Often, aliens, who, thanks to the entertainment industry, take on a variety of forms, turn out to be similar to humans, but one Australian scientist has several ideas about what alien life might be on seven planets for a red dwarf - and it will certainly be completely different from Earth.
According to science fiction books and Hollywood movies, aliens are associated with "little green men with big eyes." In addition to them, there are still more or less humanoid aliens, which are mentioned among ufologists and in reports of abductions, where aliens are usually gray, white (known as "Tall White") or reptiles.
However, Dr. Brian Chu of Flinders University of Australia, working with artist Stephen Grice, has created 3D images of the planet and alien creatures that logically explain the formation of life in a world that revolves around a red dwarf. In a world with limited resources, dominated by solar winds (red dwarfs are a constant source of bursts of plasma and radiation particles that can destroy the atmospheres of their planets for millions of years, as astrophysicist Neil de Grasse Tyson noted), life must adapt as much as possible to use that that is at hand.
Dr. Chu envisions alien life in the world around a red dwarf amphibian, or any other cold-blooded vertebrate that has an aquatic larval stage and a terrestrial adult stage. But this amphibian, evolving on a barren planet with scarce sources of potential food, will not be like terrestrial amphibians.
Its body may have a hard shell and four limbs, a small pair in the back and a large pair in front, designed to dig and support a large hammerhead. Its mouth is located at the bottom of the head, which will allow the animal to pluck plants and suck nutrients from the tubers. His skin will be crystal clear in order to receive more energy from his star.
This "strange creature", according to Chu, can feed on low-growing lichens and can dig tubers from the soil. The low-slung body and armored carapace gives it the ability to forage during hot storms. The paddle-like tail and vestigial fins will remain from the aquatic larval stage, which is likely to pass in cold lakes of melting glaciers at the edge of the dark zone.
Hardy plants will be more like cacti, able to retain water for a long time. And their seeds will have some kind of propellers that allow them to fly in different directions.
“The harsh conditions on the planet's surface could force plants to grow underground,” Chu says. - Like mushrooms, which in this way would protect themselves from winds, high temperatures and radiation. The fleshy bodies of these "plants" are mostly hidden underground, only a few petals trap moisture and use the sunlight with the help of symbiotic microbes."
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Whether aliens on red dwarf planets such as Trappist-1 will resemble the lifeforms Brian Chu draws is hard to say for sure. Even if alien life is eventually discovered and appears to be human-like, then, given the variety of evolutionary paths that resulted in many life forms on Earth alone, such life is likely to be too alien.
Voronina Svetlana