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Evolutionary biologist: Space babies will be more alien than human

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In his scenario, we are the aliens ourselves:

… evolutionary biologist Scott Solomon isn’t terribly concerned with how humans plan to explore the universe. Instead, he’s focused his attention on what might happen to our species once we settle into our off-world homes. His surprising conclusion: future human colonists might not be humans at all.

“Eventually,” he recently told Business Insider, “people living in space could evolve to be different enough from people on Earth that we would consider them to be different species.”

Kristin Houser, “Biologist: Babies born in space might not be fully human” at Futurism

That’s nothing compared to what he had to say about childbirth:

Narrator: That’s Scott Solomon, an evolutionary biologist and professor at Rice University. He walked us through what space might do to generations of humans born in low-gravity environments. We already know that the way we give birth influences our anatomy. For example, the size of our heads is restricted by the size of our mothers’ birth canals.

Solomon: With more C-sections, that could lead to larger heads in our descendants because they wouldn’t be constrained by the size of the birth canal.

Gene Kim and Rebecca Wilkin, “If humans gave birth in space, babies would have giant, alien-shaped heads” at Business Insider

Actually, it’s a good thing if the space kids are weird-looking because then they won’t mind the webbed feet that climate change is going to give us all. 😉

See also: Paleoanthropologist: Climate change will cause us to grow webbed feet What we need right now is an earnest, just-published study offering convoluted neuroscience theories as to why so many people don’t trust science.

and

Tales of an invented god

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Comments
Given that our genome and phenotype have not changed significantly in 100,000 or more years, so that we are the same species in numerous different habitats from the Serengeti, to caves, jungles, prairies, the arctic, modern cities, etc., I doubt there will be any new human species for the next several thousand years, at least by random evolution, assuming we survive that long and actually make a significant emigration to the stars. Of course, given the likelihood of advanced genomic engineering in the next hundred years, we could probably create a new "human" species by the time we reach the stars, if we want to. (And doubtless there will always be someone who wants to.) Hmmm, I see that Doubter has posted some very similar comments -- sorry for the redundancy.Fasteddious
July 26, 2019
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Solomon seems to be a sci-fi fan. But did he think about how with present humanity and especially future space-faring humanity technology will rule as far as the human body design is concerned? I guess he didn't - he followed the "party line" on the supposed miraculous ability of blind Darwinian processes to design new functional structures. Won't happen. Evolution as "understood" by Darwinists even if it somehow had the ability would simply take far too long, millions of years and thousands of generations. In the meantime in the "short term" (the near historical time of the next few hundred years) perhaps genetic manipulation (the human application of design) will achieve what evolution couldn't. These would be very complex body system modifications for features like tolerance of zero g or low-g and tolerance of high levels of radiation. Unfortunately, human knowledge and medical technology is still primitive compared to the true hyper-complex and interdependent, interactive nature of the body-brain system of subsystems, and many attempts at such modifications will almost certainly fail with disastrous consequences for the poor humans involved.doubter
July 26, 2019
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I would give him some credence because of the influences of environment but after being told that humans would eventually evolved and not have pinkies in the recent we’re going to evolve to have webbed feet I am not going to hold my breath but wait if I do hold my breath future generations might not need to breatheAaronS1978
July 25, 2019
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