...for the Human race to utterly disappear genetically, when we finally get out there among the stars and start mixing with the other races of the Galaxy and the further Universe? I'm assuming that when Humans go out and find themselves in a first-contact situation, where the aliens are friendly and want to trade, they'll allow some degree of Human settlement. In that event, mixing will take place with the local folks. How many generations would pass before the Human presence in a general population would become indistinguishable from those alien races into which they were being absorbed?Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
First possibility, it depends how long will it take for us to agree upon taking this path. This may take centuries. We are slow and retarded in terms of political and cultural change. Second possibility, it would be imposed by technologic advancement; application of various scientific discoveries to human genome has already started. Since we are comfortable apes, we will try to use everything our hands can reach in order to keep ourselves alive and well a bit longer. About alien races... This is matter of belief rather than an objective phenomenon. However, I think we will create and populate our society with alien like creatures with the help of our technology and ape ambitions.
Why not, pray? I'll grant that their biology will be somewhat different from ours, but I'm assuming (possibly hoping against hope) that there will be species out there in space who are close enough to us in their genetic makeup that we could interbreed with them.
I can't imagine that we're the only species in the universe, baftan. The only intelligent species for light years in any direction, maybe; but certainly not the single race that exists. I believe we'll be jumping over each other to mix with alien races, if we encounter them.
depends on how doing the wang dang doodle works out Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
Think about it this way, we are AMAZINGLY closely related to the other great apes, we even share large amounts of identical genetic material and we are made up of the same 20 amino acids as they are because we share a common evolutionary identity with all life on Earth. For all that similarity, we can only successfully mate with our own species. If we cannot even mate with another amazingly similar species from our own planet, what makes you think we'll be able to with a species to which we bear no relation and have no common history? It seems to me to be about as likely as your moving to a new house and finding out that your next door neighbor, without your being related to him, looks exactly like you to the point where your wife can get you two mixed up. There that would be a lot of similarity, but at least you and he would be very closely related and would share most of your genes anyway. Think about this: of all the species that have ever lived on Earth, how many would you want to mate with? I mean, in terms of physical attractiveness, how many species make you horny. Nature has only come up with one vaguely humanoid shape, the primates. The rest, sea cucumbers, insects, bivalves, whales, etc. all non-humanoid. Multi-cellular life is only hundreds of millions of hears old (out of the 3.8 billion year history of life), and yet we vary as widely as the difference between sea urchins and humans. Sharks, which being chordates are closely related to us as well, in the grand scheme, even have senses that we do not share with them. So what are the odds that wholly alien species will be even vaguely attractive? It will not be "Star Wars" and "Star Trek" where everything looks like humans in latex masks. On the 20 amino acids, there are plenty of organic molecules that we could have used to build up life, so why does all life (that we know of) use just those 20? No one knows, but one good bet is "accident of history." The first life forms likely used those 20 (or something very close to it) and all of their descendants wound up having them in common. If we traveled to an alien planet, not only could we not mate with the locals, we couldn't even survive on a diet consisting of local foods. Our bodies are adapted to those 20 chemicals, and we need to ingest them to live. On another world where the vagaries of circumstance started their life off with a different set, and then their evolutionary offspring incorporated that different set, would not have the molecules we need to function. So if you want a sandwich after all that freaky alien sex, you had better pack it and take it with you. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
By the time we would develop such space travel technology, I suspect that we would also would already have complete mastery over genetic engineering. So hpothetically, I think mate pairings with other species would definitely be possible through scientific means only.
But it's not clear that aliens will have "genes", let alone DNA. The earliest lifeforms on earth seem to have used RNA, and that one base pair difference would make genetic engineering pointless (unless you want to convert their RNA into DNA (or vice versa) and then combine the strands. But also humans and chimpanzees and apes have different numbers of chromosomes. (Other) Apes have one more than we do. So why do you imagine that aliens will have 46 just like humans? What if aliens have only 40, or 167? Humans with extra chromosomes have handicaps. Also, sexual reproduction is a terrible survival strategy in many ways. It is hotly debated amongst biologists whether it is an evolutionary dead end or not. It may simply be that our common multicellular ancestor was afflicted with it, by chance, and since all multicellular organism are descended from that ancestor, we all share the same weakness. If the naysayers are right, then the odds of meeting a sexual intelligent alien species are very low.
Here is a picture of cross breeding with a alien species and human... Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
I'd argue that convergent evolution would ensure that there are some species out there whom we could mix with and produce successful offspring.
I have to agree with Pandaemoni. Mating with aliens would be impossible and probably not even desirable. Besides, it isn't like we're ever going to have contact with another sentient race... so it's all hypothetical.
Anyone remember what happened to the Aztics and Incans? If you do you, see the reason why we do not want to meet any alien race for a very, very long time.
In 3.8 billion years of life we are the one and only time anything even vaguely like us has appeared. and we're incredibly new as species go. There is no evidence that such convergent evolution is occurring on Earth, let alone on alien worlds. I have no doubt that wherever there is life, convergent evolution is a possibility, but that is evolving to a "form" suitable to a given niche. If the Alents have a WTFNA (rather than DNA) based genetic code, are asexual reproducers and/or have 1.6 million chromosomes, they could look exactly like us and yet mating would not work. (In fact, theur "cells" if they have them, might not have nuclei, or single nuclei, and might not have "nucleic acids" at all, and even if they do it's unlikely to the point of being nits to think they would be made of the same four chemical nucleotides ours use. Convergent evolution won't get you past that hurdle. (Lions and tigers can only mate with great difficulty and subject to genetic problems like gigantism in the Liger, dwarfism in the Tigon, albinsm, infertility, high rates of death while in utero, and these are animals of the game genus.) "Humanzee" aside, convergent DNA has not helped us mate with any other species on Earth, and we're closely related to them. I'd argue that we cannot even imagine how alien alien life will be, if we ever find any. If we do find some, there's a good chance it will be single celled. Assuming we find intelligent multicellular life, it will probably look so different from us that you'd rather fuck an goliath beetle, because the beetle would be hotter. Showing here: Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! Look at that slut! Mammals only exist because the dinosaurs died, and dinos only because the Permian Extinction occurred. Star trek and Star Wars's view of all intelligent aliens as basically humanoid with basically humanoid psychologies and physiologies is simple-minded. If we found aliens and that were true, it would be passable evidence of intelligent design, that's how crazy it is.
Wow - in the entire universe, is a solar system like ours really that extremely rare? And if not, would life evolve so much differently? What if there's a similar pattern to how these planet things develop, and where there's a common mass a similar distance from a star, a chai reaction starts, shit starts happening, but the dino either does or does not get killed off... so maybe we find aliens and instead of just saying, "Welcome to earth", we follow it up with "those bitches better be house-broken!"
The same conditions all on Earth have produced how many humanoid species? (A: A handful, all of them either us, or our close-close relatives.) How many other species can the average species mate with and consistently produce healthy fertile offspring (A: Something higher than, but not much higher than, 1) Evolution is not guided along a path, evolution is a chaotic system (in this sense) with a self organized criticality. Like all chaotic systems it is extremely sensitive to initial conditions. If you went back in time 100 million years and killed a single insect, the odds that humans would evolve would be nearly zero. The odds of evolution tracing the same path on a cellular level (which would be required for biological mating) is unfathomably small. I think you fail to appreciate just how complex life really is. The same earth that gave you "man" also gave you geoducks like the one this man is holding: Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! Both are animals, both evolved on Earth, both have a common ancestor that lived only a few hundred million years ago and both are equally evolved since both have been evolving for the exact same length of time. There is an impression sometimes that evolution "tries" for certain things, like increased intelligence or (in you case) inter-species reproductive viability, but there is no evidence for that and much circumstantial evidence to the contrary. As I said, life evolved on another planet likely couldn't even survive eating our food, because the 20 amino acids we use would not be the set of chemicals they use as the basis of their life. Because it would not have the building blocks of their biology, they would not be able to synthesize it in to the raw materials they need to survive, and mating is far more complicated because it is less basic.
LOL I'm guessing any mating between different species will be done for recreational uses and probably involves something resembling holographic machenery. With no change for offspring. Some genitical tweeking might happen where where 2 species design a hybrid for what ever reason they can think off. Or advanced rechearge could bring a close relative to the species back to live (in our case homo sapiens; Neanderthals,idaltu and heidelbergensis) with who interbreeding Might be possible.
