by Subjectivist » Sun 23 Apr 2017, 03:39:16
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Squilliam', 'T')he problem with colonising other worlds is that even if they have plant and animal life you probably can't eat them. They would have the equivalent of vitamins, minerals etc that would be incompatible with your own physiology. The only options would be to engineer the people to fit the environment, or the environment to fit the people and both have pretty major issues.
Strange dea, minerals are the same no matter where you are.
For plants and animals, organic molecules come in two varieties, left and right. If you eat protiens that are curved the wrong way your digestive system has a hard time breaking them down because the enzymes don't couple with their shapes. Even worse the part you do break down and absorb has to be modified from its existing bend to your curve in order to properly be used by your biological machinery, and that requires energy.
A number of papers and stories have been written on the topic because it could be a serious problem. If all life is random and evolved independently as some claim then half the life bearing worlds should fit in each of the two catagories and a few should have both types. If on the other hand God provided Panspermia by spreading spores through the galaxy then nearly all life will have evolved from the same base molecular pattern and most planets will have compatible chemistry.