fandomhigh | Anthropomorphic Anatomy, Period 3, 15 Apr '09

"Adaptation," Mohinder began. "Starting from an enviroment similar to this the human body has certain expectations of the outside world - heat, light, pressure, gravity enough not crack your bones, air whose content won't scorch the lungs or leave it asphyxiating before it dehydrates."

"But that's only on this world - and others like it," he said passing out sets of notes. "And from such a relatively limited sample it would seem presumptous to think the same would happen elsewhere"

Mohinder turned to sketch out an equation on the board at the front of class, talking fractions of stars with planets, the likelihood of life developing, of intelligence etc, before throwing down the chalk. "Ultimately, this is all just guesswork and - out of Fandom's influence - we can't reason out if intelligent alien life exists without some kind of evidence."

"And if it did would we recognise it?" Mohinder settled back behind his desk. "How would life evolve on a very different planet? Or if you know it has - then how did it?"

[OCD has been discovered]

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How would life evolve off-Earth (Notes (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astrobiology). Extremes of pressure, heat, gravity? Tentacles, bone structures, teeth?

How likely is (or examples of) extraterrestrial life in your home universe?

"Life off-Earth would seem alien to us," Ender pointed out, "The specifics of their shape would vary according to the environmental pressures, of course, but it's not just the simple addition or substraction of bodyparts. Extra bone for extreme pressure, tentacles for water, that's simple, that's basic adaptation. I think what's more vital to really understand it is the social structures, how they get hardwired into the DNA."

He tapped his pen against his notepad. "Methods of communication would vary greatly between environments because of adaptation. The only alien life my people ever encountered was so different from ours in that that we strove to destroy it. We didn't understand it. If nothing else, that makes astrobiology one of the most important disciplines we can master-- if we're willing to go beyond tentacles and teeth. How do the circumstances affect more complex proceses?"

It was a big subject. He'd been agonizing over pictures of Formic eggs for over a month now.

"So many humans destroy each other because they don't understand other humans," Cal felt the need to mutter. "It's really no surprise at all that somethng really different would be put under scruteny."

"I find it's pretty easy for us to stop destroying each other if we find something that's even more different," Ender replied, catching the mutter. "Unfortunately, that only lasts until one of the two has been destroyed."

"Doesn't seem very...evolutionary, does it?" Cal mused, with a general gesturing of his hands. "To contstantly have to destroy other things? Or maybe that's just it, because, eventually, something'll destroy you."

"They call it survival of the fittest for a reason," Ender said. He tapped his pen against his notepad again. "Billions of years of history, but too often it amounts to who's got the biggest power, who wields pain the best of everyone else. In that regard, evolution is the same everywhere."

Cal frowned a little, tapping his pen a little on his notebook. He should have remembered that he had this class today before picking this to be the day he might have to tell someone about his own...evolutionary divergence, genetic adaptation.

And Ender'd basically said it all anyway. He shrugged. "Adaptations," he added, for as little as it seemed to contribute, "are so diverse on their own, that I bet you could think of anything at all, and there's still one situation somewhere where it'd fit."

Anthropomorphic Anatomy, Period 3, 15 Apr '09

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