Why is there no intelligent life in the Universe? Perhaps because there is no one to create it. The Earth may have a new goal that can change the future of civilization, but are earthlings ready to change for the sake of an illusory hope?
Addition to what has been covered
So, we won’t reach the stars on foot – the age of man is too short. Yes, medicine has learned to freeze people, as in science fiction, but thawing hasn’t worked out yet. “Ships of Generations,” sung all over the place, look like sophisticated torture stretched out over thousands of years. The meaning of their journey is lost due to the impossibility of even approximately assessing what will happen to the space wanderers over such a huge period of time. In addition, even thinking about a monstrous starship that is able to maintain a closed life support cycle and has a sufficient number of astronauts on board immediately makes me skeptical. And how much all this will cost, it’s scary to even imagine…
So why are we looking at space at all? In addition to all other important scientific pampering, we are looking for exoplanets, that is, Earth-like planets. And not just terrestrial – so that the star is a yellow dwarf (like the Sun), stable, weak, without any two or, God forbid, three sister stars that turn the orbits of planets into gloomy madness. So that it is not too hot and not too cold for the evaporation or freezing of water on the planet, and the planet is no more and no less than the Earth – in the golden middle of the habitable zone, which is called the Goldilocks Zone by English astronomers.
According to the findings of astronomers, about 18% of yellow dwarfs in the Galaxy may have planets similar to ours. If conclusions researchers are correct, this means the Milky Way could be home to nearly 6 billion exoplanets. And it is necessary to pay close attention to the closest ones. By placing electronic eyes in space, we are already looking far away and in the foreseeable future we will look even further and much more clearly, filtering out the light of both our own and other people’s stars and, finally, even receiving spectrograms of nearby exoplanets.
Task to asterisk
And you will immediately ask me: “Why the nearest, if for us it does not change absolutely anything? On promising atomic thrust, by removing certain aspects from the equation in the form of radiation, extremely high constant acceleration up to half the distance and deceleration for the remaining half, the journey to the nearest star system Alpha Centauri (there is a promising exoplanet there) can be significantly shortened. Yes, reduce it to hundreds and even tens of years. But even with these introductory information, the task becomes meaningless; why does Alpha Centauri need elderly or dead researchers?”
Doctor of Physical and Mathematical Sciences Boris Stern states: “Because we can still and, moreover, we must fly!” – and I agree with him!
What if robots fly instead of people? Sounds quite credible. But what if human embryos fly with the robots? It turns out that this is quite feasible!
The project that Boris Evgenievich proposes is impressive not only in its scale and planning horizon, but also in the idea that for the first time in the entire history of civilization, humanity may have a mission that determines the future of no less than the entire Universe.
A space locomotive powered by a nuclear engine (near future), carrying embryo capsules protected from cosmic radiation by a powerful magnetic field (distant future), leisurely knocks its uranium wheels on the rails of absolute emptiness. Years ahead of him, another locomotive crawls, without embryos at all, but with robots and whole hosts of specially trained bacteria (the present), for all cases of the complex climatic life of the future home. In a few thousand years, the first locomotive will crawl, for example, to Novaya Zemlya and begin vigorous activity on it – terraforming the future home.
The fact is that if all the assessments of biologists from the first part of the article are correct and if within 40 light years a planet is discovered that meets our very specific requirements, then:
- The incredible luck that can await us on the conditional New Earth is green slime from the time of the Archean era, floating in oceans of water, with an oxygen atmosphere and a climatic paradise;
- With great luck, a sterile planet with a relatively suitable atmosphere and not the most pleasant climate awaits us;
- With ordinary, average luck, it will be an unpleasant little world in which you won’t be able to breathe without a spacesuit.
But even in the latter case, life on this planet may be possible within the framework of the large-scale impact of bioengineering technologies that our engines will certainly take with them. Specially trained cyanobacteria are already slowly are being taught on the Martian atmosphere, which does not even come close to the described categories, and we only have one Mars, and 6 billion exoplanets are 6 billion exoplanets. Of course, in described sphere with a radius of 40 light years there are fewer of them, but the vast majority of terrestrial planets are very difficult to see.
At the same time, the distance limit is more technological than technical limitations. Because here we are we resist into the durability of materials and electronics, the most fragile part of the entire enterprise, since deep-frozen embryos are likely capable of surviving for thousands of years. Yes, you will say, annelids are not embryos, but simply no one has conducted any reliable experiments on the topic of preserving the viability of embryos, since they began to freeze them only 40 years ago. However, there is already record holderswho hung out in the cold for almost 30 years and were born absolutely healthy children.
Thus, if we collect a set of brackets with an assessment of the near and distant future, assess the current level of astronomy, then with some certainty we can say that discoveries impressive in texture can await us within 50-100 years. But the flight will still be quite far away…
I propose to reduce this deadline and paint the picture we need (scientists definitely do this, but why are we worse?).
Moving to the future
So, the planets were found, probed with space interferometers and found suitable. They have water, they live in habitable zones, and their suns are gentle and calm. The most promising ones even managed to discern the atmosphere – we must fly!
Soldered together as a single mechanism, humanity begins to work. Modules of future locomotives are launched into orbit, and embryonic storage facilities collect all conceivable and inconceivable flora and fauna (how could Adam and Eve manage in their homeland without dogs or mosquitoes?), acquiring the metaphorical importance of the biblical Noah’s Ark.
And so, celestial slugs are sent to the selected planets, the only awake crew members of which will be vigilant machine guns with atomic batteries. After thousands of years, some of the cars will land on the planets, and the bacteria will begin their righteous labors, dividing water into hydrogen and oxygen, giving the future home an atmosphere. While other cars will patiently wait for their turn in orbit. Why are they still a hundred or two years old?
But the time will inevitably come, and the last carriages will open the doors to a new humanity.
The pioneers of new lands give them names.
Of course, this whole journey of hundreds of lifetimes will not matter if something goes wrong next. Therefore, at the very beginning of life, the child so needs the support of his parents. For the first colonists, this function will be taken on by numerous and varied nanny robots, carrying the latest achievements of artificial intelligence from a thousand years ago. They will help raise and educate the colonists, create a way of life, but the powerful central brain of the “locomotive” will not allow excesses in the style of “seven nannies have a child without an eye” and will skillfully lead the young civilization into a bright future.
Of course, every sneeze will be broadcast to Earth, scientists will take care of this. Yes, it will be broadcast with a delay of years and decades, which will make it almost completely impossible to influence events, but this will be a series lasting thousands of years, which will become commonplace for billions of earthlings. I imagine how, with bated breath, distant descendants will see the first children of the New Earth.
Of course, many emergency situations are bound to arise.
Thus, in the novel “Ark 47 Libra” by Boris Stern, it is described how humanity, seemingly rooted on the desired planet, begins to die out quite rapidly. A fatal genetic failure affects the reproductive ability of women. And no one can do anything. Just resign yourself and heroically meet the end. Then evolution comes into play, and a new, eared species appears, which is better adapted to survival than humans. In my opinion, this is much more incredible than everything I described above. I calculated that the probability of such an outcome is approximately 10-1000 ‒ can be neglected.
The most important thing is that earthly humanity survived for many thousands of years and the colonists will receive the richest inheritance of experience and knowledge at all times, among which the most important will be the fact that they are flesh and blood of the pinnacle of evolution – people.
Return to the present
The picture I drew under the impression of the idea looks fantastic, I agree.
It contains many solutions that have not yet been found by science, in addition, expeditions to many stars will certainly cost no less than the notorious “Ship of Generations”.
However, I propose to look at it from a different angle.
Each of the technical solutions for this voyage is already being developed, at least at the level of theoretical models. Every astrophysicist will explain the need to place an interferometer in space, every biologist will gush with emotions at the opportunity to send a suitcase with a voracious bacterium to Mars. Materials scientists, chemists, AI developers, embryologists, programmers, physicists of all stripes and bioengineers – all of them individually are already working on the implementation of a fantastic project. And consistent movement towards a fantastic goal will inevitably give rise to many indirect studies that branch off from the basic directions.
Yes, in the current reality there is little hope for the consolidation of the scientific world and no hope at all for the consolidation of the political economic world. We are still small…
Yes, many ethical questions remain, because human embryos are a very slippery topic, which will certainly be raised like a banner by people in white coats and with good faces. It is possible that experiments will be required on people (we strongly condemn this), who will grow from a test tube and live in closed enclaves under the guidance of AI – even the thought of this can put an end to further research. There remains hope for AI, which will help simulate such virtual colonies, identify the bifurcation points of future problems and confirm or deny the very possibility of such an odyssey. For no matter how hard you try, man still remains the weakest link in the great goal of humanity.
Well, how will our distant descendants from Tau Ceti give our distant descendants from Earth a hefty bill for their evil generation? And although they will have to fly with their fists for a very long time, they can throw a blank at us or some kind of virus, they say, we suffered, and now you too will have to…
And yet I prefer to see the most beautiful thing in this story.
Man will give birth to life in the Universe! So that later, perhaps tens of thousands of years later, we can shake hands through the void with real aliens. Isn’t it worth a little effort?
The article uses illustrations for fragments of Boris Stern’s novel “The Ark of 47 Libra” by artist Maxim Pushkov.
Source: mobile-review.com
