Expert Says Aliens Might Not Be So Alien After All

NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) -- There are potentially hundreds of thousands of habitable planets in our galaxy alone, so it's tough to say if we are alone.

But if we are not alone, University of Oxford scientists say they have taken a small step to figuring out what our neighbors look like.

Sam Levin, an Oxford researcher, said aliens are potentially shaped by the same processes and mechanisms that shaped humans, such as natural selection. Levin cites there is a level of predictability that would cause them to look like us.

"But making predictions about aliens is hard," he said "We only have one example of life - life on Earth - to extrapolate from," he said. "By predicting that aliens undergone major transitions - which is how complexity has arisen in species on earth, we can say that there is a level of predictability to evolution that would cause them to look like us."

The new theory was detailed in a new study published in the International Journal of Astrobiology under the title "Darwin's Aliens."

"We suggest that major transitions are likely to be the route to complexity on other planets, and that we should expect them to have been favoured by similarly restrictive conditions," says the study.