I'd think that SOMEONE in the offices of SciAm would know that we already are 'colonizing' the Milky Way!
Posted on 01/13/2016 9:28:58 PM PST by LibWhacker
It's a common theme in science fiction, but migrating to planets beyond our solar system will be a lot more complicated and difficult than you might imagine
The idea that humans will eventually travel to and inhabit other parts of our galaxy was well expressed by the early Russian rocket scientist Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, who wrote, “Earth is humanity’s cradle, but you’re not meant to stay in your cradle forever.†Since then the idea has been a staple of science fiction, and thus become part of a consensus image of humanity’s future. Going to the stars is often regarded as humanity’s destiny, even a measure of its success as a species. But in the century since this vision was proposed, things we have learned about the universe and ourselves combine to suggest that moving out into the galaxy may not be humanity’s destiny after all.
The problem that tends to underlie all the other problems with the idea is the sheer size of the universe, which was not known when people first imagined we would go to the stars. Tau Ceti, one of the closest stars to us at around 12 light-years away, is 100 billion times farther from Earth than our moon. A quantitative difference that large turns into a qualitative difference; we can’t simply send people over such immense distances in a spaceship, because a spaceship is too impoverished an environment to support humans for the time it would take, which is on the order of centuries. Instead of a spaceship, we would have to create some kind of space-traveling ark, big enough to support a community of humans and other plants and animals in a fully recycling ecological system.
On the other hand it would have to be small enough to accelerate to a fairly high speed, to shorten the voyagers’ time of exposure to cosmic radiation, and to breakdowns in the ark. Regarded from some angles bigger is better, but the bigger the ark is, the proportionally more fuel it would have to carry along to slow itself down on reaching its destination; this is a vicious circle that can’t be squared. For that reason and others, smaller is better, but smallness creates problems for resource metabolic flow and ecologic balance. Island biogeography suggests the kinds of problems that would result from this miniaturization, but a space ark’s isolation would be far more complete than that of any island on Earth. The design imperatives for bigness and smallness may cross each other, leaving any viable craft in a non-existent middle.
The biological problems that could result from the radical miniaturization, simplification and isolation of an ark, no matter what size it is, now must include possible impacts on our microbiomes. We are not autonomous units; about eighty percent of the DNA in our bodies is not human DNA, but the DNA of a vast array of smaller creatures. That array of living beings has to function in a dynamic balance for us to be healthy, and the entire complex system co-evolved on this planet’s surface in a particular set of physical influences, including Earth’s gravity, magnetic field, chemical make-up, atmosphere, insolation, and bacterial load. Traveling to the stars means leaving all these influences, and trying to replace them artificially. What the viable parameters are on the replacements would be impossible to be sure of in advance, as the situation is too complex to model. Any starfaring ark would therefore be an experiment, its inhabitants lab animals. The first generation of the humans aboard might have volunteered to be experimental subjects, but their descendants would not have. These generations of descendants would be born into a set of rooms a trillion times smaller than Earth, with no chance of escape.
In this radically diminished enviroment, rules would have to be enforced to keep all aspects of the experiment functioning. Reproduction would not be a matter of free choice, as the population in the ark would have to maintain minimum and maximum numbers. Many jobs would be mandatory to keep the ark functioning, so work too would not be a matter of choices freely made. In the end, sharp constraints would force the social structure in the ark to enforce various norms and behaviors. The situation itself would require the establishment of something like a totalitarian state.
Of course sociology and psychology are harder fields to make predictions in, as humans are highly adaptable. But history has shown that people tend to react poorly in rigid states and social systems. Add to these social constraints permanent enclosure, exile from the planetary surface we evolved on, and the probability of health problems, and the possibility for psychological difficulties and mental illnesses seems quite high. Over several generations, it’s hard to imagine any such society staying stable.
Still, humans are adaptable, and ingenious. It’s conceivable that all the problems outlined so far might be solved, and that people enclosed in an ark might cross space successfully to a nearby planetary system. But if so, their problems will have just begun.
Any planetary body the voyagers try to inhabit will be either alive or dead. If there is indigenous life, the problems of living in contact with an alien biology could range from innocuous to fatal, but will surely require careful investigation. On the other hand, if the planetary body is inert, then the newcomers will have to terraform it using only local resources and the power they have brought with them. This means the process will have a slow start, and take on the order of centuries, during which time the ark, or its equivalent on the alien planet, would have to continue to function without failures.
It’s also quite possible the newcomers won’t be able to tell whether the planet is alive or dead, as is true for us now with Mars. They would still face one problem or the other, but would not know which one it was, a complication that could slow any choices or actions.
So, to conclude: an interstellar voyage would present one set of extremely difficult problems, and the arrival in another system, a different set of problems. All the problems together create not an outright impossibility, but a project of extreme difficulty, with very poor chances of success. The unavoidable uncertainties suggest that an ethical pursuit of the project would require many preconditions before it was undertaken. Among them are these: first, a demonstrably sustainable human civilization on Earth itself, the achievement of which would teach us many of the things we would need to know to construct a viable mesocosm in an ark; second, a great deal of practice in an ark obiting our sun, where we could make repairs and study practices in an ongoing feedback loop, until we had in effect built a successful proof of concept; third, extensive robotic explorations of nearby planetary systems, to see if any are suitable candidates for inhabitation.
Unless all these steps are taken, humans cannot successfully travel to and inhabit other star systems. The preparation itself is a multi-century project, and one that relies crucially on its first step succeeding, which is the creation of a sustainable long-term civilization on Earth. This achievement is the necessary, although not sufficient, precondition for any success in interstellar voyaging. If we don’t create sustainability on our own world, there is no Planet B.
Forget speedy starships, the galaxy will be populated by humans if humans develop sufficiently advanced AI,robotics, genetics, embryonic and seed storage as to send automated arks full of all the basic frozen ingredients to seed a planet upon arriving at a suitable one.
The AI and firstborn humans might find the planet already inhabited with life and even decide that the planet is not really suitable for Earth life unless the Earth forms are hybridized with native life in order to adapt to the planet.
A program of abduction, genetic testing and release would commence. If the native life is intelligent, you would want to make sure you maintain secrecy all throughout the hybridization and infiltration process until your numbers were sufficient and looked enough like the native beings to pass for one.
Are we superior and more intelligent than Socrates, Aristotle, Virgil, and Homer, despite our technology?
And we assume that any visitors will be wise and beneficent because of their technology. Well, maybe the creators of the technology. Not necessarily the users. Look at the Somali pirates -- they have USAGE of high technology they themselves don't really understand. We might just get visited by the interstellar equivalent of the Somalis.
I wrote a science fiction saga that had these themes:
1. The Universe is breathtakingly hostile to Life.
2. Life was never supposed to be here at all and exists in only one place.
3. Life exists on Earth only because it was seeded here four billion years ago by aliens from another, life friendly, universe.
4. That life was designed to evolve to create humans, but they will never be able to flit around in space.
5. Humans have a job to do.
Ties all the mysteries up in a neat bundle.
They'll be green carded, put on welfare, and turned into Democratic voters asap. I think this may already have happened, and it's being covered up.
What, you mean the democrats haven’t already been there to register them to vote?!?
Sorry but even at many times the speed of light it still would take millions of years to go anywhere we are stuck on on this rock get use to it
The laws of economics probably work the same way everywhere that they do here and that is probably the reason for the Fermi Paradox. The distances between main-sequence stars are so great as to prohibit physical interstellar travel. I.e., there is nothing you could possibly bring back from a trip to another main-sequence star system which would come close to justifying the cost of the trip. The ONLY thing you’d ever want from another star is information.
Either way what is required would be TIME. Either time to travel at lower speeds or time to develop better technology. Shorter term moon/mars colonies will assist in developing technology and working out some of the problems, but no one knows what to expect beyond the solar system for sure as the only thing that has made it past the heliosphere is voyager.
A long time
Instead of a Milky Way, I’d rather colonize a 3 Musketeers.
Another possibility is that we find out how to turn the genetic trigger for old age off or the one for indefinite long life on. So if there aren’t any insurmountable mental problems we could perhaps operate on huge continuous time scales without having to rely on future generations to continue our really long term projects.
Freegards
I prefer Payday.
Well, Phillip was instantly transported in the New Testament book of Acts. So I think life as we know it will be very different after the return of Yeshua Meshiah.
Lots of fun to think about. Walking on water, calming storms, creating storms, living to be 500 (maybe the 120 yr curse will be lifted), all vegetarians (sorry bacon lovers) as are the animals, and no new war veterans since the angels and resurrected dead from the Great Tribulation will be around to protect and bad, bad, nations get no rain.
This is my Father’s universe and things will be very different.
First things first. Colonize the MOON, then Mars.
Maybe we should coax a UFO into telling us how they do it? /s
Many 1000’s of years.
1. Someone to DISprove Einstein's FACT that NOTHING can exceed the speed of light.
2. Someone to invent the Warp Drive
I'd think that SOMEONE in the offices of SciAm would know that we already are 'colonizing' the Milky Way!
Are we not on an ark like this NOW?
GMTA!
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.