult to form.

This may be a one-sided conclusion drawn from the Earth's environment, and we will not discuss this specific professional issue today. Assuming that extraterrestrial life exists in any form, then to determine whether it is a living organism, it must at least meet the following conditions: the ability to reproduce and inherit, the ability to metabolize and grow, the ability to respond to external stimuli, and the ability to mutate, alienate, and evolve.

To become an intelligent creature, a life form needs to evolve consciousness, including self-awareness, memory, and logical thinking. This is a common feature of all intelligent life in the universe. Only with intelligent life can we develop technology, create cosmic civilizations from low to high levels, and explore and colonize deep space.

A brief history of the evolution of life on Earth is as follows: Scientific expeditions have discovered life 3.7 billion years ago, which was just a very low-level microorganism - cyanobacteria; it was not until the Cambrian period 540 million years ago that life appeared in a visible and tangible way, and at this time life began to move from low to high; and more advanced mammals did not appear until more than 100 million years ago, and increasingly intelligent primates appeared more than 50 million years ago, and humans appeared millions of years ago. The history of human civilization is only a few thousand years old, and the history of science is only a few hundred years old.

The universe is already 13.8 billion years old. There may be life forms in the universe that existed much earlier than the Earth, or there may be life forms that existed later than the Earth. If life has evolved gradually to develop intelligence and civilization, then it is possible that all forms of life at different stages from those on Earth may exist in the universe, including low-level life and civilization, as well as intermediate and advanced life and civilization.

According to the idea that different environments create different life forms, alien life can only be diverse. Some, like life on Earth, rely on water and oxygen to survive. This requires the planet to have a suitable temperature, with the ability to retain liquid water as the standard. This is what humans consider to be a habitable zone planet; of course, there are also some, like Titan, where life may exist that can tolerate extremely low temperatures and does not require oxygen and water.

There may be life forms that can tolerate extremely high temperatures, and these life forms may be able to dance in the fire. These life forms, which are completely different from the living conditions of life on Earth, will die if they come to Earth, because the air, water, and temperature on Earth are extremely deadly poisons to them.

The ultimate direction of human evolution

Humans have developed to a higher form of life, and are able to continuously understand the natural laws of the universe and use these cognitions to transform the world to obtain a better living space. However, humans have not yet escaped from the most primitive stage of life, that is, existing in a tangible physical form.

On Earth, all life has a lifespan, and humans, as the only intelligent life on Earth, live in the form of physical bodies, which is relatively short compared to celestial bodies, only about 100 Earth years. According to the Kardashev index recognized by the scientific community, the current level of human cosmic civilization has only reached level 0.73.

Since ancient times, humans have been seeking the secret of immortality, but the ancients adopted ignorant and superstitious methods, such as seeking immortality and refining elixirs, which are not only useless, but also send these people to the Naihe Bridge more quickly. After the enlightenment of scientific and technological civilization, through the understanding of natural laws, health and longevity gradually began to be included in the track of conforming to natural laws.

Through anatomy, cytology, and genetics, modern science has enabled people to have a deeper understanding of their own bodies, and thus achieve the goal of longevity through increasingly scientific and healthy eating, drinking, defecating, clothing, housing, and transportation; the continuous development of vaccines, evidence-based medicine, modern pharmacy, immunology, and gene therapy have enabled diseases that endanger human life to be controlled and cured, and have also greatly ensured the increase in life expectancy.

However, birth, aging, illness and death are the natural laws of the body. No matter how hard we try, we can only delay and repair the aging process of the human body. In the end, the body will always be riddled with holes and beyond repair. Therefore, there are great limitations to maintaining the human body to achieve longevity. Scientific research shows that the maximum human physical lifespan is around 150 years.

This lifespan seems long enough to live on Earth, but it is completely unsuitable for interstellar travel of thousands of years in the future, which means it is not suitable for the advanced interstellar travel state of human civilization. Therefore, the most cutting-edge scientists have begun to shift their attention to consciousness preservation and consciousness transfer.

Modern science has long proven that consciousness is the most important sign of human life. If a person loses consciousness, even if his body is intact, he is just a walking corpse, or even not a walking corpse. For example, brain-dead, vegetative, and mentally ill patients are "dead" even if they are "alive"; and people with full body paralysis are still alive as long as their brains are alive, even if their bodies are dead.

The late scientist Hawking was paralyzed with only his eyes and two fingers able to move. He lived in a wheelchair for decades, but he relied on his smart brain and the cooperation of artificial intelligence to achieve remarkable achievements that attracted worldwide attention.

Therefore, modern science believes that as long as human consciousness can be preserved, even if the body is dead, it can survive in the form of consciousness. Therefore, modern cutting-edge science has begun to study the topic of consciousness preservation and transfer, and has made certain progress. For example, Google's consciousness transfer research, Musk's brain-computer interface, the Russian tycoon's Avanti Project, etc., are all trying to preserve human consciousness.

These studies are all threatening to succeed in the next thirty or forty years. Therefore, I believe that the highest evolutionary form of intelligent life is the Tao, which is invisible and exists in the form of consciousness or energy.

When consciousness is combined with machines or cloned bodies, it can control and transform the world. It is still unclear how long consciousness can "live", but at least it can live much longer than the body. Because almost all normal people have good consciousness before they die. It's just that consciousness cannot exist independently from the human brain, so consciousness disappears when a person dies.

Any process of civilization upgrading must be accompanied by the evolution and upgrading of life itself.

Human civilization has only reached level 0.73, and has not yet achieved level one civilization, but we have already begun to explore the future non-physical existence of humans. Although some organizations have claimed that we may not be able to make much progress in 40 years, I believe that we will always be able to succeed in 100 years, 1,000 years, or 5,000 years.

Some scientists believe that human civilization will reach level one in about 200 years and level two in about 5,000 years, which means that before achieving level two, humans may exist in a conscious way. Consciousness is invisible, perhaps it is a kind of energy, which means that humans in the future will exist in the form of consciousness and energy.

Only when reaching the second-level civilization can a civilization fly out of its own star system and conduct interstellar exploration and migration. Only when the civilization is upgraded, the intelligent body itself also evolves and upgrades, and finally exists in an invisible form of consciousness energy, can it adapt to the lifespan requirements of long interstellar travel and greatly reduce the size of starships.

Therefore, I believe that the ultimate evolutionary direction of every intelligent life form is to break away from tangible entities and exist in an invisible form of consciousness energy. In other words, whether it is humans on Earth or alien intelligent life forms, as long as they reach the second-level civilization, no matter what their previous tangible form was, they will move towards the invisible form of consciousness energy.

Therefore, I think the future described in many science fiction literature and films is nonsense. These science fiction literature and films only focus on the continuous development of scientific and technological equipment, and completely ignore the evolution and upgrading of civilized intelligence itself. That is why they describe that even at the god-level civilization, life forms still exist in a clumsy tangible way. It is just that based on simple imagination, various alien civilizations imitate the plants and animals on Earth, making them look strange and bizarre.

Today's human beings need to eat grains and enjoy a large amount of material consumption such as air and water in order to transform a little bit of pitiful energy through the complex physical and chemical system in the body to maintain their own vital signs. This is a huge waste, and invisible life forms do not need these at all.

The only need of an intelligent being that exists in the form of consciousness energy is the replenishment of pure energy, which is inexhaustible in the universe, such as stellar energy, the transformation of any substance according to Einstein's mass-energy equation E=MC^2, etc. Such an intelligent being has already understood the laws of nature at a very deep level, and as long as there is sufficient energy, it can create almost all substances.

These intelligent entities can also be easily connected to the Internet, such as combining the consciousness of all mankind into a huge network, forming an energy-rich and efficient aggregate that can withstand huge cosmic disasters and solve unimaginably complex problems.

Therefore, the interstellar spacecraft of advanced civilizations do not need to set up living space and facilities for intelligent life forms to eat, drink, defecate and urinate, nor do they need to carry water, food, utensils and other supplies. They only need some energy conversion devices. In this way, a spacecraft the size of a car or even smaller can carry many intelligent beings that exist as consciousness energy.

When we reach the third level of civilization in the universe, perhaps there will be no need for spaceships. Intelligent entities themselves will be able to transmit consciousness in the form of energy waves, traveling freely and unrestrainedly between galaxies and galaxy clusters.

Now, after hundreds of years of searching, humans have not found any signs of life outside the Earth, let alone extraterrestrial civilizations. This is because humans' current observation level is still very low. Even with the best telescopes on Earth, we cannot clearly see the planets and satellites within the solar system, let alone the planets outside the solar system.

Therefore, the fact that humans have not discovered extraterrestrial life and civilization does not mean that extraterrestrial life and civilization do not exist. But it is almost certain that there are no high-level extraterrestrial civilizations within the range we have observed, at least extraterrestrial civilizations above level 2. Because if there are, these civilizations will transform their own stars, causing abnormal changes in the star's brightness, which humans can observe.

Humans have observed millions of stars around them and have not found these changes. Therefore, no scientist believes in the rumors of UFOs and aliens appearing on Earth, and there is no confirmed landing. Because according to the current level of human spaceflight, let alone flying out of the solar system, there are only 12 people who can reach the moon, which is only a few hundred thousand kilometers away.

Even if aliens exist, they are at least several light years away from us. Aliens that can come to Earth must be at least a Level 2 civilization, which means that these aliens should not exist in a physical form. How could they be sitting in a flying saucer, looking stupid and top-heavy? This is just some people's imagination based on the ugly appearance of humans.

That’s all for today. Welcome to discuss and thank you for reading.

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