Alien Matter

How alien is objective physical reality compared (a) to its perceptual appearance and (b) to our own consciousness? As to (a), it seems to lack secondary qualities like color; in which case, what makes it capabable of occupying space? As to (b), unless we go in for panpsychism it seems very remote from the nature of experience. So it must be quite alien to the things we know about most directly. Is it SO alien that we couldn’t represent it in our experience in principle? We’re accustomed to the strangeness of matter from contemporary physics, but is it so far removed from what we are familiar with that we have no hope of adequately representing it? Is it as remote from our understanding as a bat’s experience? Or is it remoter, because at least a bat has experience, which we also do–while matter sits at an opposite ontological extreme? Is the entire universe an alien form of life–though completely dead?