Page 11 - The 'X' Chronicles Newspaper - October / November 2018

What Darwin Tells Us About Aliens 11

What Darwin’s Theories

Tell Us About The Shape
Alien Life Will Take

Stuart Clark

All aliens must evolve, says a new
study from scientists at the University
of Oxford – and that gives us
something to look for.

“It’s life, Jim, but not as we know it.” How
many times did we hear Mr Spock say this back
in the day when classic Star Trek ruled the
airwaves?* What always interested me back
then was how did he know that it was life if it
was so barely recognisable by Earthly (or
Vulcan) standards?
Turns out a group of scientists from the
zoology department at the University of Oxford upon a small number of what have been termed This Congressional Candidate Is
may have the answer. Don’t look for faces, eyes, major evolutionary transitions in individuality. More Than Just Her Alien
limbs or any of the large-scale things that are so In each transition, a group of individuals that
familiar to life on Earth. Don’t look at the could previously replicate independently Abduction, Okay
chemistry either. Instead, look for the hallmarks cooperate to form a new, more complex life
of natural selection. form or higher level organism.” Bettina Rodriguez Aguilera is one of nine GOP
Natural selection lies at the very heart of That includes us. We are collectives of candidates campaigning to represent Florida’s
Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution. It is the cells all working together. Our individual cells 27th Congressional District in Congress. She
process by which favourable adaptations are are themselves collectives containing smaller currently runs a business that trains women from
retained and accumulate in populations. As time sub-units like the nucleus and energy-giving other countries to run for office. Before that, she
goes by, lifeforms adapt to be more and more mitochondria. It’s like Russian dolls all the way was a City Council member for the Miami
suited to their individual environments. down to the molecular level. These changes suburb Doral, a social worker, and the
This leads to the appearance that they were driven by natural selection because they ombudsman at the Miami-Dade county
have been designed to fit into their allowed once competing entities to work manager’s office. And even before all that, when
surroundings. However, there is no magic together for a common good. she was still a child, she says she was taken
involved, the favourable adaptations allow these The authors suggest ‘the Octomite’ not aboard an alien spaceship by tall, blond
entities to live longer and have more offspring, as a lifeforms we might expect to find but as an extraterrestrials.
so naturally the fittest rise to dominate the illustrative example of what to look for. Although she’s considered a long shot to
population. Namely, a hierarchy of once separate entities take over Congresswoman Ileana Ros-
Natural selection extends down to the that now function together for the common goal Lehtinen’s seat, last weekend Rodriguez
level of individual cells where environmental of survival. Aguilera received a significant endorsement
hardship can force cells to work together for This is the most interesting part of the from the editorial board of the Miami Herald,
their common survival, thus building complex paper: the call to jettison our attempts at which acknowledged she was an “unusual
cells, multicellular life, animals and then social defining life and just recognise it by something choice,” but said her extraterrestrial experiences
structures. that it uniquely does, which is evolve. are a “nonissue.” Rodriguez Aguilera agrees,
This complexity and cooperation is what It reminds me of Isaac Newton’s and in an interview with the AP this week, said
we should look for says Samuel Levin and co- response to queries about the meaning of his she does not want to be defined by her
authors to recognise aliens – not little green men mathematical law of gravity in 1687. When abduction.
or very big teeth (well, not necessarily anyway). asked how the gravity gets from one celestial “It has nothing to do with what I have
By doing this we could also sidestep the thorny object to another, he said it didn’t matter how it done. It happened when I was 7 years old,” she
problem of defining what life actually is. happened, all that mattered was that it did and said. “I am so proud of the Herald and what they
There have been many attempts to his equation gave the right answer. did.”
define life over the years, and all of them run In other words, we should concentrate The candidate has never wavered from
into trouble at some point. Take, for example, on what life does not what it is, and draw our her story, which she shared in an interview with
the idea that life’s defining characteristic is that insights from what things do, not how they the Spanish language station América TeVé
it must be able to reproduce. Well, a flame might do it. As Mr Spock might be driven to say back in 2009.
reproduces but can hardly be said to be alive. ‘Science Jim, but not as we know it.” That’s not According to the candidate, she entered a
Then there are the mules: creatures that are meant to denigrate the work at all. Indeed, as I spaceship manned by a trio of blond alien giants
usually sterile but are clearly alive. read the paper, another of Spock’s great (two female, one male), and “there were some
Chemical definitions such as ‘life must catchphrases kept jumping to my mind: round seats that were there, and some quartz
be based on carbon and contain DNA’ are no “Fascinating.” rocks that controlled the ship — not like
better because they are completely unfounded. The answer is none at all in the literal airplanes.” She said that they told her that Africa
We simply do not know whether other sense. It’s a line from the song Star Trekkin but is the center of the world’s energy, and that
chemicals can build replicating molecules like Spock does say similar things on a number of Florida’s Coral Castle is actually an Egyptian
DNA. Silicon shares some of carbon’s occasions. pyramid. She also claimed to have
characteristics, so may be ok under the right communicated with the extraterrestrials several
conditions (whatever those are!). times since her initial abduction.
The authors sidestep all of this and zero As the Herald put it, however, she also
NOTE: Stuart Clark is the author of The
in on the rise of complexity and cooperation as has “boots-on-the-ground ideas and experience”
Search for Earth’s Twin (Quercus) and can’t
the thing to look for. They write: that would serve her well in Congress. And who
quite believe he actually linked to that song.[]
“In particular, the evolution of complex knows, with the new Space Force, having an in
life on the Earth appears to have depended with some aliens might not be a bad thing. []