What will humans look like in a million years

An individual may develop such a characteristic but will not pass this on to any offspring. Many geneticists claim that something new is happening in human evolution - something along the lines of a 'grand averaging' of our species. Basically, we are becoming more alike.

Human evolution relies on the differences in our genes and in our ability to pass on these genetic differences ie our breeding capabilities. Over time, the population should change as these differences become more apparent. If the genetic changes are great enough, a new species will arise. However, the three components required for evolution to occur - variation, natural selection and geographic isolation - have more or less disappeared from the equation.

Humans can be considered a single genetic 'continent' - meaning that the world's population is mixing and is no longer just breeding within cultural or ethnic groups. It is suggested that, given enough time, the human race will start to look more and more alike, becoming the 'average' of all the current different physical appearances. The Australian Museum respects and acknowledges the Gadigal people as the First Peoples and Traditional Custodians of the land and waterways on which the Museum stands.

Premiering today May 15 , the new National Geographic Channel series "Year Million" investigates what humans might look like far into the future. In six episodes, the show explores the possibility of merging technology with the human body , the potential to drastically extend lifespans, the effects of virtual reality, the use of computers to merge human minds, the availability of new sources of energy and the possibilities of spreading humanity into outer space.

Brian Greene, a professor of theoretical physics at Columbia University in New York City, is one of the famed scientists featured in the series. Greene has written several books on string theory, a theoretical physics model that suggests the universe is made up of miniscule, one-dimensional strings. He has also explored the mathematics that could help explain how the universe has more than three dimensions. Greene said he doesn't think humans 1 million years from now will look much like people do now, and he said their lives will be so different that humans today wouldn't recognize them.

A look at what life was like 1 million years in the past provides an idea: At that time, modern humans didn't exist yet, and the most technologically advanced things on the planet were fire and the hand axe. Jason A. Hodgson predicts urban and rural area will become increasingly differentiated within people.

Some groups are reproducing at higher or lower rates. Populations in Africa, for example, are rapidly expanding so those genes increase at a higher frequency on a global population level.

Areas of light skin colour are reproducing at lower rates. Therefore, Hodgson predicts, skin colour from a global perspective will get darker. And what about space? If humans do end up colonising Mars, what would we evolve to look like? With lower gravity, the muscles of our bodies could change structure. Already biohackers I know plan to amputate healthy limbs and replace them with brain-controlled robotic ones.

Robotic limbs can be upgraded as new technology becomes available. The real gamechanger for future human health is bionic organs.

Already dozens of medical companies are surgically fitting humans with robotic devices that mimic and replace specific organs, such as the pancreas, eyes and heart. Bionic organs can and will outperform their biological counterparts; by , I expect humans to be regularly going into body shops for upgrades.

The future of work is more complicated. Robots threaten to steal all our jobs. Companies in California such as Kernel and Neuralink are already tackling the problem, trying to make humans more efficient workers. They aim to create neural prosthetics that allow the human brain to communicate in real time with machine intelligence, including AI and the internet. And if our thoughts are connected directly to machines — supercomputers can already do , trillion calculations a second — where does that lead humanity?

Transhumanists believe it leads to the Singularity, a moment in time — likely around — when the exponential evolution of machine intelligence grows beyond the comprehension capacity of the biological brain. The only way for humans to stay at the top of the food chain will be to merge directly with AI — by uploading our thoughts and entire personality into it. This future, sometimes called the hivemind — because everyone is jacked into AI and one another simultaneously — is a controversial outcome.

But economics might force more of the transhuman future than people want. Biology is simply too limited for us to remain competitive for much longer. The proportion of people who die at 26 is now less than one in a thousand. If we eliminate ageing, that rate will stay the same with each passing year: extrapolate from that and you could have people living for thousands of years.

The single tipping point will consist of a combination of a number of therapies that repair various types of damage that accumulate in the body. We have worked to classify these types of damage into seven big categories, which allows us to work out how we might treat them.

One of them is loss of cells, where they are dying and not being automatically replaced by the division of other cells. Different organs need slightly different types — but only slightly different, which is why the classification is useful. The benefits will be extraordinarily valuable; it will pay for itself in no time. Any country that makes the political decision not to pay for this through taxation will soon become bankrupt, as other countries keep their chronologically elderly populations contributing to society.

Overpopulation is really about pollution — the damage that people do.