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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 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]