9 Ways You're Picturing Aliens Wrong

3. They Might Not Be Biological

Body face robot man
Pixabay

Okay, in fairness, you might have imagined them like this, but it could be that alien intelligence exists in a non-biological form.

Whether intelligent or not, a self replicating system could conceivably propagate itself throughout the galaxy without the continued input of a biological being. Robotics and AI are obviously unlikely to arise spontaneously, but once switched on, they could act as a completely self-sustaining system exactly like humans.

There are those here on earth who think the idea of self-replicating artificial life is not just possible, but inevitable. There are even those who think that it could be the dominant life form in the universe.

This throws a spanner in the works for our attempts at detecting alien life via the medium of biomarkers. If there's a civilisation of artificial minds that are living in the form of digital uploads in a supercomputer, there's not much chance that they'll be kicking out too much methane for us to detect.

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