Naked Science Forum
Life Sciences => Plant Sciences, Zoology & Evolution => Topic started by: thedoc on 10/05/2016 01:50:01
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Steve asked the Naked Scientists:
Hey Naked Scientists,
Been listening to the podcast (http://www.thenakedscientists.com/HTML/podcasts/) that you and your team produces, it is always interesting to listen to and usually learn something new.
Even though you haven't covered it recently, the talk about Elon Musk wanting to send people to Mars to inhabit and start colonizing Mars led me to think about two questions regarding evolution. The first being, are we the same species (Homo Sapiens) as those who inhabited the ancient civilizations of the world, like Ancient Egypt, or the Ancient Chinese?
The second question that it led me to was how would we determine when Homo sapiens actually evolve into a new species. If humans send people to inhabit Mars with no intention of bringing them back and they survive and reproduce on Mars; at what point would we classify the humans who live on Earth and those who live on Mars as different species? The idea also comes from Darwin's finches but on a cosmic scale rather than on different Islands.
Thanks for answering my questions and producing informative podcasts.
Respectfully,
Steve
What do you think?