--- title: "Scientists Say There May Be “Humans” All Over the Universe" description: "Imagine, if you will, that future humans manage to travel to other worlds and find...more humans. " date: "2021-11-22" modified: "2021-11-22" authors: - name: "Noor Al-Sibai" job_title: "Senior Staff Writer" link: "https://futurism.com/authors/nooralsibai" url: "https://futurism.com/scientists-humans-universe" categories: - "Astronomy" - "Exobiology" - "Space" tags: - "alien life" - "Darwin" - "evolution" - "humans" --- # Scientists Say There May Be “Humans” All Over the Universe ![Imagine, if you will, that future humans manage to travel to other worlds and find...more humans. ]() *\Image: Getty Images\* Imagine, if you will, that future humans manage to travel to other worlds and find... more humans. According to one University of Cambridge astrobiologist, that scenario may be more likely than you'd think. In [a new interview with the *BBC*'s *Science Focus* magazine](), an evolutionary palaeobiologist at the institution's Department of Earth Sciences named Simon Conway Morris declared that researchers can "say with reasonable confidence" that human-like evolution has occurred in other locations around the universe. The core of Morris' belief comes from the theory of convergent evolution, which claims that, as *Science Focus* put it, "random effects eventually average out so that evolution converges, tending to produce similar organisms in any given environment." The magazine used the examples of flight, which "has evolved independently on Earth at least four times — in birds, bats, insects and pterosaurs." In short, convergent evolution theory posits that evolution itself is a law of nature — and, as a logical endpoint, it's likely that evolution would operate the same way on different planets as it does here on Earth. In other words, it's theoretically possible that the blue and green alien humanoids you see on "Star Trek" could be, well, actually out there. Morris isn't the only Cambridge man who believes alien life would have evolved in ways "analogous to a human." Arik Kershenbaum, a zoologist at the rarified British institution, wrote a whole book about the concept of alien evolution. "Because evolution is the explanatory mechanism for life everywhere," Kershenbaum [told *Quanta* magazine]() earlier this year, "then the principles that we uncover on Earth should be applicable in the rest of the universe." Kershenbaum argued that while it's "tempting" to envision alien races who don't have the same cultural interests humans have, such as philosophy and literature, we have to remember that they didn't just spring up out of a vacuum as advanced technological beings. Even alien lifeforms with greater technology than humans, Kershenbaum said, would have "evolved from a pre-technological species." "If that pre-technological species went on to develop all the things that we have now, chances are that they were built on building blocks that served that social purpose — things like bonding between group members, transmission of information and useful ideas between group members," he told *Quanta*. "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." It's compelling to imagine other worlds where humanoid lifeforms, in Kershenbaum's wording, are "singing and dancing and telling stories" just like on Earth. And if the laws of evolution are as strong as Darwinists like Kershenbaum and Morris believe, that ups both our propensity for relating to and communicating with aliens — and, unfortunately, for warring with them as well. ## Author At Futurism, I've often been drawn to unpacking the narratives that underlie technological, scientific and medical progress, with a special interest in areas of conflict and ambiguity that end up setting agendas and steering the fates of both elites and the hoi polloi. I'm a committed generalist, but I often find myself returning to work involving NASA and the private space sector, the effects of AI on media and society, and the mechanics of the pharmaceutical industry, with a specific focus on the spread of GLP-1 drugs like Ozempic and Wegovy. Prior to Futurism, I worked for publications ranging from Media Matters and Truthdig to Raw Story and Bustle. I'm also the author of "Myspace Scene Queens," a 2024 title in Instar Books' acclaimed "Remember the Internet" series. My work at Futurism has been cited by outlets including the New Yorker, Slate, Nieman Lab, the Verge, the MIT Technology Review, the Sunday Times, and the Daily Beast. I grew up in North Carolina, attended the University of North Carolina at Asheville, and now live in Brooklyn, New York. In my free time, I'm an avid reader and music fan; you can probably find me at a local poetry reading, concert, underground rave, or DJ set. I'm the proud parent of an ineffable orange cat named Mee-Mow. ### Author social links [Bluesky]()