of messy organization discussing their prospect of finding intelligent life on other planets so dr black arts when you think about extraterrestrial what do you personally imagine there are like. well the ones that we can contact are going to be scientists because that's the only way we can exchange a radio signal or a laser pulses if they also have an ability to create the instruments that allow us to exchange information but beyond that i don't expect that they're going to look like us you know they're not necessarily even going to have the same way of encountering the world that we do we rely very heavily on our vision vision has evolved forty times independently on earth so it's been very affective here but what happens if you're a civilization on a planet where there is a murky cover over the atmosphere and you need to get around through a sense of hearing or a sense of touch or a sense of smell you could still be a scientist still discovering your universe but your way of encountering that day to day could be very different and so that's why we always need to be open to new possibilities