Do You Believe in Aliens?

I know it may be far-fetched to talk about aliens when the second quarter was mainly about the origin of the human race. However, I became interested in this topic again after seeing the movie “The Last Mimzy”.

The movie was not entirely about aliens but about two siblings (a boy and a girl) gaining powers after they had found a box of “toys” on the beach. One of those toys was Mimzy. Disguised as a stuffed bunny, Mimzy was really an advanced form of artificial life utilizing nanotechnology by Intel (Wikipedia, 2008). Humans sent her from the future because they were trying to find solutions to their problems, from the past. Apparently, the future state of Earth had a big ecological disaster caused by pollution, and it has caused great damage to the human race, including genetic mutations. People from the future thought of saving the human race by sending Mimzy to the past and gather “old” human DNA; clean, untouched, and free from mutations.

There was a scene from the movie where the girl was able to see into the future, and saw scientists and a few “aliens” trying to resolve the problems in their environment. They were hoping that the last Mimzy (owned by the girl) would bring back the DNA that they needed. Luckily, the tears from this sibling fell onto the stuffed animal, and when she was brought back to the future, the DNA from the tears was used to “save” mankind.

Towards the end of the movie, the scene of the scientist and the “aliens” was shown. The aliens were actually humans, and their “alien skins” were clothing that they had to wear to protect themselves from the effects brought about by pollution. They shed off these protective clothing and were able to roam around the Earth again without fear. They used the DNA to fix the mutations, and to ensure that the succeeding generation would not carry the effects in their genes. The girl was regarded as the future’s new Eve, and the savior of the human race.

Well, a new Eve, eh?

While watching the movie, and even after watching it, it didn’t really occur to me that it had any relation with the issue of a real Eve. The only difference is that, in the movie, it was not the mitochondrial DNA that was passed onto the succeeding generations. I was sure of that because the kids in the future had all the abilities that the new Eve possessed. If that was from the mitochondrial DNA, then why don’t I (and the other people) have all (and the same) abilities that the old Eve had?

Anyway, what amazed me from that movie is the idea of a new Eve. It would really be an honor if I would be the girl who could save the succeeding generations of the human race from total extinction. I just hope that whatever ecological problem they encountered in the film would not happen for real, because if it does and we become too blind to see it, maybe the realization that we need a new Eve would come too late.