Odd question but they could look us and maybe I'm one.

Odd question but they could look us and maybe I'm one.

Speculation is always fun. Most of my stories are built on various speculations, and some of those speculations deal with alien life. There are some limitations in evolution that would need to be in place for an intelligence to develop technology. One of them would be depth perception which demands at least binocular vision, though it could be trinocular or any multiple of light receptors. These light receptors (eyes) would need to be capable of high resolution for detail, and sensitive to color variations. Another would be the ability to manipulate things, from the very small to the moderately large, requiring appendages akin to fingers attached to maneuverable arms, and the minimum number of arms would be two, while the minimum of digits per hand would be three (including some form of opposing digit). Everyone can think of times when it would have been handy to have and extra hand or two, so the upper limit to appendages remains unknown. Just remember that everything your critter becomes is guided by deep time and specific conditions -- none of which will be equal to Earth.

This Nova documentary is just a few years old and the numbers from Kepler data have since nearly tripled. Good documentary and worth a viewing.

And this one from NatGeoDocs is a good deal of fun.

Like a god to a lesser specie if they are the one getting here. If we are the one getting there... could be lesser level than earth animals and will still be extraterrestrial. So they are filed under "god don't exist" until they show up here or we show up there.

We will never know, yet I believe the odds are in favour of life elsewhere. I like t imagine life, but not as we know Jim. So not necessarily carbon based, no dna. In a colder place, it may use ammonia instead of water to move molecules in, to me silicon based life seems unlikely though silica may be part of its structure I can't see it being the main ingredient as carbon is for us. Arsenic is more likely. All this said, carbon is quite abundant out here I just feel we limit our search, we look only at places where our known life can exist. I would be looking for an arsenic based lichen.

Probably a lot like life on this planet, organs for movement, sensing light, touch, heat, smell, taste, eating, breathing, etc.
As for the sort of organisms that would be capable of visiting other star systems, they would probably have gone well past natural evolution and shaped themselves into brains supported by technology, because it will be a better option than fragile irreplaceable bodies.

or invisible

Considering the unlimited diversity just on this planet I would say anything goes. If I consider the Sumerian Texts then beings similar to us; reading the translated texts one is lead to believe humanity actually has extraterrestrial genes.

As diverse as the lifeforms on Earth are, one would expect life from another solar system to be as varied and different than human life is from the other creatures on our world. There is no way of anticipating what "they" would look like...we can only speculate, albeit wildly.

They could be microscopic, invisible or comprised of matter undistinguishable as a life form to humans, unlike the insipid cartoon type characters protrayed in most simple minded science fiction movies

If you believe the accounts of abductees, there are at least six species of aliens that have visited Earth: [en.wikipedia.org]

High point would be that they all look like the naked vampire on "Lifeforce ". But I digress.

After watching all the Men in Black spoofs, I have no idea what an alien life form from another galaxy could possibly look like. I'm still trying to figure out if I would be excited and thrilled or scared out of my fucking mind.

They would be a whisper in your head. A bacteria that radiation can't kill. A fog from nowhere. A mist from the sky. A thought.