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...except maybe to dip into it now and then to harvest some protein delicacies...

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Think of capsaicin. We can tolerate small amounts of it, some other creatures can't take any, and others don't even notice. Suppose there is a living system on some other planet where it's a necessary signalling molecule -- all of that life would be toxic to us, even if it uses mostly familiar organic compounds otherwise. But the chances are that other life forms will use compounds that our digestive systems have not adapted to, and are possibly toxic to us. I suspect we'd probably be toxic to other life forms as well.

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Think of capsaicin. We can tolerate small amounts of it, some other creatures can't take any, and others don't even notice. Suppose there is a living system on some other planet where it's a necessary signalling molecule

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Think of capsaicin. We can tolerate small amounts of it, some other creatures can't take any, and others don't even notice. Suppose there is a living system on some other planet where it's a necessary signalling molecule

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So instead of tasting like chicken, the creatures of that planet would taste like buffalo wings...

Mmmm.... Scotty, beam me down some blue cheese dressing...

Jarad

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Horta are just like Oysters..only giant sized.

Pesse (I'm thinking aphrodisiac on steroids here...) Mist

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Think of capsaicin. We can tolerate small amounts of it, some other creatures can't take any, and others don't even notice. Suppose there is a living system on some other planet where it's a necessary signalling molecule -- all of that life would be toxic to us, even if it uses mostly familiar organic compounds otherwise. But the chances are that other life forms will use compounds that our digestive systems have not adapted to, and are possibly toxic to us. I suspect we'd probably be toxic to other life forms as well.

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You mean Star Trek lied to us when they pretty much beamed down unprotected to just about any alien planet eating with & (in Kirks case) mating with the indigenous population?

I always wondered about the partial pressure problem of different planets? Even if the atmosphere was breathable I would have concerns about air embolism, decompression sickness etc going from ship to surface so quickly.

Also consider the revulsion factor. Who in their right mind would eat some slimy tentacled alien ink squirter?

Pesse (I need to order a plate of Calamari and think this through.) Mist

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But what about green Orion slave girls?

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There's no reason that other life forms would have anything like our subset of configurations, or that they would use them for the same functions.

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There's no reason that other life forms would have anything like our subset of configurations, or that they would use them for the same functions.

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But (given our old friend, the sample of one), there's no reason they wouldn't, either.

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Actually, we already have sample sizes greater than one for many of the compounds life uses. There are a number of examples of very different substances being used for parallel functions in different organisms.

Take skin covering, for instance. Plants use cellulose, arthropods use chitin, and vertebrates use keratin. Three substances, three lineages, one function.

Take skeletal structures. Plants use a combination of cellulose and lignin, arthropods use chitin (their skin is their skeleton), and vertebrates use a combination of collagen and calcium phosphate.

And these are all from eukaryotes that shared the same DNA for nearly 3 billion years before diverging into different lineages. Yet for all our shared history, and for all the eating our ancestors have been doing on plants and arthropods, we still can't digest cellulose or lignin or chitin.

Add to that the fact that the same peptides can have very different effects in different cell types, and you begin to see that the relationship between molecule and function is a very loose one overall -- however specific it may be in any given cell type -- and there is no reason to expect that living systems with very different origins, different histories, and different environments would find molecules from completely foreign organisms to be of any use.

I'd be surprised indeed if we were to find that any E.T. was safely digestible for us, or us for them.

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In my gut (meaning, I haven't thought this through with either rigourous logic or serious intellectual research) I feel this silence betokens either there is no intelligent/sentient life elsewhere, or that the geometries of scale in the universe are so large and the limitations of physics so severe even they can't overcome them.

Your thoughts, please.

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This 'idea' of intellegent is in many ways debated, so it's not that there is a clear definition. If the equation could apply to bacteria in a Petri dish then I rest my case. Let me take the opposite side and say we are not intelligent, and then proceed - then there is a possibility that an intelligence from elsewhere would avoid us beyond cataloging that we are here.

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This makes an assumption that we are by some measure 'intellegent' and that it somehow would apply somewhere else - but we have a sample of one. This 'idea' of intellegent is in many ways debated, so it's not that there is a clear definition. If the equation could apply to bacteria in a Petri dish then I rest my case. Let me take the opposite side and say we are not intelligent, and then proceed - then there is a possibility that an intelligence from elsewhere would avoid us beyond cataloging that we are here.

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This 'idea' of intellegent is in many ways debated, so it's not that there is a clear definition. If the equation could apply to bacteria in a Petri dish then I rest my case. Let me take the opposite side and say we are not intelligent, and then proceed - then there is a possibility that an intelligence from elsewhere would avoid us beyond cataloging that we are here.

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On the intelligence spectrum, I think a clear distinction could be made between bacteria in a petri dish and bacteria who design and build their own dish, find ways to the move the container from place to place, and develop strategies and technologies to communicate with colonies of bacteria in other dishes near and far.

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Exactly. What we are looking for when we mention extraterrestrial "intelligence" is actually technology on a level that we ourselves can recognize and understand. High intelligence without technology wouldn't show up on our radar.

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Exactly. What we are looking for when we mention extraterrestrial "intelligence" is actually technology on a level that we ourselves can recognize and understand. High intelligence without technology wouldn't show up on our radar.

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