posted on Apr, 23 2011 @ 04:38 PM
The idea of dark or unusual types of photosynthesis is very interesting but the premise that life would evolve independently on another planet to be
so similar to life here on earth seems incredibly unrealistic to me.
If they are assessing potential for life to evolve in this way, are they allowing for the myriad evolutionary accidents that would have to happen just
for life to reach the level of single-celled organisms and the billions of alternative paths that evolution might go down on other planets?
It seems that their simulations are making gigantic assumptions if they predict that independent evolution on another planet would go through the same
sequence as it did here on earth, through a single-celled, prokaryotic phase and onto a symbiant eukaryotic phase of cells joining together as they
have here.
This seems as spurious as saying that on planets in multi-star systems humans-type beings would evolve, with the only difference being that they had
built-in shades!
I'd love to hear what an evolutionary biologist would say about this.