Alien Life?

i was reading an article on wired.com today about two simulated "worlds", aurelia and blue moon, created by nasa and seti project researchers. don't worry, i'm not going to summarize the whole article (because you can read it here). the basic gist is that researchers fashioned alien creatures that might exist on these "worlds" (located somewhere in our universe). then a description, and picture, is provided for each creature. the article reminded me of when i was a kid and would spend hours (i was the coolest!) reading national geographic's picture atlas of our universe.



each chapter provided information about the type of creature you might find on each planet, taking into account what scientists knew about the planets' climate/geographical factors. i was fascinated then ... and i guess i still am.