When you hear the word "alien," what picture comes to your mind? And why the heck does everyone think of little green men!?

Locke

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"...and remember, the enemy gate is down."

Uh.....I don't think of little green men :blink:
I just think of the word Alien.

We think of 'aliens' as creatures very different from us.:wacko:
Long ago, movies and science fiction books made the 'little green men' image of aliens famous. thats why we think of that every Time we hear 'aliens.

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Limericks, written by me: http://limericker.blogspot.com

It can be everything. I don't think it is a green guy, but it become some kind of stereo type. Maybe aliens are exacly like as. That would be weird.

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Tim Kraayvanger
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When someone says the word "Alien" or "Aliens" I immediately think of the movies by those names. B) Usually the second one.

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Give me a firm place to stand and I will move the Earth.
-Archimedes

With all the assumptions of various forms of energy, perhaps they are here now, and we haven't yet detected them.

RAT

I've read or heard somewhere that this image of little green or gray men, bald, big eyes, with no nose, and thin limbs is actually a representation of our worst fears: what we are becoming.

It's subconscious meets evolution. We see (comparing ourselves with our common ancestors and other "higher mammals") that we are loosing fur (or hair), our senses aren't as powerful, as we depend more on technology our bodies don't need to be as powerful or endurable.

Maybe when we think about more evolved beings, that's what we visualize.

I know, the media has had great influence in this topic. But ¿why is this form the most popular?

I can't say if this features are realistic, mainly because I haven't met any aliens yet :P, but also because i don't know if those are necessarily the characteristics of a member of an advanced civilization. Maybe someone knowledgeable in evolution, anthropology, ¿biocosmology maybe?

Anyway, those are my two cents.

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Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity and I'm not sure about the former.
Albert Einstein

That's an interesting idea, CyberJIT!

I'm amazed at the sheer preponderance of this ridiculous belief in "Greys"! We all know Spielberg introduced them into popular culture in his overrated "Close Encounters". Spielberg himself stole the idea from the fabulous '50s classic "Earth Vs The Flying Saucers"!! Watch the film - when they remove the alien's helmet, there is your typical "Grey"!

I vote for "The Green Slime" over "little green men", personally. Give me tentacles and cyclopic eyes! :P

For those who have read "Ender's Game" and "Speaker for the Dead" how about "buggers" or "piggies?"

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"Human curiosity and the desire to make the intangible tangible, has led us into a new age where the New World has been settled, and the West has been won. But if you think that we, the human race, has conquered everything there is to conquer, then just look to the sky--at space--last and greatest of the frontiers."

Speaking of Ender's Game. The author actually defined 4 (I think) categories of "Alieness", the degree of "Alieness" of each category is defined by how easily we can communicate with them. I can't remember the definition for each level, only the fourth category: Impossible to communicate - War inevitable & will only end with total destruction of either species. The virus belongs to this category. I think the Hive Queen belongs to the 3rd.
Anyone remembers the whole thing?
From that point of view, the external form of aliens are not as important as how well we can communicate with them. Whether we see them as hostile or not also depends on that.
I think there's much truth to that line of thought, considering how we're locked in mortal combat with the multitude of viruses even now. Nobody cares whether these "things" have the right to exist or not, nobody knows/care what they want. We just wanna wipe them out. Clear & Simple.
So we dun have to look to space for aliens - there're all 4 categories of them right here in our own backyard! Pretty interesting...

Yes, it was developed by the character in the book called Demontheses (spelled right?) the four categories were Utlaning, which I think is a member of your own species but from another country (i.e. planet in the book) Framling I'm not for sure........
Raman is a member of another species, but is intelligent and capable of communication and peaceful reasoning. Varelse is the 4th term and is like raman, except for the fact that they cant not be reasoned with and are dangerous.

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"Human curiosity and the desire to make the intangible tangible, has led us into a new age where the New World has been settled, and the West has been won. But if you think that we, the human race, has conquered everything there is to conquer, then just look to the sky--at space--last and greatest of the frontiers."