Creatures on Other Planets

What would you expect on other planets? It’s a question I love asking my self because it lets my imagination run wild. As a kid, I loved watching shows about outer space, I mean, who doesn’t? Probably some weirdo, right? laughs nervously Space has always fascinated me and I’m sure it has fascinated you as well. But as the question I asked earlier, what would you expect on other planets? Do you think It would be humanoid creatures with two arms and two legs like us? Would they have feathers instead of hair? Or skin like a reptile’s with webbed feet and fingers? Cool right? Or maybe they are just little microscopic creatures like bacteria, floating around in their planet, waiting for another million years to pass by before they decide to evolve and become a more structured and complex life form like how humans came to be. It’s easy to imagine other planets when we compare it to ours. I mean, our world has life, right? Shouldn’t other planets be the same as ours, like how Earth broke the secret to gaining life? Wouldn’t all livable planet in the universe has the same features as our Mother Earth? I mean if physics was the natural law of the universe, then it has to be the same with all planets. It also means that all matter would come about similarly to Earth.

Not long ago, a few livable planets were discovered. These planets were deemed livable by scientists because they are in their planet’s Goldilocks zone. Do you know the story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears? If you don’t, well Goldilocks was a little girl wandering the forest when she stumbled across a house. She entered the house and on the table were three soups. The first soup was too hot for her, the second was too cold, but the third one was just right. Not too hot and not too cold. That was the concept used when naming the Goldilocks zone, the planets that orbit around the Goldilocks zone can contain life. Just as Earth is in the Goldilocks zone of this solar system. The discovery of these planets brought about more questions than answers. The question being, what would life on those planets be like? So, to answer this question, nobody has a clue what it would look like as many factors affect the way life is formed. There are no two planets that have the same factors that could bring about similar types of life. Think about the animals in New Zealand, such as the kiwi and practically no other land mammals. These animals are vastly different compared to animals in Africa, with elephants and zebras. So, take those two places, multiply their diversity by about a million. And you just might understand how diverse life all over the universe would possibly be.

A factor that could determine how life could look on other planets starts with gravity. Gravity is a phenomenon that attracts planets, stars, and galaxies toward one another. On Earth, gravity is the one that keeps everything anchored on the ground, and the moon’s gravity is what changes the tides in the oceans. So, on other planets, gravity can also be different. It could be denser on a planet bigger than Earth. Meaning the life that is formed there would be shorter in order to adapt to the denser gravity. They might even have more limbs to be sturdier. Conversely, on planets with lighter densities, the creatures might be lightweight and tall. They might even be able to glide, soar, or fly with ease. Wouldn’t that be something?

Another factor would be evolution. Creatures evolve based on what they need to survive. For example, humans evolved to have two hands and thumbs to hold weapons for hunting, and eagles evolved with a sharp vision to see their prey from a faraway distance. So it should also be like this in other planets, in planets where the sun is dim, creatures that need the sun would grow to astonishing heights and be giants to survive.

But in reality, scientists aren’t even sure if life beyond our planet is as advanced as ours. Think about it. Our scientists have been trying to contact life in space for a long time. Wouldn’t they have replied by now if they existed? Or maybe they’re just waiting and watching us from above, which is why we have so many alien abduction stories and UFO sightings. Maybe life on other planets is just too primitive for contact outside of their world. Maybe they are just beginning to evolve from microscopic creatures. Some scientists have theorized what advanced alien races might do to their planets. They might be using their sun as a source of energy or colonizing other planets like most of the things you see on movies such as Star Wars and Guardians of the Galaxy. Some scientists have even gone as far as saying that life on other planets might look like the creatures we have here, in the deep sea. Most of the Earth’s oceans are actually unexplored, as they are hard to reach. Exploring the deep sea, they say, is like venturing into deep space. Into places such as Europa and Enceladus, icy moons of other planets, and they mostly consist of water and seas. Life in the deep sea could very well be similar to these places. Scientists have said that they expect to find life on other planets within the next 20 years as these types of moons are the most promising due to the majority of the planets being in the water and the existence of life forms in the most unlivable parts of the oceans on our planet. The life on these types of planets is imagined to be plankton-like creatures that roam around the deep sea with a shark-like creature as their predators. But with the lesser energy in dark oceans, living creatures that are formed there would probably be small in order to keep their energy consumption to the minimum. They compare it to taking everything on Earth and shrinking it down by 100 times, meaning that a shark could be around 5 cm!

If life on other planets were advanced, they would probably be machined based as well. Many theories by our scientists have said that they expect Artificial Intelligence to take over Earth and that humans might go extinct soon. And that’s not only limited to Earth. These might have already happened in other planets, and machines might be traveling through the world while studying other planets silently. As machines have a very strict code, they might have been coded to not contact any other life in the solar system.

Here’s a few examples of what life might look like on other planets

Imagine tall trees with hearts walking around, instead of animals or humanoids, with limbs that are capable of helping it reach water and the sun. It would be a reverse of what is here on Earth, animals that need the sun for photosynthesis in order to retain life, who can escape whenever there exists a threat nearby. Imagine giant dinosaurs that grow like trees and move slowly whenever the nutrients from the ground is used up.

Or on planets where the sun is very dim and creatures on these planets are not able to see. They might evolve into a form without eyes but a very strong sense of smell.