scifiwriter

That does sound about right, considering that evolution occurs over vast amounts of time and I'm only working with a tiny sliver of that. It is interesting to consider that perhaps with a loss of ozone on Earth, if the colonists returned with a better suitability for withstanding solar radiation, that would be a tremendous advantage. Of course, what remains of civilization would have had to learn to adapt, but purposeful genetic intervention would make the colonists physically adapted and perhaps more so. It is always possible that the intentional manipulation of the human genome had some unintended effects for the colonists, who may not have had the same stringent standards for experiments and ethics that we do. I'll keep mulling this over. Thanks a ton for your input.

Thank you Phi for responding. Yes, the colonists have technology for genetic engineering that Earth does not, largely because in the novel Earth's economic and political systems collapse, and while the colonists continue to more or less thrive, science and society on Earth takes a huge backward plunge. The colonists develop themselves both to adapt to environment, and for other reasons--some wish to develop biological weapons, for instance, because there is a lot of political strife within the colony, and the weapons--well, it's complicated, but the weapons arise from the altering of human biology. The colony, by the way, is largely composed of scientists, for reasons I won't go into in the name of brevity. I suppose the follow-up would be, how large a difference in environment would make a significant difference in physiological development? Perhaps the colonists were sent to a planet with the perfect temperature and presence of water, but a radically different composition of atmosphere for example. I was thinking that many adaptations could be less advantageous here on Earth, for instance requiring them to use devices to breathe, or the need to avoid exposure to the sun, or any other of many possibilities. This aspect is intriguing. They would in this case be very reliant on technology for survival. It fits the needs of the story well. Interestingly, the original working title for the book was "The Phi." I won't get into that though, long explanation.

Hi folks. I'm hoping I can occupy a few minutes of your time. I'm not a student or scientist, I'm a writer doing research for my first novel. I know this post is broad and possibly confusing, and I apologize in advance for it. I'll try to keep this brief. In my novel, in the distant future, a group of 5,000 to 10,000 colonists have settled a new planet and separated from Earth entirely. Over the next thousand years, they spend their time in an environment which is slightly different from ours, here and there--perhaps a bit more nitrogen in the atmosphere, perhaps a bit less ultraviolet light to contend with. After that thousand years, they return to Earth looking and functioning with a notable difference in cultur eand physiology (the latter being the subject of my post), from adapting to a different environment over a relatively short amount oftime. They also have genetic engineering capabilities, and purposefully alter their physiological makeup to cope with the environment. If we lived a thousand years on a planet with these small changes--and any other possible causes thatyou could imagine would effect humans so as to cause significant changes, including genetic engineering--what would you *speculate* both the causes and effects could be? I'm looking for a mechanism by which humans would return a thousand years later with altered--and advantageously so--physiology. This is a brainstorm/ thought experiment, and your input would be very much appreciated. Let me know if and how I can improve my post. Thank you for your time and sorry for the possibly confusing question. To summarize: I need a mechanism by which humans could be physiologically altered (mostly in an advantageous way) over a relatively short period of time. And I'm curious as to what the effects of small changes in environment could be after a thousand years.