If extraterrestrial life is discovered, who gets to name it?
January 9, 2025 7:25 AM   Subscribe

And how could the name distinguish its extraterrestrial origin?
posted by Lemkin to Science & Nature (6 answers total)
 
Response by poster: some mood music to ponder by
posted by Lemkin at 7:30 AM on January 9


Mod note: One comment removed. Please leave Trump out of this.
posted by Brandon Blatcher (staff) at 7:53 AM on January 9 [3 favorites]


any news you want to share?
posted by HearHere at 8:04 AM on January 9


I'd assume it would get a relatively scientific name, ie: galaxy/planet etc and then maybe a more personal name. So under this naming scheme, we'd be Milky Way/Earth/homo sapien/Doug.

Obvious big assumption here is that it can't communicate it's name to us.
posted by The_Vegetables at 8:34 AM on January 9


Best answer: If they're intelligent, then we'll probably base what we call them on what they call themselves, although that hasn't always worked in the long run for humans. What intelligent creatures call themselves varies, or what we understand as a name, once we start communicating (see Arrival).

If they're not intelligent, then they'll probably get named according to how we name living things here, by whoever identifies and documents them first -- but probably with a lot of "xeno" and/or the scientific name of the planet included with the flexible use of greek and latin parts, i.e. xenolapinus proximacentaurii. We'll probably have to create new clades for whatever weird structures they have that don't fit our ideas of plants and animals and things in between.
posted by AzraelBrown at 8:39 AM on January 9 [3 favorites]


Best answer: And how could the name distinguish its extraterrestrial origin?

This seems a very difficult question to answer, because the classification processes we use for life on Earth are specific to how life works here — and evolve as we learn more about how life works.

For example, classification for Archaea and Bacteria is based on their phenotypes (appearance) and chemotaxonomies (biochemical function), but — since the revolutions in biology since the mid-1900s — now also on their genotypes (genetic constitution).

Biochemistry, genes and genetic material may be specific to the chemistry of Earth, not necessarily applicable to all life everywhere in the universe (though some evolutionary or informational principles may be shared).

While we could easily start naming extraterrestrial life by how it looks (phenotype) as well as its origin (using prefixes such as "xeno-", "exo-", etc.), the other two classification types might not apply directly, or even at all, if their biology is radically different or not understood. That might require different, incomplete, or wholly new naming schemes.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 11:11 AM on January 9 [3 favorites]


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