What if humanity becomes a interstellar species?
What if humanity grew to be so technologically advanced that we were able to leave our Solar System and spread across interstellar space? This is WHAT IF, and here's what would happen if humanity became an interstellar society.
No human has ever been outside of our Solar System, and only
a few of us have actually left the Earth. Even those who blasted out of here in
a rocket didn't go too far. There are billions upon billions of planets out
there.
But they are so far
away, it would take us a very long time to reach them. If we jumped into the fastest
spacecraft ever built, it would take us over 70,000 years to get to our
neighboring star system Alpha Centauri.
Even if we could
accelerate a spaceship to 99% the speed of light, over 26,000 years would pass
until we arrived at the center of our own galaxy. And another 2 million years
until we set foot in the nearest neighb or, the Andromeda galaxy.
How could we go about expanding our civilization into space
if we're so terribly slow? To become an intergalactic civilization, we'd need
to break the speed limit of the Universe. But for all we know, traveling at the
lightspeed is physically impossible, never mind outperforming it.
The Universe is
enormous, possibly infinite. And our lifespans are too miserably short to cover
those kind of distances even at near-light speeds.
But let your curiosity take over and imagine we were a
civilization that could approach lightspeed and travel among stars. We'd start
with Alpha Centauri, our neighboring star system. Who knows - maybe the
exoplanet orbiting this three-star system would turn out to be habitable.
Then, we'd push
ourselves out further to discover the billions of other worlds.
Not all of them
would be suitable for us to settle in. In astronomy, a habitable world is a
planet that is just the right distance from its Sun-like star to be able to
sustain liquid water. But the reality is, humans require so much more than
that.
Atmosphere, gravity, temperature -they're all important.
It's unlikely that we'd find another planet just like Earth.
But we could build self-sustaining Earth-like biomes on our
giant spaceships, where humans could live for generations. Or, we could
terraform some rocky exoplanets. First, we'd harvest water from a few ice
comets. Then, we'd alter the planets' atmospheres to resemble Earth's.
Anything to be able to breathe in fresh air again. Even
though space would be so accessible, people wouldn't travel around the Universe
much once the new colonies were established. Even at the speed of light, it
would take generations to make at rip to the other side of the Universe.
Space is just too
vast, remember? In this new world, you'd get to travel among stars only if you
were a part of a ship's crew, a colonist, or a space miner. We'd send robots to
perform our intergalactic chores. Robots don't eat, sleep, or go to the
bathroom.
They can withstand high levels of radiation and extreme
temperatures - all the things that would kill a human being. But if space
travel is something you crave, consider pursuing acareer as a postal carrier.
Because the most reliable way to communicate might be
through the mail. Surprised? Well, our satellites rely on radio waves to
transmit information. Even though these waves travel just as fast as light,
they lose their strength over long distances.
It's like being too
far awayfrom your WiFi router. If humanity did become an interstellar society,
we humans would end up spread out across hundreds of light years of space. At
least we'd give Earth a break, and allow it to recover from our mistreatment.
Maybe we don't have
to go so far. Maybe we could create a
new society on artificial planets that we built around the Sun. But that's a
story for another WHAT IF.
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