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SJHigbee
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   Posted 3/10/2008 9:19 AM (GMT -5)    Quote This PostAlert An Admin About This Post.
Just a thought - with ideas of mobile genes, or 'jumping genes' reacting very quickly to affect our DNA in response to violent environmental upsets, such as famine or disease (and I would have thought deep space could also fall into this bracket), surely homo sapiens could very quickly split off into radically different sub-species. This isn't a new idea of course. (Is it Greg Bear who has Heavyworlders??) But looking at some of the stuff recently published in the New Scientist, the timescales could be far shorter... and make for some very interesting differences!


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Skadi meic Beorh
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   Posted 3/9/2008 3:32 PM (GMT -5)    Quote This PostAlert An Admin About This Post.
My first thought is that without much light, we're talking about albino cave-like humans...

turn


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Hermit
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   Posted 3/5/2008 3:16 PM (GMT -5)    Quote This PostAlert An Admin About This Post.

Isn't gravity defined lately as the curvature of space? There's no such thing as zero gravity in the manifest universe. Relative zero, perhaps, but not Absolute Zero. So the way to fake higher gravity is to keep a constant of acceleration. Relative to stationary objects, a spaceship might move the speed of light, but the lack of resistance of "blank" space would permit it to continue acceleration until it was overly influenced by the gravitational pull (friction) of a large celestial body. Within such a ship, the constant acceleration would be more meaningful than the speed of the vehicle. Reverse acceleration would have similar effect within the ship.

Frankly, I think the only way foreseeable now is nanotechnology and DNA encoding - like longrange cloning. Our nanobots swarm a planet with the right primordial soup and shoot our DNA into it. We either grow from the muck or evolve. Either way won't matter much, as the Earth will likely not be in touch with propelled space voyagers. I think the only longterm answer lies in technologies that facilitate space folding or dimensional teleportation. Which means we'll have to have a far greater understanding of subatomic particles, antimatter, dark energy, and such.

Maybe . . . rofl


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Anaconda
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   Posted 3/5/2008 3:00 PM (GMT -5)    Quote This PostAlert An Admin About This Post.
If this spacecraft is going to arrive at a habitable planet or moon then it will need to accelerate to a significant fraction of the speed of light (c). Just as critically, in will need to accelerate in the reverse direction before it arrives.
By my rough mental calculations, if this vessel can (miraculously) continuously produce 0.1g and it gets to a maximum of 0.5c, then ten years of that voyage will have the equivalent of weak gravity. (Time as noticed inside the ship).


Alec Anaconda, author of “Slaves of Janice”, “After Janice”  and “Toxic Retribution”.

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crystalwizard
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   Posted 2/3/2008 4:47 AM (GMT -5)    Quote This PostAlert An Admin About This Post.
Dragon Angel said...
since breeding isn't that difficult


I should not read threads like this at this time of night!
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Dragon Angel
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   Posted 2/2/2008 12:17 PM (GMT -5)    Quote This PostAlert An Admin About This Post.
Here's what I mean.

Imagine there are two groups of people on the space ship. A ad B. A's aren't particularly suited for space, but they can breed. B's are well suited for space and can breed. Humans, space age humans, have children when they want to, usually 2 or 3. B's might easily ahchieve this, but the A's would as well, since breeding isn't that difficult. Without natural selection to kill the A's and keep them from breeding, their genetic line will continue.


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Dragon Angel
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   Posted 2/2/2008 12:15 PM (GMT -5)    Quote This PostAlert An Admin About This Post.
jackypaper said...
Dragon Angel said...
Unless someone is killing off the people in space who are not well adapted to it, there won't be any natural selection at all, so no evolution.
Natural selection doesn't require murder.  If two creatures with different physical traits inhabit the same environment, the environment will select which one is naturally better suited to thrive in those conditions.  That creature has better odds of surviving and producing an offspring that will carry those same traits.
 
So I was wondering what traits would make a human "best suited" to be selected for survival in a weightless environment. 
But humans who have mastered space travel are also going to have the technical prowress to continue their genetic line even if they aren't best suited for the conditions.


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Anaconda
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   Posted 1/14/2008 4:29 PM (GMT -5)    Quote This PostAlert An Admin About This Post.
The few animal reproduction experiments in zero gravity have produced disastrous results.
It seems the foetus needs to “know” which way is up to be able to grow a head.


Alec Anaconda, author of “Slaves of Janice” and “After Janice”.

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M. A. Shah
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   Posted 1/13/2008 6:35 AM (GMT -5)    Quote This PostAlert An Admin About This Post.
<<sorry i don't know but it just wasnt continuing>>

weight
Children born in a gravity less environment will not be able to differentiate between up and down. And balance and ...
Although all this is still improbable, because if we ever want to head for the stars, we will certainly have to mess with our genes. Like acquire the radiation defying gene of the cockroach. This i guess will be the reason for most of the changes.


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M. A. Shah
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   Posted 1/13/2008 6:26 AM (GMT -5)    Quote This PostAlert An Admin About This Post.
Quite interesting replies.
I guess if we ever go into space for extended periods of time, the basic change will of course be a gravity less environment. And all the changes that occur in the human body will eschew from this fundamental change. We'll lose bone density, and muscle mass rapidly. Remember the muscles too, because almost all the exercise that we get on earth is against gravity. It will most probably result in uselessness of our bodies and inevitable death. Remember that evolution takes place only when the environment is changing slightly with time, over the longer period. The shift from gravity to no gravity would be instantaneous.
Of course it is quite improbable that humans will not apply preventive measures. If its a space station, then the basic space station design will be used that i guess everyone here has studied in high school. Centrifugal force acting as fake gravity and that stuff.
If its a space ship then it gets more complicated. If we are heading for the stars, most probably it would be in a hibernation like state. A centrifuge will provide the fake gravity. Imagine a round table, on which many people are lying in a supine position. Like they placed the swords on the round table. The table is spinning thus providing the necessary gravity.
Another way is a manual centrifuge in which the people lying on the table use a bicycle like peddles to rotate the centrifuge, thus stimulating their muscles in addition to providing gravity.
Space travel without such measures is an impossibility, because after even a few weeks in space, men will be unable to exist in a gravity environment. An example is of some astronaut who came back to earth after a few weeks and was not even able to stand in the gravity environment. He had lost considerable


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jackypaper
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   Posted 1/11/2008 1:51 PM (GMT -5)    Quote This PostAlert An Admin About This Post.
Hermit, thanks for the wonderful speculation!  A lot of this is pretty radical stuff.  But it all seems to make sense.  Though some authors really strive for realism, this is one area where they seem to take the easy way out.  You've given me a lot of things to think about in my kill-time-at-work-thought-project.
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Anaconda
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   Posted 1/11/2008 12:43 PM (GMT -5)    Quote This PostAlert An Admin About This Post.
If your characters can build a craft immense enough to start with a viable gene pool, then add thousands of years of descendents, then they can make it rotate fast enough to produce normal gravity at the rims.
It would be just too ironic for them to atrophy to the point where they could not live on a planet (or moon) with gravity strong enough to retain an atmosphere.


Alec Anaconda, author of “Slaves of Janice” and “After Janice”.

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Hermit
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   Posted 1/11/2008 12:21 PM (GMT -5)    Quote This PostAlert An Admin About This Post.

Wow! This gets really complicated very quickly.

Assuming no artificial gravity, as commonly stated, bone mass and muscle mass lessen. So the bones and muscles atrophy. What about organs? Metabolic changes would have to re-regulate or become aggressively adaptive. This would create changes in the pituitary down to the thyroid, adrenal system, hormonal systems, etc. Diet would come into play, and would have to evolve. If we're not using hydroponics or such to grow organic plants for food, we would likely need to adapt to a diet based on micro-organisms. Which would change our dental makeup as well as our entire digestive track. Eyes would definitely evolve to something else - I like to imagine that we'd develop a nictitated membrane to deal with changes in light, and that it would work not only to deal with light but to filter out other harmful radiations. Skin pigment would likely become unnecessary. Circulation would change because of the gravitational changes as well as the near-static environment as maintained by the computers onboard. Hair would either thicken or develop into colorless villi capable of organic processes to digest available radiation (radio-synthesis).

Would we retain our hands as they are? I think they would be very similar. We really depend a lot on that opposable thumb adaptation, so I doubt we're going to hold onto it for as long as we have carbon-based bodies.

Look into the deep ocean trenches and evolution around the vents. This might give you a lot of ideas on life in an environment cloaked from natural lighting. There are a lot of really creepy things down there! Also deep cave critters.

BUT, I really think that we'll have to have vessels with windows that let in certain spectra of light. Radiation and light will become necessary to feed Homo odyseus.

There's lots more . . . is this helpful?


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jackypaper
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   Posted 1/11/2008 12:03 PM (GMT -5)    Quote This PostAlert An Admin About This Post.
Dragon Angel said...
Unless someone is killing off the people in space who are not well adapted to it, there won't be any natural selection at all, so no evolution.
Natural selection doesn't require murder.  If two creatures with different physical traits inhabit the same environment, the environment will select which one is naturally better suited to thrive in those conditions.  That creature has better odds of surviving and producing an offspring that will carry those same traits.
 
So I was wondering what traits would make a human "best suited" to be selected for survival in a weightless environment. 
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Lyn
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   Posted 1/11/2008 11:37 AM (GMT -5)    Quote This PostAlert An Admin About This Post.
"...despite the fact that those characters are supposed to be descendants of people who have been living in space for 1000 years."

Easier on the make-up artists in case the story goes to screenplay. lol :-)

[PS, Sorry for the confusion, I was referring to 'atheistic evolution' as a philosophy - (I assume it's the same as Darwinian, but I may be wrong) - which is different than evolution via natural selection. Natural selection is a scientific theory - the best one going (and quite logical) - but doesn't address the ultimate origin of 'things.' Atheistic evolution is illogical in that it starts with the premise that something came from nothing. Again, didn't mean to steal the thread. Good discussion though. :-) ]


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Dragon Angel
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   Posted 1/11/2008 11:36 AM (GMT -5)    Quote This PostAlert An Admin About This Post.
Unless someone is killing off the people in space who are not well adapted to it, there won't be any natural selection at all, so no evolution. Will vertigo kill people? I'm a bit skeptical.


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jackypaper
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   Posted 1/11/2008 10:15 AM (GMT -5)    Quote This PostAlert An Admin About This Post.
Lyn said...
Darwinian doesn't necessarily mean logical. Darwinian evolution is more of a philosophical viewpoint.
Hmmm.  I never heard Darwinism described as a philosophy, but rather as a scientific theory.  And isn't evolution via natural selection more logical than not?
 
At any rate, the "deep space" subgenre is my favorite, where most of the action takes place not planetside but somewhere Out There in between worlds.  It amazes me that some authors portray human beings as looking exactly like the ones sitting here in my office building, despite the fact that those characters are supposed to be descendants of people who have been living in space for 1000 years.
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Lyn
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   Posted 1/11/2008 9:43 AM (GMT -5)    Quote This PostAlert An Admin About This Post.
"...a logical, scientific, Darwinian point of view?"

Just a quibble - Darwinian doesn't necessarily mean logical. Darwinian evolution is more of a philosophical viewpoint. So from a scientific standpoint, yes, changes will occur. I agree that micro-evolution is constantly taking place (which is what you are talking about here) - and the implications for generation upon generation of space travelers is an intriguing topic. I think you're right, jackypaper, this will require some study of the human body in order to contrast our current physiology with the vastly different conditions of space. Best wishes!


Lyn from ResAliens

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Anaconda
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   Posted 1/10/2008 4:52 PM (GMT -5)    Quote This PostAlert An Admin About This Post.
I suggest that balance from the inner ear will be even more helpful in zero gravity; it will still register directional accelerations. As anybody has ever suffered from (real) vertigo will know, it is probably the worst minor illness.
There is already plenty of available work on bone density loss and its control.
 
A good place to start could be on the genetic adoptions that have already taken place, such as:
People who live so high that I would need oxygen.
Isolated island tribes who have lost stature.
 
It could also be worth looking at other mammals, such as the sheep on a remote Scottish island, which have adapted in a few hundred years to survive on seaweed. They now cannot do without their seaweed, and die if allowed only grass.
 
Why no natural light in your interplanetary craft?
Hope this helps.


Alec Anaconda, author of “Slaves of Janice” and “After Janice”.

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jackypaper
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   Posted 1/10/2008 4:18 PM (GMT -5)    Quote This PostAlert An Admin About This Post.
erazmus said...
Radical design shift for the inner ear.
Why?  Balance, I assume.  I'm no ear man; I guess I need to go read up on the inner ear.
 
This thread is going to show me how little I know about the human body.
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darkbow
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   Posted 1/10/2008 3:57 PM (GMT -5)    Quote This PostAlert An Admin About This Post.
I'm no expert and haven't really given this a lot of thought before now, but I'm guessing muscle mass would drop drastically and bones would weaken. In the long, long, long term, I would think legs would become useless or would adapt to something akin to another set of arms.

Weightlessness might help with blood pressure, though I'd also fear the walls of the heart would weaken with other muscle tissue.


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erazmus
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   Posted 1/10/2008 2:45 PM (GMT -5)    Quote This PostAlert An Admin About This Post.
Radical design shift for the inner ear. Much differnt lensing arraignment for the eye-- te human eye is highly developed for a middle distance of ten feet to one hundred feet that is of little use in space where things are mostly either very close or very far away.
This assumes no meaningful "antigrav" no FTL. Generational ships, long hibernation sleeps, that sort of thing. Which I don't think we'd really do, as I don't see us going anywhere until we can pretty much go as we are. We don't so much adapt to enviroments as adapt enviroments to us through technology and cultural innovation.

Mike


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jackypaper
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   Posted 1/10/2008 2:34 PM (GMT -5)    Quote This PostAlert An Admin About This Post.

Hello!

I’ve read a lot of sci-fi in which the characters travel for extended periods of time through deep space, spending the majority of their time in a weightless environment.  Some authors deal with the effects this might realistically have on the body, while others ignore it in favor of the greater story.  I’m fine with either method, so long as the story is strong.  But the situation has always made me wonder about the next phase of evolution.

 

Assuming that the human body is currently optimized for our earth of 2008, what type of evolutionary changes might take place in the physical form if we all lived in space for the next X number of years (long enough to see changes in our descendents)? What is the best configuration of the human body to deal with constant weightlessness, lack of natural light, and the hundreds of other little ways that space differs from our present surroundings?  In the absence of ways to try and compensate for the environmental differences (such as some form of artificial gravity), what would space travelers actually look like, from a logical, scientific, Darwinian point of view?

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