Extraterrestrial Evolution?

Posted: Sat Dec 02, 2006 5:47 am

realgamer4ever wrote:

Alien Planet, eh?

See if you can get your hands on the out-of-print Expedition by Wayne Douglas Barlowe, which the Discovery special was based off of. There are quite a few aliens in there that the show didn't cover.
I also recommend Matt Howarth's Kief Llama comic book series. Some of the aliens are StarWarsy, but quite few are pretty damn clever.

Posted: Sat Dec 02, 2006 8:05 am

sunamiren wrote:

I just wondered, why do these scientists envision such ugly and horrible creatures?
Why is it that alien life has to be so god damned ugly?

Beauty is strictly our perception of symmetry and balance, it is also relative and very much a matter of exposure. We also tend to find mammalian forms more “beautiful” then insect or fish forms; again a biased perception. In most cases evolution has little use for such vanity.

Personally, I would find any confirmed extraterrestrial life a beautiful thing, even if it weren’t esthetically pleasing.

Posted: Sat Dec 02, 2006 8:28 am

Kelreth wrote:

sunamiren wrote:

Okay, I watched Alien Planet the other night after downloading it.

I just wondered, why do these scientists envision such ugly and horrible creatures?
Why is it that alien life has to be so god damned ugly?

Why can't life on an alien planet be beautiful for instance? Something like we have never seen before? Something utterly fantastic?

Why are these creatures, always so ugly? our own Dinosaurs weren't this ugly?

"reagamer4ever"... please imagine at least "some" good looking creatures in your book! hehe

think about it. does beauty make the creature have a better chance of survival? i don't think so, its not essential to life errr doesnt help the creature procreate. Though look at us, we are hairless (generally speaking, we aren't completely covered in hair) creatures that walk around with a strange gait. Any extraterestial would look at us as ugly, with their form being beauty, it is all subjective

but evolution wise, beauty only helps humans procreate, i dont think my dog being beauty is going to get him laid any faster than him being the way he is right now

Yes, I get your point Kelreth... but had to laugh about your dog...Animals do go by smell, but then what about the birds or other creatures that have to do a "dance" to attract the opposite sex? Maybe we should start dancing more, and smell each other more, rather than be bombarded with vanity from the media and Hollywood Stars to make us think that looks are so important. LOL

MockingGods wrote:

[
Personally, I would find any confirmed extraterrestrial life a beautiful thing, even if it weren’t esthetically pleasing.

Okay, but then what would you do with these creatures once found on alien planets? If they are so dangerous, then we have new predators to worry about. We have managed to love beautiful creatures such as Lions, Tigers, Crocs, Dolphins, Whales etc... not to mention the beautiful baby Seals that are being clubbed to death....I cannot understand how any human can do that by the way. Like many human traits that are displeasing to me, it's beyond me.

Club one of these creatures on Alien Planet to death, and then what? What are you going to get from such a creature? My thoughts were mainly, that, what would we do, once having found such a planet?

The scientists having created their fantastic creatures, don't seem to go there, and that is what would interest me more. Would people want to "Colonize such a place"...?

When I see that planet for instance, Darwin4.. and then look at our beautiful planet, jeebus, who wants to go there? not me.... hehe Our mountains, lakes, seas and deserts, canyons...etc... earth really is a beautiful planet. I've not yet seen anything like, Mars for instance or the moon for that matter, where I would want to live.

Or am I missing something here.... once again... Laughing

Posted: Sat Dec 02, 2006 8:41 am

"pr126".... I knew it. My husband has one of the Rama books, the "Rendezvous with Rama"... he doesn't have the others. He read them years ago and the book looks to be quite "ancient"... not exactly this years buy....

I'm going to read this and see if I can follow it... it will be another experiment to see if I can understand why hubby reads thousands upon thousands of these books. He reads nothing else, except maybe computer magazines... LOL

I notice on the back of the book it says, " Rama - a world of technological marvels and artificial ecology. What is its purpose in this year 2131? Who is inside it? and why?"

Hell, we are not that far away already from 2131 are we..... this particular book was printed in 1974... even then 2131 seemed eons away didn't it?

I can't even remember myself ever thinking about the years, 2000 plus those days. It already seemed like too far into the future, and yet here I am....

If the world wasn't so damned "messed" up, (others might like to use the "F" word here, which would seem more appropriate).. we could really enjoy our 21st century, and look forward to new discoveries. But I fear that maybe, just maybe man will nuke us into oblivion, due to rushing into ever fervent religious revelations, and making Armageddon happen so that Jesus will return.....

Just some rambling there.... and thinking out loud....

Posted: Sat Dec 02, 2006 9:22 am

sunamiren wrote:

Okay, but then what would you do with these creatures once found on alien planets?

On a personal level, I wouldn't want to do anything with them perhaps other then understand their biology. Honestly, I think the mere knowledge that biological life isn't geocentric would be enough for me.

Quote:

If they are so dangerous, then we have new predators to worry about.

I don't worry about stuff like this Wink

Predatory behavior seems to be a very common occurance among living entities, at least on this planet.

Quote:

We have managed to love beautiful creatures such as Lions, Tigers, Crocs, Dolphins, Whales etc

And these cute fussy wuzzies aren't dangerous predatory animals? Even the Dolphin has been observed violently killing its own young.

Quote:

Like many human traits that are displeasing to me, it's beyond me.

It could certainly be argued that humans are the most dangerous of all predatory animals, at least on this planet.

Quote:

When I see that planet for instance, Darwin4.. and then look at our beautiful planet, jeebus, who wants to go there? not me.... hehe Our mountains, lakes, seas and deserts, canyons...etc... earth really is a beautiful planet. I've not yet seen anything like, Mars for instance or the moon for that matter, where I would want to live.

Or am I missing something here.... once again...

I think you're missing that beauty is a perception that is relative and subject to many cultural, social and exposure based experiences. I’m sure that if human life had evolved on this other imaginary world, we’d find it just as beautiful. In fact, I’d ague that we’d find this world mostly “ugly”.

Posted: Sat Dec 02, 2006 9:28 am

[quote="MockingGods"]

sunamiren wrote:

Quote:

We have managed to love beautiful creatures such as Lions, Tigers, Crocs, Dolphins, Whales etc

And these cute fussy wuzzies aren't dangerous predatory animals? Even the Dolphin has been observed violently killing its own young.

What I meant here was, that we have learned to "love" these animals, inspite of them being dangerous, because most of them are beautiful creatures.

Posted: Sat Dec 02, 2006 9:30 am

In a way though, I am making the same mistake the scientists are, in the fact that, I would like to see an alien world, in my own perspective... and that will not be the case, ever....

Seeing that we have not as yet, actually "seen anything alien".. alive...we can still only speculate to the extent our human brain allows us.

Posted: Sat Dec 02, 2006 9:45 am

[quote="sunamiren"]

MockingGods wrote:

sunamiren wrote:

Quote:

We have managed to love beautiful creatures such as Lions, Tigers, Crocs, Dolphins, Whales etc

And these cute fussy wuzzies aren't dangerous predatory animals? Even the Dolphin has been observed violently killing its own young.

What I meant here was, that we have learned to "love" these animals, inspite of them being dangerous, because most of them are beautiful creatures.

"Some" of us have become sentimentally attached to these creatures and find them to be esthetically pleasing. Do you find all life on this planet beautiful, or more likely, there's much you find repulsive, like snakes, spiders, pond scum, or the HIV virus perhaps?

I'd wager if the imaginary life in this presentation were real, after much social conditioning we'd find at least some of it to be beautiful too, especially the ones that exhibited anthropomorphic traits.

Posted: Sat Dec 02, 2006 10:00 am

sunamiren wrote:

In a way though, I am making the same mistake the scientists are, in the fact that, I would like to see an alien world, in my own perspective

Quite true. Beauty is a perceptual condition and relative to ones own perspective. I find spiders to be beautiful, most don’t.

Quote:

... and that will not be the case, ever....

I would say it's extremely unlikely. However, it’s possible we’ll actually “see” life on mars (if it exists) within a few decades. I doubt it will be anything other then microbial, if it exists in a living form. Fossil evidence is far more likely.

Quote:

Seeing that we have not as yet, actually "seen anything alien".. alive...we can still only speculate to the extent our human brain allows us.

True enough. Although some scientist speculate life on this planet has exo-genetic origins.

Posted: Sat Dec 02, 2006 10:13 am

Oh yes. I realize that we have a lot of ugly creatures as well....

For instance, lately, I have become rather used to our Huntsman Spiders, which frequently visit my office. I used to be so frightened of them. They are quite large in size, like the size of your hand for instance, the fully grown adult that is, and I assume they are male... and where I once used to spray them with insecticide, I now just get a broom and shovel and carry them outside, only to return once more I suppose.

I also used to just swat them and kill them, because I just hated the sight of spiders. However, I don't like to kill things.... (No I'm not a buddhist hehe)...
I used to think, if the so called, "God" can just kill my friend with a brain tumor in 3 months, then the spider can also be swiped, just like humans get swiped, by nature, tsunamis etc... hehe... but now, I want to let the spider live.

They do bite, but are not dangerous. Maybe Bob Spence can tell me more on that one.

So, with time, I got to see them as not ugly, but amazing creatures.

I am not afraid of snakes, but hate scorpions because of the way they look more than what kind of threat they are.

You are right though, a lot of this is conditioning, and sentimental and esthetically pleasing to the eye that makes us see things as pleasant or unpleasant.

If anything is completely outside our frame of reference, we have nothing in our mind that allows us to actually think of what anything might look like. That's why reality is actually stranger than fiction, because we have no basis by which we can go by other than what we know already.

We can use our imagination, but even our imagination is based or extends on what we already know. We can take these imaginings a step further, but still, can you just think for one minute, of what actually an alien would look like? We actually have not one iota of an idea, other than what scientists, biologists, anthropologists, etc can come up with according to their studies, thus far....

Posted: Thu Feb 07, 2008 6:30 am

The alien theories for evolution on earth always need to be considered from the perspective of where the aliens came from. They must have evolved themselves, so natural evolution is still very much in the picture here.

Some people like to think that alien tampering somehow negates natural evolution in the universe, when it simply broadens the perspective of evolution in reality. Life has to evolve in order to venture out into space and recreate life of course.

I like how Dawkins handles this issue.


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