# Searching for the origins of life... and our future (BBC News) November 08, 2011 - [ News ](/news-categories/news) By Karen Weintraub Cambridge, Massachusetts November 8, 2011 Hollywood is wrong about aliens. They don't have oddly shaped heads, bulging eyes or even an eery green hue. Dimitar Sasselov is pretty convinced of that. He's not even sure we'll know them when we see them. Prof Sasselov, an astrophysicist, thinks that if life exists elsewhere - and he believes it does - it will likely be based on different building blocks than ours, and so may not even be recognizable as life. A project he's heading at Harvard University, called the Origins of Life, is trying to imagine what life would be like if it were based on different chemicals, conditions and history than we have on Earth… See also:- [ News Media ](/filter_by/news-media) - [ 2011 ](/filter_by/2011) Share on:- [ Facebook ](#) - [ Twitter ](#) - [ Linkedin ](#)