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Hollywood films and science fiction literature fuel the belief that aliens are monster-like beings, who are very different to humans. But new research suggests that we could have more in common with our extra-terrestrial neighbours, than initially thought.
In a new study published in the International Journal of Astrobiology scientists from the University of Oxford show for the first time how evolutionary theory can be used to support alien predictions and better understand their behaviour. They show that aliens are potentially shaped by the same processes and mechanisms that shaped humans, such as natural selection.
The theory supports the argument that foreign life forms undergo natural selection, and are like us, evolving to be fitter and stronger over time.
[...] The paper also makes specific predictions about the biological make-up of complex aliens, and offers a degree of insight as to what they might look like.
[...] 'There are potentially hundreds of thousands of habitable planets in our galaxy alone. We can't say whether or not we're alone on Earth, but we have taken a small step forward in answering, if we're not alone, what our neighbours are like.'
http://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2017-10-31-aliens-may-be-more-us-we-think
[Also Covered By]: phys.org
Darwin's aliens (open, DOI: 10.1017/S1473550417000362) (DX)
Evolutionary exobiology: towards the qualitative assessment of biological potential on exoplanets (DOI: 10.1017/S1473550417000349) (DX)
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 02 2017, @03:20AM (21 children)
There are already lots of lifeforms on this planet which are very NOT like us from our normal usage of "like us".
But if you're comparing with a nebula or a star I'm sure many aliens will be more like us than such stuff.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 02 2017, @03:45AM
> There are already lots of lifeforms on this planet which are very NOT like us from our normal usage of "like us".
Everything we deem alive consists of bags of proteins, water and nucleic acids. We don't say viruses are alive but they consist of nucleic acids in an envelope of protein. All of it probably came from a single ancestor. Right-handed amino acids are a rarity.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Grishnakh on Thursday November 02 2017, @03:54AM (19 children)
There are already lots of lifeforms on this planet which are very NOT like us from our normal usage of "like us".
There are, but precisely none of them have developed written language or significant technology. We've done that because of a few big reasons: we're land-based, we have big brains, and we walk on two legs and have opposable thumbs (i.e., we can carry things around and manipulate them without having to choose between mobility and manipulation/carrying). Dolphins are apparently intelligent and we can communicate with them to a degree, but they have no practical way of manipulating their environment (flippers kinda suck at grabbing things) and are stuck in the water. Chimps are pretty smart too, but apparently not smart enough for written language (they can manage some simple sign language). And that's about it. Everything else is basically too dumb to come close to our level of technology, and certainly isn't going to be traveling between stars anytime soon.
(Score: 4, Funny) by edIII on Thursday November 02 2017, @04:37AM
If they aren't, you may have just ordered yourself a whole lot of probes.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 02 2017, @05:36AM (2 children)
If the only interesting life forms are the ones capable of interstellar travel, then as far as we know there are no interesting life forms (the article speaks of "habitable planets" not of interstellar travel).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 02 2017, @10:20AM (1 child)
"As far as we know".
As far as we know, it isn't possible to go faster than the speed of light, which is a basic requirement of interstellar travel. From that we can conclude that we won't be able to detect anything going faster than the speed of light - if we were, the first such detection would destroy the theory that it isn't possible.
So yeah, as far as we know there are no life forms capable of interstellar travel, because we aren't capable of detecting them.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 02 2017, @02:13PM
No, it isn't. The next star is only four light years away; a travel to that star is, by definition, interstellar travel. Also, sending a generation ship is interstellar travel; there's nothing in the definition that says the crew must be the same on arrival as on departure. Also, there might just be aliens that are very long-lived; if you live for several millennia, a century-long space travel doesn't sound too bad. And finally, thanks to relativistic time dilation, it is theoretically possible to reach an arbitrarily distant star in your lifetime, just not in the lifetime of your relatives that didn't come with you.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Thursday November 02 2017, @01:31PM (11 children)
I've gotta go with Douglas Adams on this one, again:
Sure, we've sent a few hundred of our species above the atmosphere (like: 0.00002% of people alive today...), and a few dozen probes to the planets, even a couple that have escaped the sun's gravity. But, in reality, as an average member of the species, which is the more sustainable strategy? Dolphins appear to have been "doing their thing" for millions of years without risking their own extinction, and without causing an extinction level event for the planet.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 02 2017, @01:58PM (2 children)
but if you are born as a dolphin, there is a much bigger chance to die as an infant, there is a much bigger chance that any infection will be lethal, and there is a much bigger chance that you are hunted and killed for food by humans. and you can't jerk off.
(Score: 3, Funny) by c0lo on Thursday November 02 2017, @02:12PM
Using one's fins to jerk off is utterly uncivilized. The nature provides reefs and stinging anemones for that
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 3, Informative) by pvanhoof on Thursday November 02 2017, @02:22PM
They don't use their flippers, but they do have dildo's ..
"Dolphins have long penises that they can manipulate like it was an arm. Masturbation is fairly commonplace and there have even been reports of dolphins using live, wriggling eels to give some extra pleasure to the experience.
With that said, it might not be too much of a stretch that a dolphin has been spotted masturbating with a decapitated fish. That’s right, it is just going to town on the fish's dead, headless body. The dolphin looks like he's having a fantastic time. I’ll just let you have a look:"
http://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/self-love-animal-kingdom/ [iflscience.com]
http://www.youtube.com/embed/TvLZxG6pB6U [youtube.com]
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Thursday November 02 2017, @03:00PM (7 children)
Dolphins are being killed off by humans, and one species (in China) is thought to be extinct now. Their long-term strategy clearly is inferior to the humans'. It might work OK on a planet without any technological species, but Earth isn't that planet.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday November 02 2017, @04:03PM (6 children)
Which is inferior remains to be seen. Humans have demonstrated the clear ability to destroy any living thing on Earth, including themselves, but does that make them superior? If any one of a dozen recent historical events had gone differently, it could have been the dolphins living free and easy right now and the humans scrambling to avoid starvation. If humans can continue the miracle of the last 100 years of technological progress forward for another 10,000, then, yes, I think we can be judged "superior" to dolphins. The judgement will be a lot easier (for me, at least) if humans manage to carry dolphins and a significant portion of the Earth's present biodiversity along with them into the future. That's something that dolphins have done for millions of years, whether by intention or accident.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Thursday November 02 2017, @06:11PM (5 children)
It really doesn't matter if humans survive or not. If the dolphins are made extinct by humans (even if that event destroys human civilization too), then the dolphins' strategy obviously was not superior, as it was a failure to compete and survive.
A good human analogy for this is Hawaiian culture. By all accounts I've read, pre-contact Hawaiian culture was free and easy: food was abundant, they lived in a paradisical land, they had free sex, they surfed, war was non-existent, disease wasn't a problem, etc. What happened? They were overrun by a European-derived civilization. Sure, the European civilization meant life was no longer free and easy, they got stupid Christianity and its prudism forced on them, they got diseases, war, poverty, not even owning their own land any more, etc., but their own civilization wasn't able to fend off this threat, which is why their strategy failed.
A free and easy way of life is great, up until some other culture comes and destroys it.
(Score: 3, Informative) by JoeMerchant on Thursday November 02 2017, @06:36PM (4 children)
What I've gleaned of pre-contact Hawaiian culture is that: yes, the tourist myths are true to some extent, time to surf, plenty of poi to eat, etc. but it was also a pretty harsh dictatorship, something that gets soft-pedaled now that their culture has been steamrollered.
If you take a hypothetical case of two spacefaring species: one sterilizes any new habitable planet they find before even attempting a landing, while another observes, learns, and eventually, when possible, forms a harmonious union with the new civilizations they find. A) If these two start out as "first movers" in space travel on opposite sides of a galaxy, which one do you think will be more capable when they do eventually contact each other? B) Which one would you call superior?
Just because the British and other European empires were a bunch of insecure, blood thirsty, conquest mad hooligans, and they happened to briefly rule the Earth does not mean that their methods are the best, or even the most powerful in a longer game than one-rock domination.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Thursday November 02 2017, @06:58PM (3 children)
What I've gleaned of pre-contact Hawaiian culture is that: yes, the tourist myths are true to some extent, time to surf, plenty of poi to eat, etc. but it was also a pretty harsh dictatorship, something that gets soft-pedaled now that their culture has been steamrollered.
How so? According to what I've read, and what I heard from a tour guide there once, people generally lived in little villages, marriage and monogamy didn't exist (except among royalty, that was different and bloodlines were guarded), and things were pretty easy. However, there were certain zones that were off-limits to non-royalty, and anyone venturing there would be immediately killed. So yeah, that kinda sucks I guess but some no-go zones doesn't sound bad compared to the rest. I haven't heard of anything else really horrible about their culture.
A) If these two start out as "first movers" in space travel on opposite sides of a galaxy, which one do you think will be more capable when they do eventually contact each other?
It's impossible to say for sure, but I'd like to think the harmonious one will be more capable because they'll be like the United Federation of Planets: strength through diversity (plus, not killing off productive potential members of society--i.e. more manpower). But that could be a pipe dream. These days, China is looking like the next superpower and they're not diverse at all culturally, while the diverse US is going down in flames and the even more diverse EU is too disorganized to be a world power.
B) Which one would you call superior?
Depends on your metric. If superiority is based on who survives, it's whichever one wins the inevitable war between the two. If your measure of superiority is "which society would I rather live in", I'd rather live in the harmonious union, assuming it survives for my lifetime. But look at Hawaii: is it better to live as a Hawaiian or a European imperialist? If your life as a Hawaiian ends (of old age) before European conquest, then that's preferable to me. But if it comes after European conquest, being on the side of the conquerors is better; being a slave or serf is never a preferable life.
Just because the British and other European empires were a bunch of insecure, blood thirsty, conquest mad hooligans, and they happened to briefly rule the Earth does not mean that their methods are the best, or even the most powerful in a longer game than one-rock domination.
Their methods may not be the most pleasant, but if they end in success (even if that's because of brutality and atrocities) and survival over other competing cultures, then it is the successful strategy. Yeah, it sucks, but I can't see any advantage in being conquered or exterminated. We can talk about how great some exterminated cultures were, by certain measures, but survival against a conquering society obviously wasn't one of their strengths.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday November 02 2017, @07:50PM (2 children)
My visit to Hawaii was brief, and Oahu only, but we did a lot of research on the Big Island and considered moving to HPP or thereabouts pretty seriously for a while. The condition there, outside Hilo, today too much resembles the Florida I grew up in: out of control immigrant growth. It was sad to grow up in it once, I don't want to go watch another paradise drown in obnoxious outsiders. The unforgivable no trespassing zones were just one (big!) example of royal privilege, I remember that there were others, but this is reaching back decades - specifics are fuzzy. Plenty of Hawaiians today are happy to not have to grow, grind, and eat poi, but, otherwise, life as the 50th state is certainly not quite up to par with the stories of old, for the natives. Today is, perhaps, a minor improvement from the sugar plantation days that ended around the 1970s.
The "strength through diversity" approach would seem to be a strong advantage, in the long game. In the short run, if you can deliver a single competitor a knockout blow, then, sure, small game over, you won. If you can manage to learn from, and occasionally join forces with, your competitors - that's likely to be a winning strategy when one big fuzzy entity starts to encounter another big fuzzy entity and knockout blows aren't really possible. Humans may turn this extinction level event into a doozy, but I don't think we'll be capable of taking out all the microbes - that's an "opponent" that's just too diverse for us to exterminate, they'll keep coming back from the niches, no matter how badly we skew the environment.
As for China, I think they're winning at the moment due to their willingness to learn from us and adapt: beat us at our own game, so to speak. Maybe they're retaining enough ethnic pride to turn on the world one day, do to Europe, Australia and the US what they did to Tibet, maybe not - that's a tough call at the moment, I think we're at least a century away from such attempts, if they ever even try.
The nations of the Earth are, today, big fish in a very small pond, and the king of the hill, destroy your enemies lest they live to defeat you another day strategy very much applies. 100 Billion stars in the galaxy, and hundreds of potentially habitable bodies orbiting each one, or drifting through space unassociated with a particular star. 100,000 light years from one side to the other. That's a very different game than one rock that you can orbit in 90 minutes, and a single biosphere that can be severely crippled with just a couple of tons of plutonium.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Thursday November 02 2017, @09:11PM (1 child)
100 Billion stars in the galaxy, and hundreds of potentially habitable bodies orbiting each one, or drifting through space unassociated with a particular star. 100,000 light years from one side to the other.
Minor quibble: I thought the Milky Way had about 1 trillion stars in it at last count. The nearby Andromeda galaxy (I think some parts are nearer to here than the far side of our own galaxy even) has several trillion. However, not all those stars have potentially habitable bodies; According to this [wikipedia.org], stars too close to the core are too likely to be near supernovae and other events to make life likely, though some criticize the idea of a galactic habitable zone altogether, with one criticism being that stars may move great distances through the galaxy over time rather than just staying in one spot.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday November 03 2017, @02:51AM
My quibble with "habitable zones" is: habitable by what?
Too much heat for life? The undersea thermal vents have stretched that thinking. Too much radiation? Maybe for DNA, but maybe other structures thrive on it.
I don't keep up with the latest star counts (and I suspect the old "what is a star?" question will drastically affect the count)... The main point is: it's huge, multiple orders of magnitude more huge than anyone on Earth is likely to truly comprehend. What's the difference if we have 15 stars per human in this galaxy or 150? Or, whether 10% of them are too close to the core for us to survive or 50%?
I think one of our bigger problems, lately, is that nobody really even comprehends 7 billion people... it's too abstract, and scary, to really contemplate.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 02 2017, @05:03PM
None of which seem to be mentioned in the paper.
The paper makes claims like this: "Like humans, we predict that they are made-up of a hierarchy of entities, which all cooperate to produce an alien."
Which while being more specific than vague stuff about evolution (that were made earlier in the paper) and entropy still gives great scope for aliens that aren't really like us.
The title and editorialization for this story is not backed by the paper.
(Score: 1) by rylyeh on Thursday November 02 2017, @07:50PM
Male dolphins have been known to masturbate by wrapping a live eel around their penis. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dolphin/ [wikipedia.org]
If that's not tool use, what is?
"a vast crenulate shell wherein rode the grey and awful form of primal Nodens, Lord of the Great Abyss."
(Score: 2) by terryk30 on Friday November 03 2017, @03:10AM
Don't forget about this [theonion.com]...