mazamba:

So one of my favorite themes on this site is the “Humans Are Weird To Aliens” thing. Most people realize that we could be considered unusually friendly or unusually tough to an extraterrestrial species.

Yet people don’t realize just how alien we might really be to them.

There are moons in our own solar system that will never see liquid water in normal circumstances. To aliens that evolved in this frigid climate of liquid methane oceans, we’d be exotic lifeforms that melt mountains down for a drink hailing from an infernal planet that would boil away they methane-soluble bodies within seconds of arrival.

Imagine an interaction with a creature that considers steel impossible simply because steel’s melting point would kill everyone that tried to reach that temperature.

Life in other planets could be so alien, that we’d never recognize it as life.