You know I’m a fan of DarkSyde’s Science Friday series at Daily Kos.  I often point out these posts to bring them to your attention.  This week is no different.

The latest edition lets DarkSyde tackle the idea of extraterrestrial life and why we’ve not heard from them yet, as well as what they might be like.  I highly recommend you read Science Friday: What Dreams May Come for a fantastic voyage into the unknown.  His view is correct: the premise of alien life is beyond our understanding because of its very alien nature.  Our lack of success in finding life out there does not mean none exists.  On the contrary, it simply means we’ve as yet been unable to think in ways alien enough to comprehend where that life might be, what it might be up to, and how it might be contacted, not to mention the consideration that some aliens may have no wish to be discovered.

And yet, life on our world is not only incredibly diverse and tenacious, we keep finding it in places we previously considered not only sterile, but uninhabitable. If that is any guide, whatever aliens we may someday discover are likely going to be far more bizarre and exotic than anything even the most gifted human storytellers can conjure up. Moreover, humans have almost no experience with the vast infinitude that stretches around us. We’re a new species, traveling on the frozen rocky skin of a tiny pale-blue dot hurtling through an ocean of space and time. We’ve barely gotten our toes wet, yet. But our first eager–if crude– vessels of mind, energy, and matter are already testing the waters near shore. And until those cosmic journey’s are begun in earnest, who’s to say what alien nightmares may someday materialize, or what dreams may come.