Alien Life

Previously I talked about three possible interstellar destinations for Project Orion and in this post I will bring up speculation about possible alien life and what it might look like.

First I will star with a Star Wars fish called a Colo Claw Fish which has the possibility of inhabiting a planet around a nearby star system such as Alpha Centauri and Tau Ceti instead of in a galaxy far far away.  Tau Ceti E and F are two possible places for Colo Claw Fish to live but we still have yet to find any planets in the habitable zone around either Alpha Centauri A or B.

One of my favorites is featured in the conclusion of Episode 2/Chapter II of Carl Sagan's Cosmos called "One Voice In The Cosmic Fugue".  In 1976 Carl Sagan and a colleague Edwin Ernest Salpeter made some calculations and came up with the possibility of the Jupiter "Floaters" and "Hunters" which Adolf Schaller painted and there has been subsequent art of the floaters and hunters by other people myself included.

Adolf Schaller's first painting of possible gas giant atmospheric life

Close-ups of Jupiter Floaters

Sagan and Salpeter's speculation stated with very little life forms called "Sinkers" that would have to reproduce before they are fired and hope that the turbulence will carry some of their offspring to the higher cooler regions.  They the two made calculations about some of the other forms of life that might inhabit a gas giant's atmosphere.  Jupiter Floaters are vast living balloons kilometers across, enormously larger than any Sando Aqua Monster, beings the size of cities.  Floaters are imagined in great herds for as far as the eye can see with camouflage patterns on their skin.  There are also other creatures to inhabit such a world, smaller, faster, and more maneuverable hunters.  The hunters eat the floaters both for their organic molecules and their store of hydrogen and there cannot be very many hunters because they would die off if they eat all the floaters.  Hollow sinkers would evolve into the first floaters and self-propelled floaters would evolve into the first hunters.  Physics and chemistry permits such life forms and art gives them a certain look but nature does not have to follow our speculations.  below is another speculative guess about atmospheric gas giant life which Adolf Schaller also drew.

This post has been a preview about possible alien life.