Sky Whales & Pagoda Forests -Scientists Study Possible Course of Evolution on Planets Beyond Our Solar System

What form would evolution take on life-bearing planets similar in size to earth? With the intense effort of the world's astronomers in their search for earth-like planets beyond our solar system, scientists are putting extra thought into the concept of alien evolution and have come up with some interesting results.

It's an attempt to come up with "creatures, that, although fanciful, are plausible," says Michael Meyer, an astrobiologist and the lead scientist for NASA's Exploration Program.

Using the expertise of a number of renowned scientists, an exhibition that originated in London is set to open April 10 at the Montreal Science Center explores ideas on what aliens might look like, taking into consideration biology, astronomy, and the laws of physics and chemistry. The main attraction of the exhibition are alien forms envisioned by the scientists to fit the specific characteristics of two planets, such as carbon content, the temperature, the type of atmosphere.

The planets are about the same size as Earth, says Simon Conway Morris, a Cambridge evolutionary biologist who took a lead role in the exhibition, first presented in London, England, in 2006.

The planet  supports life even though the star it orbits is much cooler than our sun. It does so by orbiting very closely, so close that the star's gravitational pull prevents Aurelia from spinning. One-half of the planet is always dark, the other always day.

The top predator on Aurelia is the bipedal gulphog, which has a long neck and a claw-like beak, and stands 4.5 meters tall. It might feed on six-legged mudpods that scurry on the ground, hide in burrows, and swim like crocodiles. There are also stinger fans, which look like plants but are actually animals that use tentacles to capture a weak star's energy.

"Blue Moon" is a planet more like Earth, but with much more oxygen and carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, allowing both plants and animals to grow bigger than on Earth. The air is extremely dense, allowing all sorts of animals to fly, such as so-called sky whales, which have nine-metre wingspans and fly using echolocation. They hover above thick "pagoda" forests, which stand at an astonishing 1,000 meters.

There are distinct similarities to creatures on Earth. Conway Morris says that's no mistake. "My constraint," he explains, "is that I seem to think that life could only evolve in a number of limited directions" -a theory known as "convergent evolution," whereby similar physical attributes evolve from completely unrelated ancestors.

"From different starting points, you end up with very similar biological solutions," he says. The eye, for instance, is found in all sorts of unrelated creatures. The octopus and the human have each developed an eye that's similar in construction.

"What I find so fantastic, if we did meet an alien, we might first (express disgust). But those differences would turn out to be skin deep. While they might look quite different, in the details of its organization, we'd be impressed by terrestrial similarities."

The scientists believe that extraterrestrials would also be subject to the laws of evolution that have shaped life on this planet.

"If you don't have evolution, you're not going to get from a simple replicating thing to bacteria to complex life," says NASA's Michael Meyer. "I can't think of another way." Other assumptions were made, such as the fact both Aurelia and Blue Moon have oxygen to support life. "There is reasonable scientific speculation that you need oxygen to get complex life forms because the energy-usage rate is so much higher to maintain different kinds of cells working in cooperation," Meyer says.

Meyer notes that we didn't have an aerobic world until 2.8 billion years ago, roughly the time we began getting more complex organisms.

As scientific as these researchers' approach was, it doesn't deny some of Hollywood scific visions. For example, the terrifying queen in Ridley Scott's scifi classic, Alien, with the acid blood. Neither Meyer nor Conway Morris discount the possibility. Here on Earth, they point out, the African bombardier beetle can spray boiling hydrogen peroxide at enemies.

The final zone of the exhibition looks at our attempts to communicate with aliens, largely through the SETI project, listening to radio waves, hoping for contact.

There is no hint at positing the existence of intelligent life, just the existence of "something."
Meyer's bet is based on simple math: "There are 100 billion stars in our galaxy. And there are 100 billion galaxies," he says. "That's a pretty large number – so there's got to be something out there."

Real forms of life that exist on Earth in extreme environments – under extreme pressure at the bottom of the ocean, or in extremely high temperatures, or acidic conditions – offer clues to the real forms that alien life might take. A few years ago, for example, scientists discovered a single-celled extremophile at a volcanic vent two kilometers under the sea, at 121 degrees C. At those depths, they need no sunlight. Researchers suggest they could survive on a planet that is habitually dark.

Posted by Casey Kazan.

If you liked this article, please give it a quick review on Digg, Reddit, or StumbleUpon.Thanks!

Related Galaxy posts:

Ancient Antarctic Microbes Revived in Lab
Lonely Hearts of the Cosmos Revisited -NASA's Phoenix Probe & the Search for
Is There Life on Mars? NASA Goes Underground to Find Out
Non-Carbon Lifeforms -Why We May Overlook Extra-terrestrial Life
Did Life Originate from Clay -Science Fiction or Reality?
Life from the Center of the Earth - The Shadow World of Our Hidden
Is There Life on Mars? NASA Goes Underground to Find Out
What Lies Beneath -A Mystery at the Earth's Center
Unknown Species of the Underworld Discovered

 

Source link:

http://www.thestar.com/News/Ideas/article/349795

Comments

[Kirado]

too bad they weren't as imaginative with the names as the where with the alien animals.. I mean, "gulphog" and, "stinger fans"..?? would it have killed them to hire a copywriter or a Sci-fi author.. I mean really?

[invaderchuck]

yeah, those names sound to me like some of the Oddworld games on Playstation ^^

[Fred Silwon]

This can't be true. I know for a fact that there is no planet called Blue Moon.

[Ollie]

This is taken directly from a documentary movie from quite a few years back. I can find identical articles from early 2005. Stop wasting people's time and come up with something yourself!!

[Ollie]

This is taken directly from a documentary movie from quite a few years back. I can find identical articles from early 2005. Stop wasting people's time and come up with something yourself!!

[Php Shopping Cart Software]

Flying whales ROFLMAO!

[MII]

good job helping to recycle an old discovery channel show!! gotta love the blogosphere...

[knoxvilledaniel]

These people SHOULD go to the experts & consult science - fiction writers. I remember an anthology called " Medea - Harlan's World " where a group of science - fiction & speculative fiction / fantasy writers wrote short stories after collaborating on what kind of environment Medea would have, & what creatures would live there. Harlan Ellison & Larry Niven were just the people to go to, in that case.

Flying whales & pagoda - like forests should only be the tip of that particular iceberg. They need to think outside the box in coming up with nomenclature.

[terrypirates01]

This is from National Geographic's Extraterrestrials just a few years back. Why hasn't anyone mentioned this?

The program was okay, but The Discovery Channel's Alien Planet was much more interesting.

I agree with the posts here - try being more original next time.

[knoxvilledaniel]

Like I said - they need to consult some Science Fiction writers like Niven & Ellison, among others. One would think that scientists working for NASA / JPL would be a tad more creative.....

[Marty Ferguson]

(Thank you, Daniel, for remembering those two programs. I have both on tape and love watching them from time to time.)

For the rest of the responders on this page, if you want imagination for alien life, read the STAR TREK novel "The Three-Minute Universe", then try to imagine a creature that has the 'ability' to offend EVERY SENSORY ORGAN OF THE HUMAN BODY: They're horrifying to look at, they have an offensive odor, a high-pitched shriek and a body temperature that can give you second-degree burns. Okay, that's four but, with all the other negative attributes, who would WANT to EAT one?! Now, THAT'S imaginative!!!

I'll go further: ALIEN. After the original movie was released in 1979 several people wrote to a few movie magazines that summer with their concepts about life on the alien's planet. Their views were based on its gestation period (from face-hugger to chest-burster) and the amount of time it took to grow to adult size from the moment it erupted from Kane's body (maybe another two hours?). Once it emerged it RUSHED into the bowels of the ship (so it could reach its final stage quickly and unmolested). So, if this creature had to go through all of this just to survive to adulthood, IMAGINE WHAT THE OTHER CRETURES ON ITS HOME PLANET MUST BE LIKE. Now, it was never mentioned or shown in any of the sequels, but if you READ THE NOVELIZATION by Alan Dean Foster, you will see a very different approach to how a life form can develop. Not all creatures need a 'queen ant' laying several thousand eggs, as shown in ALIENS and contrary to public insight and Hollywood's tunnel vision, the planet shown in ALIENS was NOT its place of origin. Foster's version of gestation was just one small step better than A. E. van Vogt's in VOYAGE OF THE SPACE BEAGLE, but van Vogt's was just as creative.

If you want even more creativity, read Piers Anthony's CLUSTER series; HE has imagination!!

[Grumble a lot]

I enjoyed the article, am going to plunge into a few more soon.