Putting aside random events such as the 14-mile wide asteroid that destroyed the 150-million-year reign of the dinosaurs and cleared the path for the evolution of the human species, aliens are potentially shaped by the same processes and mechanisms that shaped humans, such as natural selection. “A fundamental task for astrobiologists is thinking about what extra-terrestrial life might be like,” said Sam Levin, at the University of Oxford.
“But making predictions about aliens is hard,” Levin added. “We only have one example of life – life on Earth — to extrapolate from. Past approaches in the field of astrobiology have been largely mechanistic, taking what we see on Earth, and what we know about chemistry, geology, and physics to make predictions about aliens.”
“There are potentially hundreds of thousands of habitable planets in our galaxy alone. We can’t say whether or not we’re alone on Earth, but we have taken a small step forward in answering, if we’re not alone, what our neighbors are like,’ said Levin.
“By predicting that aliens undergone major transitions – which is how complexity has arisen in species on earth, we can say that there is a level of predictability to evolution that would cause them to look like us,” observed Levin
In a 2017 study published in the International Journal of Astrobiology scientists from the University of Oxford showed for the first time how evolutionary theory can be used to support alien predictions and better understand their behavior.
The theory supports the argument that foreign life forms undergo natural selection, and are like us, evolving to be fitter and stronger over time.
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