Stuart’s Thoughts  4/19/2018

What’s Your Pleasure For The Next 5 Billion Years ?

Michio Kaku begins his book “The Future Of Humanity” by reminding us that, in spite of the long 200,000 year history of earth being the home of our species, a day is coming when, if we remain here, humanity will face extinction.  In fact humanity was nearly wiped out 75,000 years ago with the eruption of Toba, a massive Indonesian super volcano. Another repeat volcanic calamity may be in our future as we nervously monitor the warning signs emanating from our own super volcano beneath Yellowstone.  However, even if we avoid another super volcano eruption, collision of a large asteroid or comet with earth or extinction via colossal human stupidity, the end of our planet will surely arrive in about 5 billion years from now.  At that time,  our sun will expend into a red giant and consume the close-in rocky planets including earth.

Kaku’s book goes into great detail exploring the wide range of technological and social problems that exist if we were to opt for a mission to prepare for an all-out effort to save the human species from ultimate extinction. The assumption is that we would want to leave the earth on a voyage to an alien planet that would support human life and allow the species to again flourish as our numbers grow from the original relocated sample of humanity.
Aside from the large number of obvious social and ethical questions that would arise, the technological challenges are massive.  For starters, how long would it take a present day space ship to reach a habitable planet.  The other planets in our own solar system are not possible candidates although, we may be able to use the moon, mars and one or more of the gas giant moons as stepping stones to outer space.  The next nearest star to our solar system is Proxima Centuri and it does have an earth sized planet orbiting it.  While it is estimated that there are likely to be thousands, if not millions, of other candidates, i.e., new home planets in our galaxy, this nearest possibility is a staggering 4.2 light years or 2.5 trillion miles away.  It would take a rocket ship using current technology over 1,000 years to get there (if my calculations are correct).  But even if I’m off by a factor of ten or we can develop space vehicles that travel ten times faster than what we currently have, It’s likely that anyone blasting off for Proxima Centuri today would not be alive when the destination is reached.  Such is the tremendous challenge distances is space travel present mankind.

Now, the Proxima Centuri planet may not have water on it and, wherever mankind is likely to go, water is an absolute necessity. So let’s now take a look at our galaxy as a whole field of possible new home planets.  The Milky Way galaxy is 100,000 light years in diameter and contains an estimated 250 billion stars.  Surely one of these must have a planet in just the right orbit around its star that also has water.  Hopefully, we would not have to stray out into the wider universe that is thought to be roughly 93 billion light years in diameter.

Regardless of whether we were to head for Proxima Centuri or some more distant destination, we face tremendous technological challenges, not the least being as yet unidentified propulsion systems and energy sources to conquer such vast distances. In his book, Kaku explores an impressive array of possibilities for creatively solving these enormous problems.  However, the approach that caught my attention is perhaps the most radical idea presented but one that can fire the imagination.  In discussing the possibilities for extending human life span, Kaku introduces the concept of digital immortality.  Early work is already underway to digitize the entire human brain.  It may eventually be possible to transfer this information via laser beam at the speed of light or maybe even via quantum entanglement instantaneously to a distant planet. This in turn opens the possibility for human consciousness/robot hybrids which would be representative of the original humans on a new planet?  Could this eventually be the salvation of humanity?  Reproduction via cloning and mass production of new robot bodies would be the means of growing the population.

On second thought, this whole scenario doesn’t sound too exciting to me anymore.  Maybe we would just be better off by focusing on the enhancement of human nature so that we can all live in peace and harmony for the next 5 billion years.  What do you think?