What would happen if we actually did discover some kind of alien life form?

[Hypercube]

What do you guys think the implications would be if we actually did find some sort of life form on Mars or in some meteorite, and I'm not talking about UFO's or little grey men, I'm talking about any form of life not born on earth, be it viruses, bacteria, fungus, protists, etc. I mean virtually every scientific book ever written would have to be rewritten. And what if that life form was nothing like anything we've ever seen before? After all, since we've never found any sort of non-terrestrial life (at least that's what the government tells us), how could we possibly say with certainty that extraterrestrial life forms would even have DNA, of if that is to far-fetched, maybe they would just have different nucleotides. Who knows, silicon based life forms are a common theme in science fiction, but theoretically they could exist, since silicon and carbon can form virtually all the same bonds.

 

I don't think it is too bold to say that when we're talking about extraterrestrial life forms, it is entirely possible that they evolved entirely differently than the life forms on earth. What do you guys think?

[Fanghur]

Hypercube is right about the fact that extraterrestrial life forms may have evolved completely differently than life on earth; and when we do eventually find an alien bacteria or something or other, we probably will see some differences between it and our bacteria. There has to be other forms of life in the universe, there is no question about that, whether or not they are technological is probably much more rare, but considering the size of the universe; 200 billion stars in 100 billion galaxies...do the math yourself.

[antimatter]

...do the math yourself.

 

And that's where the Drake Equation steps in...

[Gilded]

Protists or their remains on Mars for example would of course help to understand the conditions required for life to form (and it would be interesting to see if they're structurally similar to their Earth counterparts) and would be quite a discovery indeed, no doubt about that, but the discovery of life that doesn't base on familiar carbon biochemistry would be a tremendously more significant discovery as far as astrobiology goes, and at least more surprising.

 

And as we go further down on the "that's freaking amazing" scale, Something like this would be completely mindboggling.

[MrSandman]

The descriptions of the undiscovered are limitless, but I always hoped there are a mutually friendly and would like to learn from us and we'd learn from them.

[antimatter]

'Hope' being the key word. There's never any sure way of knowing.