Mankind is discovering new technologies and advancing at an incredible rate in recent decades, progress that will take us closer and closer to encountering alien life, claims futurist Michio Kaku in his new book, “The Future of Humanity.” And he believes that the true appearance of aliens may surprise us.

Among the remarkable revelations of recent years is that one out of every five stars in the Milky Way probably has a planet similar to Earth orbiting it, meaning there are potentially billions of Earth-like planets just within our own galaxy, let alone the billions upon billions of other galaxies in our universe. While many of those would still be inhospitable to life, the sheer volume of Earth-like planets out there means there must be a large number that coulud host life and currently does, Kaku argues.

Kaku believes that any aliens we encounter will have three features: they will have stereo vision just like humans, they will have some form of opposable thumbs to allow them to grasp things, and they will have some sort of language or communication. So surprisingly, aliens could look very much like us. Also, he thinks that life could exist totally underwater, or on icy moons.

Kaku also belives that alien cephalopods, like the octopus on our planet, could learn to develop a language, and he thinks that could even happen on our own planet. Just slight changes in conditions on our planet or elsewhere would cause different species to arise as intelligent life forms, Kaku argues.