In 1949, Ray Bradbury wrote a story called "Dark They Were, and Golden-Eyed" that has stayed with me since childhood. It concerns a colony of pioneers from Earth who settled on Mars, but without communication or ships from Earth, they turned into Martians.
Most of a century later, people are seriously talking about sending people to Mars to live. If a colony of humans were isolated on the red planet, how would they change over time? Would it require many generations for any differences to evolve, or would the very different environment on Mars cause changes? And how long would it take until they became a different species from the humans left on earth? We won't really know until it happens, but scientists have some idea about how the human body might adapt to an environment with different gravity, sunshine, and atmosphere. Read what those potential changes might be at Real Clear Science.
(Image credit: D Mitriy)
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