How Would We Recognize an Alien if We Actually Saw One?
by Samuel Levin October 10, 2018 (aeon.co)
• Astrobiology – the study of life on other planets – has grown from a fringe sub-discipline of biology, chemistry and astronomy to a leading interdisciplinary field, attracting researchers from top institutions across the globe, and large sums of money from both NASA and private funders. But what exactly are astrobiologists looking for? Would they even recognize an alien being?
• Under Darwin’s theory of ‘natural selection’, we can expect an extraterrestrial being to have reached that place in its development naturally through survival and reproduction. This combination of complex design (to better survive) and apparent purpose (to reproduce), also known as ‘adaptedness’, defines life. Entities are designed to fit their surroundings. The organism’s ‘design’ variation is always improving over the generations, which allows for ‘design to appear without a designer’.
• If alien development wasn’t ruled by natural selection, the aliens wouldn’t be able to cope with changes on their planet, and so would disappear before we found them. Therefore, aliens must be the product of natural selection, following certain Darwinian rules to produce only certain kinds of organisms. Thus, astrobiologists can use the theory of natural selection and the mathematics of evolution to make predictions about alien development.
• [Editor’s Note] On the other hand, what if the biggest game in the universe was genetic experimentation to create endless types of beings? What if technologically advanced ‘creators’ have simply adapted a humanoid “star template”, i.e.: a head, torso, two arms and two legs, as a practical template for the vast majority of intelligent beings? And what if these created intelligent humanoid beings were scattered all over the galaxy/universe already? What if Earth humans were unremarkable – a common entity throughout the galaxy, and were even at the lower end of the intellectual, technological and spiritual development scale? Or what if the different Earth human races were the descendants of various refugee groups from other worlds? What if Darwin’s ‘natural selection’ had nothing to do with human or alien development, but these attributes were indeed ‘given’ to us not by natural selection but by ‘purposeful creation’ in order to survive in a particular environment? Once we have shed our belief that we are the only intelligent beings alive in the universe – having evolved ‘naturally’ from the planet’s primordial ooze, an entirely new universal paradigm of ‘creative evolution’ will be revealed to us as we raise our collective consciousness. It’s coming folks, so hold onto your hats.
What would convince you that aliens existed? The question came up recently at a conference on astrobiology, held at Stanford University in California. Several ideas were tossed around – unusual gases in a planet’s atmosphere, strange heat gradients on its surface. But none felt persuasive. Finally, one scientist offered the solution: a photograph. There was some laughter and a murmur of approval from the audience of researchers: yes, a photo of an alien would be convincing evidence, the holy grail of proof that we’re not alone.
But why would a picture be so convincing? What is it that we’d see that would tell us we weren’t just looking at another pile of rocks? An alien on a planet orbiting a distant star would be wildly exotic, perhaps unimaginably so. What, then, would give it away as life? The answer is relevant to our search for extraterrestrials, and what we might expect to find.
Astrobiology – the study of life on other planets – has grown from a fringe sub-discipline of biology, chemistry and astronomy to a leading interdisciplinary field, attracting researchers from top institutions across the globe, and large sums of money from both NASA and private funders. But what exactly is it that astrobiologists are looking for? How will we know when it’s time to pop the Champagne?
One thing that sets life apart from nonlife is its apparent design. Living things, from the simplest bacteria to the great redwoods, have vast numbers of intricate parts working together to make the organism function. Think of your hands, heart, spleen, mitochondria, cilia, neurons, toenails – all collaborating in synchrony to help you navigate, eat, think and survive. The most beautiful natural rock formations lack even a tiny fraction of the myriad parts of a single bacterial cell that coordinate to help it divide and reproduce.
And living things, unlike dirt and wind, appear to be trying to do things – eat, grow, survive, reproduce. If you’ve ever tried to squish a resilient bug, you know that it doesn’t require a complex mind for an organism to appear to want to survive. Or for a squirrel to ‘want’ to jump from one branch to the next. Or for a plant to ‘try’ to reach towards the Sun and soak up nutrients from the soil. Not only do living things have many intricate parts, but all of those parts have the same, common purpose ¬– survival and reproduction. This combination of complex design and apparent purpose, also known as adaptedness, defines life. When we look at that photo of an alien, it’s exactly this adaptedness that would make us go: ‘Aha!’ We would see, clearly, the difference between a disappointing pile of rocks and an exciting alien – design. This is good news, because there’s only one way to get such design: natural selection.
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