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Asked by Djenne to Heather, Helen, Hugh, Jane, Julian on 11 Nov 2014. This question was also asked by Maddie L, Abz, Sharon, elena, HannahD, ollie.t.
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Julian Onions answered on 11 Nov 2014:
Evolution tends to take a long time, so although it might be possible, they might not be humans at the end of the period. It’s much more likely we will adapt the habitat to suit us, either by habitation modules or by terraforming a planet (making it earth like).
Humans can adapt though, in low gravity environments, muscles and bones tend to waste away as they are not needed, so astronauts have to exercise a lot to keep this to a minimum.
Perhaps by the time we are ready to live on other planets we’ll be able to meet the challenge through a combination of technology, engineering and possibly genetic engineering to change our bodies.
Evolution is a very slow process though, so we probably won’t wait for that!
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Hugh Osborn answered on 11 Nov 2014:
Evolution takes a *really* long time. For a species like humans to evolve even a slightly different trait takes tens of thousands of years.
However, if humans did land on Mars or another planet and live there for a long enough time, they probably would begin to adapt to the conditions. But we won’t live long enough to study it unfortunately!
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Helen Johnson answered on 12 Nov 2014:
The other guys are right, evolution takes a really, really long time to happen. Over the past few hundred years the only way we’ve really changed as a species is to get taller. If we wanted to live on another planet we’d need to learn how to breathe another atmosphere, handle extreme temperatures and different gravity.
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