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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: 2) by zocalo on Thursday November 02 2017, @07:58AM (3 children)
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 02 2017, @10:25AM
a good chance that many of them won't have all that many volatiles
Why would that be?
There was a story the other day [soylentnews.org] about the discovery of water ice on Ceres, which lies between Mars and Jupiter. Comets, which spend much of their time in th eouter Solar System, have substantial volatiles. I would expect the general trend to be the farther from the Sun, the more volatiles.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday November 02 2017, @01:09PM
Pluto is a pretty nice lump of ice and dust to work with, and it's not a planet because there are so many other Oortian objects out there of similar and larger mass.
No, they're not close together, but that isn't such a bad thing. The resources on Pluto should support a sizeable colony, say 100K residents, maybe much more if fusion fuel is abundant.
My main point is: we're using up the third rock, and we're all stuck here together. As a long term strategy, I'd rather have 7 billion humans spread across 7000 different colonies in the Oort clouds of 100 nearby stars, instead of 7 billion humans stuck on a single rock. It might take months, years, or lifetimes to travel between colonies, which should give the colonies opportunity to diversify, instead of homogenizing.
In my travels, I have enjoyed much more visiting places with different languages, cultures and foods, the ubiquitous McDonalds? not so much.
And, while physical visitation is not going to be easy, or even practical for most residents, light speed communication should work quite well.
🌻🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 03 2017, @10:54AM