Thoughts on aliens......

1) cute - don't know if Data from Star Trek Next Gen counts as an alien (not human and not from earth??), but I find the enthusiastic and earnest way he just tries anything without preconceptions or prejudices and usually comes up with an interesting and intelligent take on it is rather endearing, so maybe "cute"??

2) Admire - obviously Darth Vader who has so many positive qualities that far too often get overlooked. Also the Alien Queen (Alien/Aliens etc). She is awesome: driven, resilient, goal oriented and willing to take any steps necessary to achieve what's necessary.

3) Scariest: Kai Winn from DS9 - arrogant, manipulative and treacherous. Turning people's faith and hopes into a personal power grab. Yeah: scary

4) Funniest: Audrey II from Little Shop of Horrors. Funny and dangerous, but still funny. 

5) Identify: Garak from DS9. So many mental health issues(!). Feeling alone and a perpetual outsider. Coping on the outside, because he has to, but struggling on the inside. Driven, goal oriented, clever and able to play politics without having a particular desire for power. Makes rational decisions even if they're difficult. Lacking in empathy and not afraid of being unpopular. Ultimately on the side of "good" but often reluctantly. (I'm always drawn to morally ambiguous characters!)

Also a category of my own: most irritating alien: Q from Next Gen. He's such an annoying character. 

The Borg were scary.

I agree Garak was interesting

Zaan was so cool and Aeron too.

Data was so philosophical

I don't really watc much sci fi

But the scariest Aliens ever were the Cybermen, not even Daleks were as scary!

Why do we assume that aliens would be interested in us humans? They might be more like ants and be highly organised, or bee's and have a hive mind? Or they might be a fungus and be communicating with the whole earth, and we don't know.

What would happen if aliens landed somewhere relatively unimportant, like New Zealand, or Cyprus and not America, Russia or China, would Trump make them unwelcome for not dropping in on him first?

Why do we assume that aliens would be interested in us humans? They might be more like ants and be highly organised, or bee's and have a hive mind? Or they might be a fungus and be communicating with the whole earth, and we don't know.

What would happen if aliens landed somewhere relatively unimportant, like New Zealand, or Cyprus and not America, Russia or China, would Trump make them unwelcome for not dropping in on him first?

Why does humanity assume aliens would be interested in us? Good question, this is what I think:

Humanity projects certain attributes like communication, cognition, sentience, intelligence etc onto the world around them. They also assume any aliens, no matter how superficially different they might appear, will also have these core attributes. Anthropomorphism is just something humans do, it's inate.

So it appears logical to humans that if they're interested in aliens then aliens must be interested in them.

Plus, of course, it wouldn't be particularly entertaining fiction if it was about simple, single cell, alien organisms that hitched a lift on a comet and have been quietly doing their boring, non-invasive, alien thing for millennia without any humans ever noticing! ;)

Maybe they have already in fact...

In the almost limitless vastness out there, statistically there must be something or someone out there. Distances are huge, so unless some form of FTL propulsion has been invented, it's going to take a while to get anywhere.

Over the billions of years of earth history there have been multiple mass extinction events which somehow our distant ancestors survived which eventually led to the evolution of early humans and much later to homosapiens. It's complete chance that we are the dominant species.

If one of those events hadn't happened or had been less severe would we be here? Could reptiles or some sort of aquatic life be dominant. 

If you watched star trek enterprise they had a race known as the xindi which were made up of different types of evolved creatures. (Insect, humanoid, arboreal, aquatic, reptile). Most aliens are portrayed as humanoid as it's obviously easier to relate and possibly emulate (inexpensively). Could there be species of pure energy or sentient gas or liquid?

We have various creatures that have evolved to live in extreme environments, some living in the massive depths of the oceans on thermal vents the spew out super heated water. There a snail with iron armour that lives in 9500 feet in water that's around 400c. One of my favourite creatures is a tardigrade or water bear, they are a tiny creature that is almost indestructible, they can survive in a  vacuum, high radiation, heat, cold etc.

If we have life here, it's certainly out there somewhere.

Hi Cat woman, I don't assume that aliens would be interested in us. If you think about aliens In terms of life on other planets that we might encounter if we were ever able to travel the universe, there could be life forms of lower intelligence than us who wouldn't be bothered if we landed on their planet. But I was thinking about intelligent aliens who have mastered interstellar space travel and found us, and I'm not sure you can have intelligence without curiosity.

In some movies and novels, aliens are insect like rather than humanoid. I'm not a scientist, but I don't think insects are able to grow as large as humans on our planet, so maybe insect like aliens couldn't survive here. And how would insects build spaceships? I thought that opposable thumbs were a prerequisite for building stuff?

There have been alien stories where they had a hive mind (The Borg in Star trek being one example) but I'm not sure if that is an advantage as it would seem to me that it would stifle individuality, and therefore creativity and the ability to invent stuff.

If there are any scientifically gifted members here who can answer these questions it would be great to hear their ideas. This is certainly an interesting conversation.