response 1 of 37:

Apr 22 22:21 UTC 1997

make that bad 'hair', not bad 'hai'...o well...

response 3 of 37:

Jul 29 18:50 UTC 1997

Yes, but the likelyhood of the aliens ACTUALLY looking like that is what...
1,000,000,000,000(Imagine more zeros if you feel like it) to 1.... Life on
earth evolved this way for a reason... Life on another planet is almost
certainly not going to evolve the same way unless the planet was an EXACT
clone of earth, down to all the historical events.... one change in ANYTHING
and something will change.. maybe an extra arm her, one less leg there, etc...

response 5 of 37:

Aug 9 17:14 UTC 1997

Yes, but there are still basic things that they would have to have.  First
off, if they built spacecraft then they would have had to build it with 
something.. an appendage of some kind.  One could argue for telekinesis but
then why bother with a ship if  your mind powers are that great, just
make something that lets you survive space and go for it
Again casting aside the 'mind power' stuff, they would have to have something
to perceive the world around them with.. i.e. eyes, earrs, etc..
It would also seem that they might need to respirate somehow and maybe have
the need to eat and also release waste.  All these thing would require at
least for them to be more than worms or some other form of lower life.
The amount of legs (if any) might depend on the gravity  and terrain of
their planet, but surely they would have to get around somehow.  Useing
the physics that we have here on Earth (and one would assume that other
planets would have the same rules) there aren't really too many ways to do
all
these things and not resemble a Earth animal in some way, remember, there
are tons of different things here already.  Besides, the fact that they
choose to come to Earth would seem to suggest that there is
something similar to the world from which they came.  Maybe they look 
like something from Earth because they were looking for a place
like Earth to land.

response 7 of 37:

Aug 10 22:40 UTC 1997

Tackling the senses issue first:
We are accustomed to five senses - taste, hearing, smell, touch, and sight.
But even here on earth there exist creatures with 'extra' senses - moisture,
pressure, electricity, magnetic charge, and so forth.  Now consider all of
the artificial devices built to detect things normally undetectable - geiger
counters, electron microscopes, metal detectors, altimeters, spedometers,
etcetera.  
Consider a creature on an iron-rich planet with high concentrations of
radioactive minerals.  The planet's atmosphere is difficult to see through,
and does not conduct sound well.
So two of the major senses - vision and hearing - are relatively ineffective.
It does have a sense similar to vision, but acting in the very short
wavelength range, detecting X-rays and gamma rays so it can avoid the worst
of the radiation.  Because it is blind, it has a very highly developed
directions sense, using the north magnetic pole and radiation from nearby
stars as navigation beacons.  It also is very sensitive to air pressure, to
avoid running into things.
It's metabolism is dependent on iron, and so it uses the same sense which it
uses to find magnetic north to find deposits of ferrous minerals.  It has poor
senses of smell and taste, but a well developed sense of touch.
The trouble comes in assigning physical features to the critter.  Because we
are used to eyes as radiation-detectors, the nose as a scent-detector, the
inner ear as a judge of balance and direction, etcetera, it is hard to think
of alternatives.  Then there's things like locomotion, communication, eating
and eliminating, protection from the elements, and so forth.  This is where
it gets really tricky, because feasable alternatives are once again hard to
think of.  
And even if you could think of good physical features, what do you do about
things like technology and culture?  What does a blind and deaf creature
develop as a form of entertainment?  What does a creature with tentacles, or
fins, or hooks, or nothing, instead of limbs come up with as a sport?  What
kind of puns does a creature that communicates by scent, or touch, or morse
code think of?

response 9 of 37:

Aug 19 21:18 UTC 1997

> It would be much easier to go somewhere that you could survive
Tell me, y, has NASA staged any missions to Earthlike planets recently?  The
fact is, for pretty much any planet a 'planet just like home' is not too
likely to be nearby.

response 11 of 37:

Aug 21 19:18 UTC 1997

there aren't any earthlike plants around that we could go to.  if mars were
earthlike don't you think that we woulad have tried a lot harder to get
there faster?  When you don't have a choice you can't make one.

response 13 of 37:

Aug 23 20:39 UTC 1997

Don't get technical with me...

response 15 of 37:

Aug 24 17:15 UTC 1997

As we wait for an answer, I return to relevance...
y - exactly.  It's not worthwhile for us to try to find Earthlike planets,
so we just visit whatever's nearby.  Assuming most other types of planets are
similarly scarce, you could expect aliens to also visit whatever's nearby,
meaning they wouldn't necessarily be adapted to life there.  So, aliens that
landed on Earth wouldn't necessarily be earthlike creatures.

response 17 of 37:

Aug 27 22:02 UTC 1997

I belive you may be right, but we'd better wait for Tricia on that one...

response 19 of 37:

Aug 28 23:15 UTC 1997

<Dan bows deeply.  Deeply enough, in fact, that his forehead adheres to the
 floor>

response 21 of 37:

Aug 30 16:29 UTC 1997

<y hands orinoco a trophy for winning, lucky thing it is really a 
bottle of solvent. :)>

response 23 of 37:

Sep 6 08:50 UTC 1997

I was thinking about this the other day.  Why is it that nobody (that I  know
of anyway) has claimed to have heard any sort of radio signals from a ufo?
Seems to me that they would have to talk to each other somehow, whatever they
are.
Are there alternatives that would not be able to be 'intercepted'?  I kinda
get the feeling that it doesn't really take much to surf around the
airwaves and hear all kinds of neat stuff.