Do aliens really exist and if so can we prove it?

 Why Sci-Fi Aliens Have What They Have, Tentacles and All

In the upcoming science fiction thriller Arrival, Amy Adams has to persuade viewers that she is Dr. Louise Banks, a brilliant linguist entrusted with establishing communication with a race of aliens known as Heptapods, which have numerous tentacles. 

Naturally, it is far simpler to convince us that Amy Adams is Louise than it is to persuade us that Heptapods are what aliens may genuinely look like. Science fiction may lead us to believe all kinds of things, but there is a fine line between what seems plausible and what is actually practical.

The extraterrestrials in Arrival seem more plausible at first appearance, or at least more complex, than the aliens in the majority of science fiction films. 

Yet why? They have tentacles and sophisticated language, which is a straightforward explanation. Furthermore, although being created particularly for the film, their language is authentic. 

This gives the alien invasion film Arrival a veneer of credibility by indicating that humans might theoretically utilize the logograms in Arrival to communicate.

Because of how amusing and antiquated those silly rubber masks in Outer Limits are, much earlier science fiction (TV, cinema, poetry, or prose) that deals with aliens frequently feels today. 

But it's crucial to keep in mind that there hasn't been any recent advancement in actual science, which is why these don't seem out of date. There is currently no active biological field of research on the physical appearance of sentient aliens. 

Not that astrobiology as a whole doesn't exist; it merely focuses mostly on the alien conditions where the simplest species may evolve. 

Real astrobiology does not take into account wild conjecture about whether intelligent extraterrestrials might have tentacles or exist as hive minds formed of gas.

Furthermore, contact with intelligent extraterrestrial life is so unlikely that it is essentially unthinkable according to true science. According to the Fermi Paradox, there isn't any intelligent extraterrestrial life in the Milky Way Galaxy, which is why we haven't found any proof of it.

In other words, there is no true scientific case study on which to base the design of sentient extraterrestrial bodies since they have never, ever been observed. 

Instead, this school of thought is likely the foundation for the depiction of more "realistic" aliens with tentacles in science fiction: In an ocean, life as we know it would have developed. Tentacles and the appearance of "alien" creatures are characteristics of aquatic life. 

Consequently, more "realistic" aliens would have extraterrestrial tentacles. The many-tentacled alien motif has come to stand for a more "plausible" alien due to the legacy of great science fiction that includes complex aliens with tentacles, such as Octavia Butler's 1987 novel Dawn.

Tentacles may thus be only cosmetic, making the Heptapods no more "foreign" than Mr. Spock from Star Trek with his pointed ears. Neither Mr. Spock nor the Heptapods are to blame for this. Actually, it's merely a very concrete restriction on human ingenuity.

Louise muses about the difficulties of speaking with the aliens in Ted Chiang's short tale "The Story of Your Life," which served as the inspiration for the movie Arrival: The strange was nearby while the familiar was far away, according to her. 

The fact that we are extremely "acquainted" with the "bizarreness" of aliens with tentacles contradicts the great statement, which also betrays the opposite trend of the physical representation of aliens in most science fiction.

Paul Park, a renowned author of science fiction, makes the important observation that when any writer attempts to "explain" an extraterrestrial, they are most likely just doing it through the prism of mankind in his ground-breaking meta-fictional essay/short story titled "If Lions Could Speak" from 1997. 

What else could they be except imitations of our words, sentiments, and tools, as Park puts it: "The words we put into an alien mouth, the feelings into an alien heart, the tools into alien hands." 

The Heptapod aliens in "The Story of Your Life" and "Arrival" both fit into the narrative because, despite their foreign look, they have a human-like quality about them. 

Because of how "strange" the Heptapods are, hardly one appreciates this movie or short tale. Instead, it has a heart, which is why we adore it.

Stories about aliens almost always depict something different than actual aliens, according to Park: "When a writer conceives of an alien race, she will infer what humans would look like if they shared the extraterrestrial's morphology." 

Paul Park addressed this as a literary premise in his book Coelestis, which was later retitled Celestis in the United States: "The only way to write about aliens would be to envision an extraterrestrial who had been compelled to be human."

The whole plot of Coelestis revolves around aliens who have been forced to effectively transform their race into mankind through time. The protagonist of the book is Katherine, who at first isn't a "female" because she isn't truly human. The storyline then centers on her realizing what makes her "foreign." 

This subverts the dishonesty of trying to write from an actual "alien" point of view. Because of the logical flaw in the plot, you can't discuss the issue of aliens directly or in a way that makes sense, according to Park, who spoke to Inverse.

A plausible tale of extraterrestrial intelligence defies logic, practically speaking. In the well-known novel Solaris by Stanislaw Lem, the fundamental problem of overcoming impossibly wide communication barriers is tragically unsuccessful. 

In an effort to make contact, an intelligent alien ocean summons the corpses of deceased individuals from the unhappy scientist's memory. Evidently, something gets mistranslated.

But the reason we enjoy stories like these isn't that it's all impossible. In Arrival, the interaction with the Heptapods is warm and emotional because, for a split second, we believe that these extraterrestrials are genuine. Their "reality" is sufficiently grounded in detail and the notion that language plays a significant role in the story for us to care. 

But as with many excellent novels about aliens, Louise's trip with her Heptopod pals eventually revolves around her. According to Paul Park, "the alien intellect becomes a feature of the terrain, something to be encountered or vanquished." It serves to reveal parts of who we are.

In Arrival, Louise holds up a mirror to the Heptapods by writing the word "human" on her tiny dry-erase board. And make no mistake, these aliens are still entirely human, even if their reflection is covered in tentacles in that mirror.