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Aliens.txt
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Aliens.txt
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2022-11-05
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|Aliens - Little Green Men?
Most people when they fantasise about life out in the far Galaxys',
imagine a network of worlds, occupied by creatures not unlike ourselves.
We tend to dream of the Bar in Star Wars; where all different species
met to drink and argue. Or perhaps think of any episode of Star Trek,
when all the aliens in 10Forward are humanoid with some minor
variations. It would be marvellous if that were so; I think it highly
unlikely.
Why (I almost said,"on Earth") should any self respecting alien look
remotely like us? We almost didn't get to look like us; only narrowly
missing disaster and extinction on several occasions. Deep time has not
brought us here as a perfect product; all that went before us mere
experiments. No; we are here on this planet by dint of chance,
evolutionary opportunity and sheer good luck. Our atmosphere makes us
what we are. There is strong evidence to show that rapid environmental
change caused our ancestors to come out of the forests and onto the
plains. Despite our backs giving us pain, the overwhelming ecological
advantage of walking upright forced the issue; so we became Bi-pedal
apes and were on the way to becoming human about 5 million years ago;
which is a "blink" in the eye of Earth time.
Our mammilian line, struggled to keep small during the reign of the
Dinosaurs spending a precarious 127 million years living in a small
shadowy world, confined to only a few recogniseable species. As one
paleontologist put it,
"I can't help but feel that the entire mammilian line could have
been snuffed out by a dinosaur footprint in the wrong place"
Prior to the well known Cretacious extinction which did for the
Dinosaurs and approximately 85% of all living creatures, there had been
several, much more catastrophic extinctions. The greatest of them was
the Permian when the great Finback reptiles and a full 95% of ALL living
organisms were wiped out almost overnight(geologically speaking) Prior
to that, Several massive extinctions from the Cambrian epoch right back
to the dawn of life served as salutary reminders that life ( at least on
Earth) is fragile amd momentary.
One very salutary reminder of how fortunate we are to be here, lies in
the sedimentary rocks of the Burgess Shale in canada. They date back to
the Pre-Cambrian explosion. So called, as it marked an unrepeated burst
of variation in species. Never since that time have so many species
lived at once. Incidentally; to get this into perspective, some 95% of
all animals that ever lived ARE EXTINCT! Beginning to get the picture?
Back to the shale. Whatever else we learned about life in the Cambrian
seas it seems certain that out of hundreds of species; overnight
extinction whittled them down to less than about 20! This means that of
those 20 species to survive; one was ancestoral to us! The really
spooky thing is that try as they might; scientist's cannot determine
exactly what gave these 20 species any edge over the dead one's.
Extinction appears to have been purely random and our lineage could have
been snuffed out there and then!
Stephen Jay Gould, of Harvard University put it succinctly when he
said,"Imagine all of time like a cassette tape. If you rewind it back
to the beginning and replay it, it would not play the same way twice" We
are not as we are by some grand design; nor are the product of divine
intervention. If you will, fortune is the paramount factor in our
arrival. And we aren't the most prolific of genera- the insect world
holds that accolade. we can't be the "supreme beings" that we think we
are; we are only one line of a decreasing mammilian branch. This is
hardly success in any terms. As vertebrates, we have only perhaps
another 2 million years left(most invertebrates only last 4 million
tops). So why do we assume that in the cosmic order, other "Aliens"
will have our basic forms?
When you think of the complete improbability of our existence; we would
never arise again. Think of the shape of our frames due to gravity;
evolutionary pressure, atmosphere and climatic considerations, can we
really expect other worlds to be identical?
Imagine the odds of rerunning time here on Earth. Suppose we take out
all the random factors; like extinctions, comets, virii, changes in
oxygen levels. The chances of "us" appearing at all let alone in our
normal form are infinitesimal. Billions upon billions to one. It just
is'nt going to happen. Now; ask yourself to consider the chances of all
this, without ANY deviation occuring on the same time scale, acted upon
by the same forces as Earth. Well the chances of that takes the
Billions right off the page...
Of that there is life out there in the Universe I am certain. It can
only be arrogance to assume that it looks anything like we do. The
Universe will be populated by creatures that do not resemble a make-up
artists' fantasy. It will be teeming with myriad types, forms and
differing levels of "Intelligence" As a footnote, Astrophysisists now
think we should not be looking for stable planets for life but to those
which seem to mirror our own ie periods of stability punctuated by
violent natural upheaval. Perhaps it is there that we will find the
locomotion of evolutionary process; species forced into adaptation or
bust.
You might also consider that we may be the eldest civilisation in the
universe. Yes there are older stars and probably older planets around
them but they may well lack the evolutionary punctuation needed to force
the issue. We may also be the most primitive; our senses interpreting a
world entirely unique to us. There may be out there more colours waves
and natural Laws than we can dream...
Of course the utimate irony is that due to the very random nature of our
existence we may be the only example in the entire universe, when the
dice fell in our favour. Either way; if we are unique in the universe
or just an insignificant species on an insignificant planet, it is a
sobering thought...
Paul