In your opinion, Do you think are we alone in the entire universe? that we are a rare accident?

i'm 99.9999999% sure we aren't alone in he universe.

it depends on the environment in which they're in... they could be similar (not just to us but other things on this planet).. they could be totally different. i'm pretty sure they aren't exacly the same as anything on our planet that is SO unlikely.

I'm starting to get tired of answering this question...but yes, I think there is probably intelligent life outside our solar system...probably even in our galaxy. The reason for this is sheer probability, there are just too many stars and solar systems for none of them to harbor life and surely some of those harbor intelligent life as well.

OK, so as for the more interesting question, what do they look like?

This is a tough question to answer. I think they would likely have noses, eyes, and brains, however feet is a different story.

One example of this (on Earth) is the octopus. No feet (tentacles instead) yet highly intelligent. The truth about hands and feet are that intelligent life requires a way to physically manipulate objects around them. So for instance, I doubt intelligent life would have hooves, since this offers no fine motor skills. But something like an elephants trunk or octopus's tentacles does give this ability, so I would expect to see something to that effect...they would have to have some appendages that allowed them to finely manipulate objects around them.

Now the reason this capability is so important is that you cannot make tools with hooves...if you cannot make tools then you cannot make technology which means no matter how intelligent you were, with hooves, you couldn't progress past grazing. In fact, I would argue that standing up is probably what caused humans to evolve into intelligent beings (that is freeing up the hands to do stuff).

So the plant question is a little more answerable. There are two ways to go here:

1. Only specific stars can harbor life, i.e. our Sun. In this case plants would probably still be green and run on some form of photosynthesis, although probably not the same way our plants do.

2. Any star can support life. In this scenario, plants could be all different colors. Photosynthesis only works with green light (well actually it reflects green light, so white light would be a better statement). But if the star is putting out different wavelengths than ours, say blue, then plants might be blue instead of green, or maybe purple. Or even weirder they may appear transparent to us because they transmit visible light and reflect and absorb some other wavelength.

Likewise, the aliens from different stars wouldn't perceive light in the same spectrum we do. They might be able to see, for instance, infrared and be completely unaware of visible light. Here on earth, where there isn't very much infrared, they would see it as being fairly dark. Likewise we would probably see their world as being dark as well since there wouldn't be very much visible light.

I've never believed that inteligent aliens would necessarily look like humans as science fiction movies usually portray.

However, given to the morphological variety of the species that can be found on Earth, I've also thought that an alien creature might resemble an earthling.

But recently I had a strange dream.

I dreamed of a group of human astronauts on an alien planet. During the dream, the name of the planet was never mentioned.

The astronauts had all spacesuits on and were on a rocky surface watching a body of liquid. During the dream, the liquid was never identified either.

But all the austronauts were focusing their attention on a strange creature under the liquid. It was very large, round and purple. In diameter, this creature was comparable to the height of a human being. The creature wasn't a perfect sphere. And its surface wasn't smooth either.

Due to the conditions of the liquid, I couldn't see whether the creature had eyes or not, and during the dream, the austronauts never mentioned this either.

The austronauts started taking pictures, and meanwhile the creature ran away...

This struck me because as far as I know, there is no animal on Earth that is ROUND IN SHAPE or PURPLE.

So, there could be something out there that we are completely unfamiliar with...

In my opinion... we're not alone. Life may be a 10-billion-to-one chance, but there are *trillions* of chances in the universe. Life may be rare, but I have to think it's out there.

As for what it looks like... we're the product of our environment; a billion responses to a billion conditions. I would *guess* that eventually, *most* higher-intelligent creatures would evolve an approximately same size brain, and body to match. The nose might be upside down, they might require darker (or brighter) light, but... I would *guess* that bilateral symmetry is going to be a trend... probably not a law - I would bet there'd be other successful forms, but probably the majority would respond to their environment as the creatures on our planet did.

In my opinion we are almost certainly not alone. But I could be wrong.

It seems only reasonable with so many other possible planets and no known reason why life could not appear on some of them just as it did on Earth. But that is no proof and there is some small chance we really are alone.

I would assume, if they exist, that they would have at least some similarities to Earth life, but that would just be a guess.

Look at it logically. We are on a average planet, in an average solar system, in an average galaxy. So that makes life forms an average occurrence. That fact means there are in the very least, hundreds of billions of planets with similar life forms on them throughout the universe. Similar life will evolve similar characteristics. Just look at the diversity of life on earth. It is mind boggling, and we still share similar features of creatures born hundreds of millions of years before us.

I'm honestly clinging to the crazy idea that there may be humans somewhere in other galaxies. It's very likely right? SOMEWHERE there has to be some other life, we just haven't found it yet. I bet if there are people on other planets though, they will have developed differently or came up with different ideas on how to live and stuff. And will probably look way different.

I hope I'm alive to see the day that NASA finds life on other planets. x)

If, as you state on your question, we had the technologies to holiday the entire universe and nonetheless discovered that we are all on my own, it might lead me to have self belief that the mass and forces of the entire universe became/is mandatory to create a life transforming into and keeping environment in the international, like a huge huge equation of tests and balances. i might additionally contemplate whether in certainty that is completely balanced, and if no longer, what the "the rest" is and what does it recommend.

I won't give me personal opinion, but I will give you a theory to think about.

Imagine along time ago in ancient Egypt. People were enslaved by cruel, power hungry rulers. One day, a shiny metal object descended down from the heavens, landing mere feet from the Ruler. Out emerges the ruler of the kindest, most peace loving beings in the universe, ready to discuss peace with the newly found humanoids on the beautiful green and blue planet. Now being as ruthless and mean as they were, the Egyptians arrested the extraterrestrial being and held it hostage while they forced the rest of the new floating people to build large shapes with the floating shiny objects. These shapes were to be so large that the indigenous people would never be able to destroy them, no matter how hard they tried The Egyptian rulers would use this as a symbol of their power, of how they conquered the strange flying beings. But the extraterrestrial beings could not stand this, this torture any more so they made a heroic rescue of their beloved ruler and left the beautiful green and blue planet to the viscous humanoids that lived there. They did what any smart, peace loving person would do, they fled. They fled so far away as to never be found again and they vowed to never return to they evil humanoid...

And now you know,... the rest of the story.

The actual chance of another life sustaining earth-like planet existing is (10)^-15

[Ten to the negative 15th], or 1 one millionth of 1 one trillionth.

but considering how expansively massive the universe is, that number doesn't seem so small :)

Well, there's the Fermi Paradox. It now seems that most stars have planets. But many of those planets are a billion years older than the Earth.

The Milky Way, and many of the stars within it, are billions of years older than the Earth.

But if you extrapolate human technology a mere million years in the future, we (or our cybernetic successors) will have colonized the whole Milky Way.

So, where are those billion year more advanced civilizations? Why aren't they here already?