I've got good news and I've got bad news. I'll do the bad news first. The bad news is that we have

no idea what alien life, intelligent or otherwise, might look like. Seriously, no clue.

Your guess is as good as mine.

We have no data, no evidence, no images, no spectra, no secret Santa gift boxes, nothing.

We don't know what aliens look like, and this is the real kicker.

We're not even confident that we can identify them if they did exist.

So that's a bummer. But the good news, however, is that we have a lot of options.

We won't be able to come up with a firm answer, but that's okay because those options are really fun to talk about.

So let's talk about what aliens might look like.

Where should we start this conversation? Well, why not

science fiction? I mean, like I said, it's not like we have any evidence to go from, so our

imaginations are as good a place as any. And when it comes to science fiction, depiction of aliens,

we have the full spread. On one hand, there's the usual TV alien that is very much a human being with some makeup on,

which I understand is a product of budget and time constraints.

And then on the other end of the spectrum, there are those aliens of the week that are some weird

energy being floating in space or a puddle of goo in a cave

somewhere on some random planet. My point is that if we can possibly imagine it, then it just

might be a candidate for aliens. It's wide open here. We actually have no idea. And considering

that the Milky Way galaxy is home to a few hundred billion stars

with up to a few trillion planets, and that's just one galaxy amongst trillions in the observable

universe and countless more beyond that, it's somewhat reasonably likely to me that if life is

possible, and life is certainly possible because, hello,

...