As kids we were fed the thought of little green Martians, you know, with antennas, and three fingers? Modern day animations and graphics paint a much grander picture. Take Avatar for example, the Holy Grail of foreign life motion pictures. It’s complete with glowing plants, pterodactyl-like (and candy-colored) creatures, and let’s not forget the gargantuan blue hominids running around. Recently released I Am Number Four features dog-men called Mongols with both fangs and gills. The minds of Hollywood are both restless and imaginative, truly. They know what it takes to make a good movie, I’ll give them that, but what would genuine extra-terrestrial life look like?

Taking a scientific approach, life on Earth is believed to have began from the same single particle, and evolved over millions, or billions, of years to be what is seen today. That being said, if life on another planet also sparked from the same, single particle then the most intelligent life on that planet would be, you guessed it. Humans! Or something very close. Talk about disappointing. I can see the headlines now.

“Humans Crash Land on Earth!” or, “Humans Invade!”

Wait, what? Humans? We’re being overrun by people here? All this time we’ve been building on the little green Martian idea, and this is what we get? You’re joking; come back when you glow or something.

But don’t feel too disappointed yet, for Hollywood may not have been imaginative enough. According to science DNA, the thing that brings life to, well, life, is made up of four things which we call A, T, C, and G, and these are present in everything living here on Earth. I bet you didn’t know that because of this we share 50% of our DNA with a banana, 60% with a fruit fly, and that you are 99.99% just like every other person alive. That .01% accounts for all the differences seen in humans, physical and behavioral. The slightest difference changes everything.

Now, picture a planet with life where, due to mutation, they never developed an A, or they developed an extra one, let’s call it Y. That’s not a slight difference, but an astronomical one. Such a being would be unfathomable to the human mind.

The truth is, we have no idea what other-world life would look like. Until that day when we stumble upon them, or them upon us, we can rest assured knowing Hollywood will always be there for us.