The universe is too big and mighty than human imagination, and as a result, several space experts believe that alien life forms could be thriving on distant planets. In popular fiction including movies, aliens have been often portrayed as those little green men or shape-shifting beings who hold advanced capabilities. However, one top space expert believes that human beings living on distant alien planets are more likely.
Human-like evolution in distant alien planets
In a new interview with the BBC's Science Focus magazine, Simon Conway Morris, an evolutionary paleontologist at the University of Cambridge suggested that human-like evolution might have occurred in other parts of the universe as well.
The view of Morris comes from the theory of convergent evolution, which claims that "random effects eventually average out so that evolution converges, tending to produce similar organisms in any given environment," Science Focus reports.
Science Focus also cites examples of the evolution of flight which has happened at least four times on earth alone, "pterosaurs, insects, bats, and birds."
Alien life evolving like human beings
Morris is not the only expert who believes that the evolution of alien life is analogous to human beings.
Arik Kershenbaum, a zoologist at the rarified British institution has written a book completely focussing on the concept of alien evolution. According to Kershenbaum, evolution is undoubtedly the evolutionary mechanism of life everywhere. Kershenmaum believes that the principle of evolution on earth is applicable to the rest of the universe as well.
Kershenbaum asserts that alien life forms with technological capabilities more advanced than humans would have actually evolved from a pre-technological species.
"A pre-technological alien civilization could be singing and dancing and telling stories just like pre-technological human civilization did because it serves the same purpose," said Kershenbaum, Quanta Magazine reports.
