Tuesday 23 August 2016

Five-Eyed Aliens: Evolution and Imagination




Might space aliens look a bit like Opabinia regalis? Image courtesy of Nobu Tamura, Creative Commons (CC BY 3.0).



Joel Kontinen

A new article in The Conversation speculates on what aliens might look like. Matthew Willis, Professor of Evolutionary Palaeobiology at the University of Bath, UK, skips over the pertinent question of whether ETs exist.

But when it comes to intelligent aliens, he isn’t absolutely sure.

Prof. Willis looks at the assumed evolution on Earth and speculates what might have happened if some bizarre Cambrian creatures, such as the five-eyed Opabinia, would not have become extinct.

After toying with the idea that five-eyed intelligent creatures might be reading his post if their ancestor had survived, he remembers convergent evolution. He believes it has for instance given some unrelated sea creatures streamlined bodies for moving swiftly in water.

The word that best explains his take on alien life is speculation:

But what aspects of alien biology might we expect? Carbon-based biochemistry is likely given that carbon forms stable backbone chains, and makes stable but readily breakable bonds with other elements. Other elements, notably silicon and sulphur, make less stable bonds at Earth-like temperatures. Water or some other solvent also seems necessary. For evolution to occur there needs to be some mechanism for storing and replicating information with moderate fidelity, such as DNA, RNA or some analogue. Although the first cells appeared on Earth quite early, multicellular animals took nearly 3 billion more years to evolve. So it may well be that life on other planets could get stuck at the single-celled stage.”

He doesn’t think aliens would look like insects, though, and opts for some kind of symmetry (two eyes, two ears, two feet) but suggests chance might have played a major role in giving us things like five fingers, so perhaps ETs might have four or six of them.

What has this to do with science?

Nothing. It’s pure speculation. But Darwinists believe that life must have evolved in many places in the universe, so it’s almost certain that aliens exist.

Stephen Hawking acknowledges that he’s afraid of them, and a former astronaut believes they’ve visited Earth several times.

Researchers have spent an enormous amount of taxpayers’ money in their search for alien life but they haven’t heard a whisper despite listening for over 50 years.

Some have even speculated that they live in our seas.

What Darwinists tend to forget is that life does not just happen. It has to be designed and created. Darwinian processes can’t produce life. Gases will remain gases and rocks remain rocks. They don’t magically turn into any kinds of creatures, alien or not.

Source:

Wills, Matthew. 2016. What do aliens look like? The clue is in evolution. The Conversation (19 August).