Why
Real Scientists Think Aliens Would Never Eat Humans
When the Martians first land on Earth in the 1996 sci-fi
comedy Mars Attacks!, for a moment it appears all will be fine.
"We come in peace," says their leader, as the music swells and a dove
soars overhead. Seconds later the Martian pulls out a laser gun and opens fire
on a crowd of human onlookers. Yet another blockbuster alien invasion has
begun.
That's Hollywood, of course. But the melodrama underscores one of
humanity's most widely held fears: that if and when we do encounter
extraterrestrial beings, they will wreak all kinds of havoc, much as they do in
the movies.
Or will they? For his new book, Aliens: The
World's Leading Scientists on the Search for Extraterrestrial Life,
quantum physicist Jim Al-Khalili asked a series of experts to explore how humans
might actually make contact with aliens. The possibility is not as far-fetched
as it once seemed: since NASA launched its Kepler mission in 2009, researchers
have discovered thousands of new planets and "revolutionized our concept
of how many habitable worlds could exist," writes astrobiologist Nathalie
Cabrol in one of the book's essays.
But while Hollywood suggests we should expect to battle their
inhabitants, science tells a different story. Here, five popular alien myths
that Aliens debunks.
MYTH NO. 1: Aliens would eat us
Movies like The Blob and Critters imagine
aliens harvesting humans for food, an unpleasant prospect. But it doesn't track
with the science of nutrition, writes astrobiologist Lewis Dartnell. In order
for aliens to get nourishment from eating us, their bodies would have to be
capable of processing our molecules (like amino acids and sugars). And that
requires having a similar biochemistry--a long shot for a species that hails
from a different world.
MYTH NO. 2: Aliens would breed with us
Both of this summer's extraterrestrial blockbusters, Alien: Covenant and Guardians of the
Galaxy Vol. 2, involve human-alien hybrids. But given that we
can't even reproduce with our nearest evolutionary relative, the chimpanzee,
it's "overwhelmingly improbable" we could do so with aliens,
according to Dartnell.
MYTH NO. 3: Aliens would look like us
Human evolution depended on so many unique and unpredictable
factors, it's near impossible that an extraterrestrial species would have
human-like features, like the aliens in The Day the Earth Stood Still and Star Trek.
It's far likelier, writes neuroscientist Anil Seth, that they'd be as different
as the octopus, "our very own terrestrial alien," which has a high
level of intelligence, a decentralized nervous system and an alternative style
of consciousness.
MYTH NO. 4: Aliens would be "living" creatures
Even restrained films like Arrival get this one wrong, according to some scientists.
Should aliens contact us, cosmologist Martin Rees believes we will hear not
from fellow organic creatures, but from the robots they produced, who can, in
theory, live forever.
MYTH NO. 5: Aliens would steal our water and metal
The aliens in Independence Day famously arrive to strip Earth of
its resources. But again, that logic doesn't add up, writes Dartnell. Most of
our metal is in the Earth's core, not its crust; asteroids would be far better
targets for mining. And icy moons, like Jupiter's Europa, would be easier
places to stock up on water. They're uninhabited, and they don't have Earth's
strong gravitational pull.
So if aliens aren't interested in harvesting our lands or our
bodies, why would they make contact? Dartnell suspects a purer motive:
curiosity. "If aliens did come to Earth," he writes, it would
probably be "as researchers: biologists, anthropologists, linguists, keen
to understand the peculiar workings of life on Earth, to meet humanity and
learn of our art, music, culture, languages, philosophies and religions."
B#20
No comments:
Post a Comment