Image Description: GIF of a person in a bright green alien suit and mask waving
By definition, an extraterrestrial is any life form originating from outside Earth.
What is life? Guenther Witzany, evolutionary scientist and philosopher, published an article in 2020 describing life as a complex process of proteins interacting in three domains: reproduction, metabolism and gene regulation through communication.
Wouldn't humans be ET to ETs? Yup! We just don't know if or how they would communicate that concept about us like we do them.
We don't know how similar we are to alien life or how many other life forms exist, used to or could — but secular magickians are interested in finding out.
WHAT SEPARATES EXTRATERRESTRIALS AND OTHER SUPERNATURAL ENTITIES?
If they exist, there's nothing definitively separating aliens from supernatural entities. All that "extraterrestrial" establishes is that the entity originated beyond Earth's ecosystem, and "supernatural" is anything beyond humanity's collective or personal understanding.
While we haven't successfully made widely-evident contact with ETs yet, scientists like Sarah Imari Walker, Avi Loeb and Seth Shostak are interested in finding whatever's out there. There's also the SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) Institute — an entire team of astronomers, astrobiologists, physicists, geologists and chemists studying origins of life and intelligence to share with the public.
Now that humans have advanced technology, it's easier for us to reason ET civilizations having similar abilities or perhaps better. It doesn't feel bizarre anymore to think about an advanced ET traveling at the speed of light, making clones in an attempt to retain immortal memory or telepathically networking with homo sapiens.
Some spiritual mythologies consider humans as plants of ETs. Perhaps they sprouted our galaxy and species as a private lab experiment.
Even if that were the case, it wouldn't change the truth that humans ought not worship them. It wouldn't change history that those same ETs were unavailable for the earthly ones who've lived humiliating lives and died torturous deaths.
In the search for extraterrestrial life, it's crucial to remember that ETs, no matter how different from us, are likewise emergent from simpler origins. They likely have systems of design and function (magick) with mechanics embedded in some type of physics. They're likely evolutionary — emerging from adaptations of basic life forms.
WHAT KIND OF EXTRATERRESTRIALS ARE PREDICTED TO ACTUALLY EXIST?
We don't have hard, empirical evidence about extraterrestrials, but scientists have made extensive models about variations of extraterrestrials that may exist.
Here are a few criteria we think are likely to exist among extraterrestrials:
1. They're alive. Extraterrestrials are life forms. They reproduce, metabolize and have gene regulation/communication.
2. They're habitable. They have homes, atmospheres and deeply integrated relationships with them.
3. They're evolutionary. This means they're developmental, have hereditary generations that change over time and are hierarchal (exist with systemic organizations of organisms in levels).
4. They're sensitive. They have senses that interact with their environments and adapt to them.
Image Description: GIF of a neon green alien floating in a purple tube on water
With this model, there are probably as many extraterrestrials on other climate-appropriate planets as there are terrestrial variations on Earth.
Consider everything on our own planet that indicates life: primitive akaryotes like bacteria and archaea; eukaryotes like plants, animals and fungi; viruses (though not considered life in isolation, viruses do require living hosts to replicate).
With those variations, other environment influences to factor in: suns, moons, weather, energy and elements.
Image Description: GIF of a neon green dancing alien between an orange mushroom and bacteria
WHY HAVEN'T WE MADE CONTACT YET?
The reason scientists think we haven't made extraterrestrial contact in our galaxy is because we're the most advanced species in it.
Consider how humans are just beginning to colonize the moon and other planets. Over time, this process exponentiates, and eventually, there may be many life-filled civilizations structured throughout the Milky Way.
The Fermi Paradox zooms in on how, if an extraterrestrial species had the means, they would colonize their entire galaxy and maybe also ours. Given the rate of humanity's development, ETs have had plenty of time to colonize our galaxy, but where are they?
SETI Institute has proposed a few possible explanations as to why we've not yet made extraterrestrial contact:
- It's too expensive for the ETs to travel.
- Humans are entertainment for / uninteresting to ETs.
- Humans are progressing at a similar pace as ETs or quicker than them.
There's a lot more to dissect and discover here, and you have a part.
Image Description: Alien staring from inside a car window as it rolls down
REFERENCES
Gair, Jane & Molnar, Charles. (2013). Concepts of Biology; 1st Canadian Edition. https://opentextbc.ca/biology/
Wikipedia contributors. (2022). Extraterrestrial life. In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 02:17, August 2, 2022, from https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Extraterrestrial_life&oldid=1099993562
Witzany, Guenther. (2020). What is Life? Frontiers in Astronomy and Space Sciences, Vol. 7. https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fspas.2020.00007
DOI=10.3389/fspas.2020.00007