What different forms of life may exist?

Question

All Life forms on Earth work basically the same way, usually having eyes ears nose mouth and feet of some sort. Some are an exception, but have at least one of those things.

Could there be some sort of life form in the universe that doesn't Use feet to walk around, or Eyes to see. How could something like this look?! It's difficult to Imagine a Creation that doesn't need those things, how would it know what was around it? but why would everything have to be like us? there has got to be something out of the Ordinary, Maybe it floats off of a chemical reaction that forms under it self and it's repelled by some weird gasses in the atmosphere or air on the planet, who knows!
What do you think something could be like? Explain how it could look or move or anything?

I get your drift! Cool way to look at it, and it's totally true.

Answer 1

Replicating life would would exist significantly based on its ability to thrive and survive in its environment. Therefore, Darwinian natural selection would be a universal mandate for the sustenance of lifeforms.

The protolife chemistry is quite ineresting, though certainly outside my expertise. (I'm a physicist.) There is some speculation that the more universally abundant very high density amorphous ice might provide the basis for the production of the molecular structures that gave rise to replicating molecules like DNA. Amorphous ice differs in that, like a glass, it is statistically disordered not crystalline in structure.

Water is the basis and is so basically because of the hydrogen bonding. Ammonia is another possible basis for life for that reason. Water has properties that ammonia and other polyatomic hydrogen-based molecules, like ammonia and methane, do not, principally its ability to form four (two shared and two sharing) hydrogen bonds per molecule and form a tetrahedral structure.

There could be quite a diversity of life in the universe, as diverse as the diversity of stable envirnoments out there. The structure of those organisms would be dictated by natural selection in those environments pursuant to survival through the point of replication.

Answer 2

Living creatures on earth have eyes,ears ,nose etc due to the fact of the particular location of the earth in the universe.
Since sunlight comes into the earth we human beings evolved in such a manner to have a pair of eyes.Since sound is there in the earth, we have ears to hear the sound
Evolution has a rule to make the living creature devlop sensory organs so that it can survive.
But there may be planets with living creatures which doesnt have eyes or ears or nose. That depends on the location of the planet in the universe. If the location of the planet is such that no light penetrates it then living creatures over there do not need eyes.

Take bats for example . They roam around in the night. Is there light in the night? But they still survive using some sort of sound reflection technique
Mental telepathy doesnt need any of the five sensory organs .

Likewise there may be other forms of life on other planets which does not have eyes, ears or nose but some other organs depending on the location of the planet in the universe

Answer 3

Do some reading in biology. You'll see that there's already a much more diverse set of life forms already on earth. Most have none of the features you attribute to life forms on earth. Look at plants, bacteria, algae, and fungi. Look at those found in extreme environments like geysers, fumaroles, deep ocean vents, and so on.

Others have noted why life works so well with its present chemistry, especially with the hydrogen bonding and the extreme flexibility of carbon bonding. That's not to say life using some other chemistries is impossible, it's just that the one life uses now works so very well.

If you find another universe with different physical laws and particle sets, you will find a different chemistry. If life exists there, it will necessarily have a different form.

Answer 4

In evolution biology is a concept call convergent evolution than said that unrelated species can develop the same characteristics, an example of this is the wings in a bird and the wings of a dragon fly. I imagine that species in other planets will develop eyes and other characteristics familiar to us because these characteristics are the more efficient reaction to similar necessities. But, what electromagnetic wavelenght those extraterrestrial species will see? Infrared? ultraviolet?

Here, in these rare planet, we have two kind of liefs the one that take it's energy directly or indirectly from photosynthesis and other species that use other paths to obtain energy. The species that use non-photosynthetic energy was discovered less than 7 years ago at the bottom of the ocean and this discovery is one of the biggest discovery in biology history.

Answer 5

Since I believe in evolution, I would expect any complex life form to be a product of it's environment. If they live in a liquid environment they will likely develop some form of locomotion that allows them to survive in their environment. Further, it would likely be the case that most life form from the same environment would share the same basic characteristics because those would be best suited for survival in that environment. If it was a planet with varied environments like Earth (mainly meaning water and land), you would expect the animals from one environment would resemble those in another because they would share common ancestors.

I would tend to think the biggest question is whether life needs an environment like Earth to evolve and/or thrive. Or if life is capable of developing in many different types of environment and even having different building blocks (for example breathing nitrogen instead of oxygen; being something other than carbon based).

Answer 6

Either you are the author or you are an avid reader of (you can of course be both) SF.

Most of the primitive life forms (from our point of view) don't have eyes, ears, mouths, legs and hands etc. Amoeba for example have none of the organs that you mentioned. How aware it is of itself and of its environment? Difficult to answer.

And are the carbon based life forms as found on the earth the only possibility? There can be others based on other elements too and finally if you define life as awareness, it can exist without any physical body, don't you think?

Answer 7

Well, i couldn't really imagine what another life form would look like, but i definitely believe that we are not the only physically form of life out there. If we can survive on this planet i'm sure other life can survive and adapt on another planet that we just haven't discovered yet, and probably shouldn't discover. If you think about it, we are aliens to because to another life form we are just as odd and different as they are...get my drift???