Can we create new ideas?

[Chronos]

In a world were creatures only had 4 senses, lacking vision, would they make the guess that visitors from another planet had complex organs in their heads that allowed them to see light, colours and shape? No, because lights & colours are completly unknown concepts to them.

Humans do not have an electrostatic sense, but we can conceive of one. In fact, there are some animals which do have an electrostatic sense (I think sharks and cockroaches, for instance), and we know that they have such a sense. And this is a sense completely separate from any of the categories that Mangetout mentioned. There are also creatures with a magnetostatic sense (certainly some bacteria, and probably migratory birds), and we can understand those, too.

[FilmGeek]

*Originally posted by ftg *
**The Star Trek universe where all the aliens look like humans is just bad Science Fiction and in no way relates to how Scientists could envision aliens. **

[geek]

They ‘explained’ this in an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation. An ancient race of humanoids spread bits of their DNA on many worlds and the pieces were discovered by Humans, Romulans, Ferengi and Klingons, IIRC, and made a message from the past explaining why everyone looks the same.

And, special effects are expensive.

[/geek]

[Micro_Furry]

*Originally posted by Mangetout ***

C 1.01 10^7
Si 10^6

So, is it suprising that the elements necessary life (as we know it) are hydrogen, oxygen, carbon and nitrogen? If you want silicon-based life, you not only have to explain the chemistry, you have to explain why the life would be based on an element 10,000 times less abundant than carbon…**

A point I would raise is… If Carbon is 10^7 and Silicon is 10^6, that doesn’t make Silicon 10,000 times less common than Carbon, it makes it only 10 times less common. Which all of a sudden makes it far more probable that silicon-based life could evolve.

But even if it was 10,000 times less abundant, silicon-based life would STILL evolve. By simple mathematics there are many orders of magnitude greater than 10,000 planets in the universe, so on at least some of them, silicon-based life would undoubtedly evolve. Unless the laws of probability took a holiday, as they often do when playing cheating video games…

*Originally posted by FilmGeek *
**[geek]

They ‘explained’ this in an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation. An ancient race of humanoids spread bits of their DNA on many worlds and the pieces were discovered by Humans, Romulans, Ferengi and Klingons, IIRC, and made a message from the past explaining why everyone looks the same.

And, special effects are expensive.

[/geek] **

That episode was the single worst pseudo-science I have ever seen come out of Star Trek… worse than their continual abuse of “subspace” as a deus ex machina for anything they are too lazy to spend 10 seconds coming up with an alternate explanation for.

If you “seeded” DNA on a planet, there is no conceivable way that 4 billion years later you would get creatures that in any way resembled you. Hell, look at all of the huge diversity of life on Earth… all of which diverged from just a few (or even one) original strains of bacteria. (Prokaryotes or however the hell they’re spelled.) Multiply this by a large number of planets, with different planetary chemistry and different solar energy inputs - there is literally no way that you would end up with basically the same beings on all those worlds after 4 billion years. Even worse is the conceit that they can breed with each other - and without the benefit of super-science at that! They just go at it! And produce half-human half-klingon walking bundles of paradox in the process. It’s utterly ridiculous.

It follows, actually, from just a variant on the ever-trite Creationist philosophy. The idea that the human form is the most superior form in the universe and all evolution eventually leads to it. Well, except for their other ridiculous conceit, “energy beings,” but that’s a different argument…

…

But anyway, that’s getting off-topic. Yes, people can imagine aliens. Hell, look at HR Giger and his Alien in the movie of the same name! Look at examples of concept art by those “life on other worlds” speculation shows they sometimes run on the discovery networks. Look at the Metroid!

(Which also off-topically… it’s pretty crazy, but this year they actually found a real-life jellyfish that resembles a metroid. It’s so variant from other jellyfish, in having those fat stubby tentacles instead of long tendrils, that it is in a completely different family and such by itself… “Big Red.”)

http://dsc.discovery.com/news/briefs/20030512/gallery/newjelly_zoom.jpg
http://dsc.discovery.com/news/briefs/20030512/gallery/newjelly4.jpg

[Mangetout]

*Originally posted by Micro Furry *
**A point I would raise is… If Carbon is 10^7 and Silicon is 10^6, that doesn’t make Silicon 10,000 times less common than Carbon, it makes it only 10 times less common. Which all of a sudden makes it far more probable that silicon-based life could evolve.

But even if it was 10,000 times less abundant, silicon-based life would STILL evolve. By simple mathematics there are many orders of magnitude greater than 10,000 planets in the universe, so on at least some of them, silicon-based life would undoubtedly evolve. Unless the laws of probability took a holiday, as they often do when playing cheating video games…**

Abundance of materials is only part of the problem; another part is the way in which the substance reacts with other substances; probably the simplest example of this would be:
Carbon Dioxide is the waste product of carbon-based, oxygen breathing metabolisms; it is easy to dispose of because it is a soluble gas.
Silicon dioxide is an insoluble solid (sand).
Silicon is like that in a number of ways; simply less reactive and less convenient to handle.
Now, I’m not saying that this is an insurmountable problem, only that it further tips the odds in favour of carbon/hydrogen life.

[bbeaty]

*Originally posted by TheMoFoD *
I wasn’t talking about Eskimos coming up with aliens, since we don’t know what they look like. I’m wondering if the Eskimo can draw a picture of a cow, or whale, or eagle or crocodile etc. or if he’s limited to drawing penguin-man combinations.

I vaguely recall something about eskimo religion. Some creatures from their spirit world are just talking animals, others are completely alien, horrific monsters from nightmares which don’t resemble animals in their environment.

Which brings up an interesting point. As a young child, if you have nightmares about profoundly alien creatures… who created those images? They apparently just boiled up out of your lower mental regions, but in a very real sense those lower regions are not “you”, and those acts of creativity which produced them cannot be easily investigated.

For example, where did these images originally come from.