posted
One of my family's biggest problems with the different Star Trek series is that all the alien species look so human. The Bajorans are just humans with wrinkly noses. Vulcans are just humans with pointy ears. One species, though I forget their names, are just bald humans with blue skin.
The question is, is this a probable outcome? Why should we assume that aliens, should they exist and they ever come in contact with humans, look so much like us?
The other extreme you get from authors like OSC and Arthur C. Clarke. In their case, we get the sense of aliens who are similar to other lifeforms on Earth...not human really, but still intelligent.
Which extreme do you think it could be? Are you more likely to believe in human like aliens, or aliens like the piggies or the buggers or the Star Child?
Of course, a lot of you could very well just yell at me and say you don't believe in aliens. Posts: 3852 | Registered: Feb 2002
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posted
I agree...but the argument supporting Trek aliens is actually convincing.
That is, nature repeats what works. Just look at the dolphin and the shark. Biologically they're almost identical, but they evolved through very different processes. Would it be that crazy to find human, or at least primate looking creatures evolve somewhere else?
Posts: 3852 | Registered: Feb 2002
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posted
"I agree...but the argument supporting Trek aliens is actually convincing."
Actually, the argument used to explain the finite makeup budget in continuity is that an alien species called the Progenitors seeded the galaxy a billion or two years ago with their DNA, producing a number of very similar species.
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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posted
Actually, there was a Next Geneneration episode that explained that some advanced alien race seeded a bunch of planets with life forms or DNA or something. Anyhow, the reason we look like Vulcans, Klingons, Bajorans, etc. is because we're all related.
Edit: Bah, Tom beat me to it, and he had a better summary of the episode.
posted
There's a problem with assuming, short of outside agency (which Star Trek had -- the Preservers), that intelligent hominids would develop independently on multiple worlds. It only makes sense if bipedal, two-handed, head-on-top critters are in some way better.
And since I'm always wishing I had an extra hand or two, I just don't buy that argument.
Anyway, even Star Trek had Hortas.
Posts: 32919 | Registered: Mar 2003
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posted
See, unfortunately Rivka, we'll never evolve more hands. Because, as soon as someone is born with an extra arm, it will be surgically removed...so, no chance of passing it on. Posts: 3852 | Registered: Feb 2002
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posted
Let's be honest here, it's a lot easier to apply latex doodads to someone's face and call them an alien than have to go about making a complicated puppet or animatronic whatever. Farscape did that, and, IMO, the non-humanoid characters looked pretty cheesy to me.
Also, you have to remember that all of the original series and almost all of the next generation predated computer graphics, so you couldn't cut and paste effects as some shows do now.
Posts: 903 | Registered: May 2003
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posted
Just for the record one of Gene Roddenberry's written rules for aliens what that the eyes and mouth remain as unconcealed as possible, so that the charater would be able to emote better. That may not help you in the story line, but it was the dominant factor. I'd say that Roddenberry's death has had the same level of impact as the advancement of computer rendereing in terms of the increase of CG and very abstract looking aliens during Voyager as well as Enterprise.
Now, I gotta remember where I heard that from so I can prove it...
posted
Hey, At least the Star Trek aliens did not look like giant vegetables! (Lost In Space)
Will Robinson can keep his giant carrot friend on the Jupiter 2. I can't imagina a celery stalk as the science officer on the Enterprise!
Posts: 279 | Registered: May 2004
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quote: See, unfortunately Rivka, we'll never evolve more hands. Because, as soon as someone is born with an extra arm, it will be surgically removed...so, no chance of passing it on.
Javert, since extra digits/limbs are never (thus far) particularly functional, that's not the real issue. Anyway, mack's right -- removing the limb is irrelevant genetically.
quote: TOS predated budgets too. I mean if anything should bug you about it, how about the incredibly similar rocks in the background of every planet?
Heck, never mind the rocks. The whole raison d'être of the transporter was because it was cheaper than doing shuttle-shots with the miniatures every week!
My favorite ST alien (after the Horta, natch ) was the one Mick Fleetwood did. Didn't emote much, though. Posts: 32919 | Registered: Mar 2003
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posted
I think we are forgetting tribbles, and what was that blob thing that lived on that mining colony (TOS) that the miners had taken her babies? Oh, and the intelligent salt water on TNG, not to mention the black oil that killed Tasha Yar. That's just four species I can think off the top of my head that didn't look anything like humanoids.
Posts: 9871 | Registered: Aug 2001
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posted
Also, extra appendages in children are usually not the result of genetic mutation, instead they're more often a result of bad cell growth in the womb.
A genetic mutation as fancy as that usually doesn't happen. I suppose there's a chance that it could, but it's very, very unlikely.
Although I'm convinced that human evolution has come to a standstill. Very few people die because of genetic insuitability to the modern world. Not that that's a bad thing. I suppose genetic engineering will allow us to evolve ourselves (as scary as that is!).
My favorite race in Star Trek are the Andorians. They're just so cool. And Blue. And antenna-ed. And militant. And badass. Posts: 903 | Registered: May 2003
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Have any of you ever seen the fossils in the Burgess Shale? It turns out that the basic body plans even of life here on earth were extremely variable and the ones that survived, corresponding roughly to our present day phyla, were largely contingent on accidents of history. There isn't any reason why life should prefer four limbs, or organs of sight, smell, taste that look like ours or are arranged like ours. Some had seven back then, and were arranged nothing at all like vertebrates or worms or anything else you've ever seen.
Life that evolves independently on other planets should look very very different from us, and even more importantly it should think very very differently than us too. So much so that we will have a hard time even realizing they ARE intelligent, much less being able to find a way to communicate.
I can't wait! I think that will tell us so much about who we are. I sometimes wonder if we are the only intelligent life in this universe. After all, life itself started on earth just about as soon as it could. Within a hundred thousand years or so of the earliest possible time life could have survived here. But for the majority of that time, life was photosynthetic bacteria and nothing else at all. It took much longer (several billion years?) to get past the single celled stage to multicellular creatures. There there was this explosion of life forms of all sorts.
Humanity only happened a few scant million years ago. We are like a tiny twig on one small branch of the tree. There is nothing inevitable about us, or about the sort of intelligence we have, the type that builds radio telescopes and writes poetry. Perhaps we are as unique as an elephant's trunk.
Dolphins and sharks are really not at all alike in who they are. They are shaped similarly because of living in the water. But inside they are very very different.
Perhaps this universe is ours. Perhaps to find other people with hearts and spirits and minds like ours we will have to look beyond to all the other universes in the cosmos, or something, of whose existence we know nothing yet but possibility.
Posts: 2843 | Registered: A Long Time Ago!
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posted
An aside: one thing I like about Stargate is they came up with a plausible reason for everyone looking human right at the beginning. Most intelligent life originated on earth; humans were shipped around the galaxy as slaves. Of course, that doesn't explain why they all speak English.
Okay, back to the other "Star" show.
Posts: 3546 | Registered: Jul 2002
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Glad you brought up the CambrianExplosion, ak, though interpretations of its meaning inregards to convergence/divergence of bodytypes is more subject to argument than you write.
The main thing to remember is as Scotty stated, "Ye cannae change the laws of physics": any biological structure has a metabolic cost as well as a biological benefit. And so, though vision has evolved separately perhaps as many as 40 different times, when it becomes a metabolic burden in terms of benefits vs costs, vision soon disappears: eg the blind cave fish.
Convergent evolution can create similar new features long after ancestral lines have diverged if the physics allows the metabolic cost to be exceeded by biological benefit. eg Well after ancestors of mammals and ancestors of lizards had diverged from their common ancestor, each line converted the same bone -- which was originally used to strengthen the skull&jaw -- into the ossicle used for hearing. Similarly, mako sharks and tuna have converged upon similar body engineering which has allowed each to become pelagic top predators.
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I doubt that humaniforms are common even on planets which have similar"level" lifeforms. This is because the formation of the Earth-Moon complex is likely to be relatively rare. The collision between the two large protoplanets -- which created the Earth and its relatively very large Moon -- quite likely blew off a super-majority of the lighter volatile elements into space.
So an extraSolar "terrestrial"planet's atmosphere would likely be MUCH denser; and the seas would likely be MUCH deeper, and covering the entire surface. And once the SnowballEarth phase -- which apparently precludes the development of complex multicellular bodies, at least within the amount of time before&during -- ended, it would be unlikely that there would be ice caps permanent enough* to be considered solid "ground" in terms of geological or evolutionary time.
In other words, most "terrestrial"planets** are likely to have oceanic and atmospheric patterns similar in appearance to those on the gas giants like Jupiter and Saturn. Planetary rotation combined with energy input from their sun would produce extremely large&long-lasting cyclonic and anticyclonic vortices: supergiant hurricanes within the atmosphere. With much higher velocities than Earth hurricanes because there would be no landmasses to interfere with the buildup of windspeed. And MUCH more powerful since the windspeed would be higher and the air would be denser.
Assuming the GaianHypothesis to be true -- ie life self-regulates its environment to the extent it can to extend the biosphere's lifespan -- there would be no hardshelled-plankton. According to the hypothesis, such plankton is believed to have developed to neutralize the life-killing effects of an especially massive outpouring of carbon dioxide from the Earth's crust due to volcanic activity. And hardshelled plankton exist to extract the carbon from carbon dioxide, then sink the carbon to the bottom of the ocean. With no extra large moon to provide an extra large tidal force, the crust would solidify into a seamless mass much sooner. No plate tectonic activity would mean no volcanos, and no carbon dioxide poisoning the biosphere. And so no need for the biosphere to respond to that threat.
If anything, there would have to be anti-plankton to lift carbon from the seafloor to the surface. No plate tectonics also means no subduction of the seafloor into the crust. Therefore there would be no geological carbon-cycle in which sunken carbon subducts into the crust, where it is transformed by heat and chemical reactions into carbon dioxide, which in turn is released from the crust by volcanos. A Gaian biosphere would counteract that ever-decreasing surface carbon by creating sea life which would mimic the Earth's geologic carbon-cycle in terms of end-effect.
There would slower "hurricanes" within the ocean somewhat resembling the northern-flowing GulfStream and the southern-flowing EuropeanCurrent combination. However the current would be nearly circular because there would be no irregular landmasses to distort the regularity of the oceanic vortices. So there could also be large semi-permanent circular "land"masses of floating kelp/etc; in many ways similar to the SargassoSea.
Because of the destructiveness of the supergiant hurricanes, "land"animals would be either amphibious to escape underwater or "avian" to fly around the storm, or both. With a denser atmosphere, flying animals could grow much larger, weigh more than birds on Earth. So flyers could be more than bird-brained. Because of the sufficiently dense atmosphere, the alien"avian"brain could match or exceed the human brain-mass to body-mass ratio believed to be a highly significant factor in the development of intelligence.
Which is where I'll stop for now.
* Earth's permanent glaciers are based on land. In terms of ice caps, most significantly on the Antarctic continental landmass and Greenland, with overflow covering nearby ocean. The NorthernPolarIceCap is based on many small islands and the continental land masses surrounding the NorthPole, again with overflow floating on the nearby ocean. From past-to-present satellite photos I've seen, the NorthPole is soon likely to be open water during the summer, with a thin ice-covering during the winter.
** What I mean by "terrestrial"planet is: a planet with Earthlike temperatures and a gravity&diameter sufficient to hold an atmosphere and ocean for billions of years. The astronomical community's standard meaning of terrestrial planet includes Mercury, Earth, Venus and Mars: ie planets with exposed rocky surfaces, but not necessarily conducive to nurturing life.
posted
Speaking of black and shiny, there was the Shelliac Corporate in an episode of TNG. It seemed to be human in size but was a heap of black gelatinous stuff.
What I thought was weird is how cauliflower growths on the temples seemed to go with telepathic ability.
I thought the species that seeded the galaxy in TNG looked a lot like the Dominion folks we saw later in DS9. But I only saw it the one time so it could be a coincidence.
I had a bread machine once just like the set piece they used to keep Odo in during "Children of Time."
Posts: 11017 | Registered: Apr 2003
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aspectre, those were some really good links you lunk. You say there is substantial debate on these subjects, and I don't survey the whole field well enough to know, yet in the dialogue you linked, I found Gould (my main source, along with Scientific American) utterly convincing.
quote: I don't know how else to interpret the cardinal fact that life did originate on earth almost as soon as environmental conditions permitted such an event—an indication, although surely not a proof, of reasonable expectation and predictability; whereas consciousness has evolved only once, and in a marginal lineage among so many million that have graced our planet's history—an indication, although again not a proof, that such a phenomenon is not inevitably meant to be.
This is just plain good sense.
Also on the phenomenon of convergence, he says this which is also quite apt.
quote: As a striking phenomenon, convergence draws our attention, but I think that we often overestimate its sway. Nearly all textbooks stress the admittedly remarkable convergences of several Australian mammals with their independently evolved counterparts in northern continents (for example, the marsupial "mole" with the denizens of our gardens, and the extinct Australian marsupial thylacine, otherwise known as the Tasmanian wolf, with doglike carnivores). When I first visited Australia, I expected to be overwhelmed by these demonstrations of convergence, but I encountered just the opposite phenomenon: uniqueness and difference, with convergence as an oddity singled out for textbook illustration. The mammalian fauna of Australia, after all, is dominated by upright and effectively "three-legged" herbivores known as kangaroos—a group with no evolved counterpart elsewhere.
posted
Your surmises on planetary evolution are also interesting, if founded (necessarily) on too little data. There is little doubt that the Earth Moon system formed from the collision of a Mars sized body with the proto-Earth, and such an event can't be the rule. However, there is no reason to believe it to be particularly rare, either, since it happened once in the only planetary system of which we have reasonable knowledge. There's also insufficient data to conclude that life as we know it can only evolve on planets with conditions quite similar to early Earth. We just don't know enough to make a good guess about that. The great flexibility and adaptability of life may allow for a far greater range of environments than we realize. Certainly the very early presence of life on Earth argues for it being a strong probability.
My personal belief is that some primitive bacteria can survive in space in suspended form, and can be dispersed through the galaxy from habitable planets during nova and supernova events. It only takes one bacterium to seed a new planet, and be the founder of an entire new ecosystem. However, the fact that for the first 3 billion years of life on earth, there was nothing but photosynthetic bacteria, leads one to believe that complex multicellular life is not necessarily the rule. What caused the Cambrian explosion of life, as you say, is still a matter of deep puzzlement.
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Denise Crosby (Tasha Yar) is one of the most annoying actresses known to mankind. I cringed every time her character did anything. I would have been pleased had she died in the premiere.
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Me, too. But Trekkies is a really good film. Not everything she does sucks. Of course, she directed it and it's a documentary, but whatever.
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