User blog comment:Spark321939/Are aliens good or will we be advanced enough?/@comment-1197011-20130430012402/@comment-1197011-20130430220802

If you mention soap bubbles as analogous to cells, think this: a virus doesn't resemble a soap bubble, yet it's alive. So might be computer viruses, depending on your definition of the term (I'm not saying they definitely are, it's just an example). Yet you deal with them on a daily basis and never recognize them as potential life. If they were intelligent, I doubt they would recognize you either :)

As for Aldebaran, I never read it but absolutely agree, we have a hard time understanding life on Earth as well, ourselves included, so understanding alien life will be hard regardless of them being carbon-based/ cell-based/ bipedal/ intelligent/ etc...