Re: The Evolution Thread
Do you mean that in a million (or other unspecified time range) years we will look like the stereotype of what we imagine aliens to look like?
Emaciated giant heads with big eyeballs, like these guys (scroll down a bit for pic)?
Because human beings can't evolve into aliens. Alien, by its very definition, is a term that simply means something that is foreign--to another region, culture, country, or (in this case), planet. Its a term of relevance. If we go to Mars, we are technically aliens to Mars. A human can't become an alien by evolution, a human becomes an alien by travel. It we are talking interplanetary aliens, then we need space flight technology, not biological evolution.
If you are asking if we can evolve giant heads and sort of gender neutral androgeny, etc....that is something else. Evolution is just the shift of genes in a population. Sure, we probably could if there was something that selected for those traits (or against them) in our environment OR if something in our environment selected for or against a trait that "carried over" another trait with it--often sets of genes, even seemingly unrelated ones, are connected and when one is changed, so is another.
But then again, maybe not--a head that big would make pregnancy and childbirth more difficult, and would probably require other changes to the body; also carrying a head that big around would likely require differences in body structure.
Originally posted by Bartmanhomer
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Do you mean that in a million (or other unspecified time range) years we will look like the stereotype of what we imagine aliens to look like?
Emaciated giant heads with big eyeballs, like these guys (scroll down a bit for pic)?
Because human beings can't evolve into aliens. Alien, by its very definition, is a term that simply means something that is foreign--to another region, culture, country, or (in this case), planet. Its a term of relevance. If we go to Mars, we are technically aliens to Mars. A human can't become an alien by evolution, a human becomes an alien by travel. It we are talking interplanetary aliens, then we need space flight technology, not biological evolution.
If you are asking if we can evolve giant heads and sort of gender neutral androgeny, etc....that is something else. Evolution is just the shift of genes in a population. Sure, we probably could if there was something that selected for those traits (or against them) in our environment OR if something in our environment selected for or against a trait that "carried over" another trait with it--often sets of genes, even seemingly unrelated ones, are connected and when one is changed, so is another.
But then again, maybe not--a head that big would make pregnancy and childbirth more difficult, and would probably require other changes to the body; also carrying a head that big around would likely require differences in body structure.
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