The Future of Humanity Read online

  Michael West, CEO, AgeX Therapeutics

  Roger Wiens, astronomer, Los Alamos National Laboratory

  Arthur Wiggins, physicist, author of The Joy of Physics

  Anthony Wynshaw-Boris, geneticist, Case Western Reserve University

  Carl Zimmer, biologist, coauthor of Evolution

  Robert Zimmerman, author of Leaving Earth

  Robert Zubrin, founder, Mars Society

  Prologue

  One day about seventy-five thousand years ago, humanity almost died.

  A titanic explosion in Indonesia sent up a colossal blanket of ash, smoke, and debris that covered thousands of miles. The eruption of Toba was so violent that it ranks as the most powerful volcanic event in the last twenty-five million years. It blew an unimaginable 670 cubic miles of dirt into the air. This caused large areas of Malaysia and India to be smothered by volcanic ash up to thirty feet thick. The toxic smoke and dust eventually sailed over Africa, leaving a trail of death and destruction in its wake.

  Imagine, for a moment, the chaos caused by this cataclysmic event. Our ancestors were terrorized by the searing heat and the clouds of gray ash that darkened the sun. Many were choked and poisoned by the thick soot and dust. Then, temperatures plunged, causing a “volcanic winter.” Vegetation and wildlife died off as far as the eye could see, leaving only a bleak, desolate landscape. People and animals were left to scavenge the devastated terrain for tiny scraps of food, and most humans died of starvation. It looked as if the entire Earth was dying. The few who survived had only one goal: to flee as far as they could from the curtain of death that descended on their world.

  Stark evidence of this cataclysm may perhaps be found in our blood.

  Geneticists have noticed the curious fact that any two humans have almost identical DNA. By contrast, any two chimpanzees can have more genetic variation between them than is found in the entire human population. Mathematically, one theory to explain this phenomenon is to assume that, at the time of the explosion, most humans were wiped out, leaving only a handful of us—about two thousand people. Remarkably, this dirty, raggedy band of humans would become the ancestral Adams and Eves who would eventually populate the entire planet. All of us are almost clones of one another, brothers and sisters descended from a tiny, hardy group of humans who could have easily fit inside a modern hotel ballroom.

  As they trekked across the barren landscape, they had no idea that one day, their descendants would dominate every corner of our planet.

  Today, as we gaze into the future, we see that the events that took place seventy-five thousand years ago may actually be a dress rehearsal for future catastrophes. I was reminded of this in 1992, when I heard the astounding news that, for the first time, a planet orbiting a distant star had been found. With this discovery, astronomers could prove that planets existed beyond our solar system. This was a major paradigm shift in our understanding of the universe. But I was saddened when I heard the next piece of news: this alien planet was orbiting a dead star, a pulsar, that had exploded in a supernova, probably killing everything that might have lived on that planet. No living thing known to science can withstand the withering blast of nuclear energy that emerges when a star explodes close by.

  I then imagined a civilization on that planet, aware that their mother sun was dying, working urgently to assemble a huge armada of spaceships that might transport them to another star system. There would have been utter chaos on the planet as people, in panic and desperation, tried to scramble and secure the last few seats on the departing vessels. I imagined the horror felt by those who were left behind to meet their fate as their sun exploded.

  It is as inescapable as the laws of physics that humanity will one day confront some type of extinction-level event. But will we, like our ancestors, have the drive and determination to survive and even flourish?

  If we scan all the life-forms that have ever existed on the Earth, from microscopic bacteria to towering forests, lumbering dinosaurs, and enterprising humans, we find that more than 99.9 percent of them eventually became extinct. This means that extinction is the norm, that the odds are already stacked heavily against us. When we dig beneath our feet into the soil to unearth the fossil record, we see evidence of many ancient life-forms. Yet only the smallest handful survive today. Millions of species have appeared before us; they had their day in the sun, and then they withered and died. That is the story of life.

  No matter how much we may treasure the sight of dramatic, romantic sunsets, the smell of fresh ocean breezes, and the warmth of a summer’s day, one day it will all end, and the planet will become inhospitable to human life. Nature will eventually turn on us, as it did to all those extinct life-forms.

  The grand history of life on Earth shows that, faced with a hostile environment, organisms inevitably meet one of three fates. They can leave that environment, they can adapt to it, or they will die. But if we look far enough into the future, we will eventually face a disaster so great that adaptation will be virtually impossible. Either we must leave the Earth or we will perish. There is no other way.

  These disasters have happened repeatedly in the past, and they will inevitably happen in the future. The Earth has already sustained five major extinction cycles, in which up to 90 percent of all life-forms vanished from the Earth. As sure as day follows night, there will be more to come.

  On a scale of decades, we face threats that are not natural but are largely self-inflicted, due to our own folly and shortsightedness. We face the danger of global warming, when the atmosphere of the Earth itself turns against us. We face the danger of modern warfare, as nuclear weapons proliferate in some of the most unstable regions of the globe. We face the danger of weaponized microbes, such as airborne AIDS or Ebola, which can be transmitted by a simple cough or sneeze. This could wipe out upward of 98 percent of the human race. Furthermore, we face an expanding population that consumes resources at a furious rate. We may exceed the carrying capacity of Earth at some point and find ourselves in an ecological Armageddon, vying for the planet’s last remaining supplies.

  In addition to calamities that we create ourselves, there are also natural disasters over which we have little control. On a scale of thousands of years, we face the onset of another ice age. For the past one hundred thousand years, much of Earth’s surface was blanketed by up to a half mile of solid ice. The bleak frozen landscape drove many animals to extinction. Then, ten thousand years ago, there was a thaw in the weather. This brief warming spell led to the sudden rise of modern civilization, and humans have taken advantage of it to spread and thrive. But this flowering has occurred during an interglacial period, meaning we will likely meet another ice age within the next ten thousand years. When it comes, our cities will disappear under mountains of snow and civilization will be crushed under the ice.

  We also face the possibility that the supervolcano under Yellowstone National Park may awaken from its long slumber, tearing the United States apart and engulfing the Earth in a choking, poisonous cloud of soot and debris. Previous eruptions took place 630,000, 1.3 million, and 2.1 million years ago. Each event was separated by roughly 700,000 years; therefore, we may be due for another colossal eruption in the next 100,000 years.

  On a scale of millions of years, we face the threat of another meteor or cometary impact, similar to the one that helped to destroy the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. Back then, a rock about six miles across plunged into the Yucatán peninsula of Mexico, sending into the sky fiery debris that rained back on Earth. As with the explosion at Toba, only much larger, the ash clouds eventually darkened the sun and led temperatures to plunge globally. With the withering of vegetation, the food chain collapsed. Plant-eating dinosaurs starved to death, followed soon by their carnivorous cousins. In the end, 90 percent of all life-forms on Earth perished in the wake of this catastrophic event.

  For millennia, we have been blissfully ignorant of the reality that the Earth is floating in a swarm of potentially deadly rocks. Only within t
he last decade have scientists begun to quantify the real risk of a major impact. We now know that there are several thousand NEOs (near-Earth objects) that cross the orbit of the Earth and pose a danger to life on our planet. As of June 2017, 16,294 of these objects have been catalogued. But these are just the ones we’ve found. Astronomers estimate that there are perhaps several million uncharted objects in the solar system that pass by the Earth.

  I once interviewed the late astronomer Carl Sagan about this threat. He stressed to me that “we live in a cosmic shooting gallery,” surrounded by potential hazards. It is only a matter of time, he told me, before a large asteroid hits the Earth. If we could somehow illuminate these asteroids, we would see the night sky filled with thousands of menacing points of light.

  Even assuming we avoid all these dangers, there is another that dwarfs all the others. Five billion years from now, the sun will expand into a giant red star that fills the entire sky. The sun will be so gigantic that the orbit of the Earth will be inside its blazing atmosphere, and the blistering heat will make life impossible within this inferno.

  Unlike all other life-forms on this planet, which must passively await their fate, we humans are masters of our own destiny. Fortunately, we are now creating the tools that will defy the odds given to us by nature, so that we don’t become one of the 99.9 percent of life-forms destined for extinction. In this book, we will encounter the pioneers who have the energy, the vision, and the resources to change the fate of humanity. We will meet the dreamers who believe that humanity can live and thrive in outer space. We will analyze the revolutionary advances in technology that will make it possible to leave the Earth and to settle elsewhere in the solar system, and even beyond.

  But if there is one lesson we can learn from our history, it is that humanity, when faced with life-threatening crises, has risen to the challenge and has reached for even higher goals. In some sense, the spirit of exploration is in our genes and hardwired into our soul.

  But now we face perhaps the greatest challenge of all: to leave the confines of the Earth and soar into outer space. The laws of physics are clear; sooner or later we will face global crises that threaten our very existence.

  Life is too precious to be placed on a single planet, to be at the mercy of these planetary threats.

  We need an insurance policy, Sagan told me. He concluded that we should become a “two planet species.” In other words, we need a backup plan.

  In this book, we will explore the history, the challenges, and the possible solutions that lie before us. The path will not be easy, and there will be setbacks, but we have no choice.

  From near extinction approximately seventy-five thousand years ago, our ancestors ventured forth and began the colonization of the entire Earth. This book will, I hope, lay out the steps necessary to conquer these obstacles that we will inevitably face in the future. Perhaps our fate is to become a multiplanet species that lives among the stars.

  If our long-term survival is at stake, we have a basic responsibility to our species to venture to other worlds.

  —CARL SAGAN

  The dinosaurs became extinct because they didn’t have a space program. And if we become extinct because we don’t have a space program, it’ll serve us right.

  —LARRY NIVEN

  INTRODUCTION TOWARD A MULTIPLANET SPECIES

  When I was a child, I read Isaac Asimov’s Foundation Trilogy, which is celebrated as one of the greatest sagas in the history of science fiction. I was stunned that Asimov, instead of writing about ray gun battles and space wars with aliens, asked a simple but profound question: Where will human civilization be fifty thousand years into the future? What is our ultimate destiny?

  In his groundbreaking trilogy, Asimov painted a picture of humanity spread out across the Milky Way, with millions of inhabited planets held together by a vast Galactic Empire. We had traveled so far that the location of the original homeland that gave birth to this great civilization was lost in the mists of prehistory. And there were so many advanced societies distributed throughout the galaxy, with so many people bound together through a complex web of economic ties, that, with this huge sample size, it was possible to use mathematics to predict the future course of events, as if predicting the motion of molecules.

  Years ago, I invited Dr. Asimov to speak at our university. Listening to his thoughtful words, I was surprised at his breadth of knowledge. I then asked him a question that had intrigued me since childhood: What had inspired him to write the Foundation series? How had he come up with a theme so large that it embraced the entire galaxy? Without hesitation, he responded that he was inspired by the rise and fall of the Roman Empire. In the story of the empire, one could see how the destiny of the Roman people played out over its turbulent history.

  I began to wonder whether the history of humanity has a destiny as well. Perhaps our fate is to eventually create a civilization that spans the entire Milky Way galaxy. Perhaps our destiny is truly in the stars.

  Many of the themes underlying Asimov’s work were explored even earlier, in Olaf Stapledon’s seminal novel Star Maker. In the novel, our hero daydreams that he somehow soars into outer space until he reaches faraway planets. Racing across the galaxy as pure consciousness, wandering from star system to star system, he witnesses fantastic alien empires. Some of them rise to greatness, ushering in an era of peace and plenty, and some even create interstellar empires with their starships. Others fall into ruin, wracked by bitterness, strife, and war.

  Many of the revolutionary concepts in Stapledon’s novel were incorporated into subsequent science fiction. For example, our hero in Star Maker discovers that many superadvanced civilizations deliberately keep their existence a secret from lower civilizations, to prevent accidentally contaminating them with advanced technology. This concept is similar to the Prime Directive, one of the guiding principles of the Federation in the Star Trek series.

  Our hero also comes across a civilization so sophisticated that its members enclose their mother sun in a gigantic sphere to utilize all its energy. This concept, which would later be called the Dyson sphere, is now a staple of science fiction.

  He meets a race of individuals who are in constant telepathic contact with one another. Every individual knows the intimate thoughts of the others. This idea predates the Borg of Star Trek, where individuals are connected mentally and are subordinate to the will of the Hive.

  And at the end of the novel, he encounters the Star Maker himself, a celestial being who creates and tinkers with entire universes, each with its own laws of physics. Our universe is just one in a multiverse. In total awe, our hero witnesses the Star Maker at work as he conjures up new and exciting realms, discarding those not pleasing to him.

  Stapledon’s trailblazing novel came as quite a shock in a world where the radio was still considered a miracle of technology. In the 1930s, the idea of achieving a space-faring civilization seemed preposterous. Back then, propeller-driven airplanes were state-of-the-art and had hardly managed to venture above the clouds, so the possibility of traveling to the stars seemed hopelessly remote.

  Star Maker was an instant success. Arthur C. Clarke called it one of the finest works of science fiction ever published. It fired up the imagination of a whole generation of postwar science fiction writers. But among the general public, the novel was soon forgotten amidst the chaos and savagery of World War II.

  FINDING NEW PLANETS IN SPACE

  Now that the Kepler spacecraft and teams of Earth-bound astronomers have discovered about four thousand planets orbiting other stars in the Milky Way galaxy, one begins to wonder if the civilizations described by Stapledon actually exist.

  In 2017, NASA scientists identified not one but seven Earth-sized planets orbiting a nearby star, a mere thirty-nine light-years from Earth. Of these seven planets, three of them are close enough to their mother star to support liquid water. Very soon, astronomers will be able to confirm whether or not these and other planets have atmospheres containin
g water vapor. Since water is the “universal solvent” capable of being the mixing bowl for the organic chemicals that make up the DNA molecule, scientists may be able to show that the conditions for life are common in the universe. We may be on the verge of finding the Holy Grail of planetary astronomy, a twin of the Earth in outer space.

  Around the same time, astronomers made another game-changing discovery, an Earth-sized planet named Proxima Centauri b, which orbits the star closest to our sun, Proxima Centauri, which is just 4.2 light-years away from us. Scientists have long conjectured that this star would be one of the first to be explored.

  These planets are just a few of the recent entries in the huge Extrasolar Planets Encyclopaedia, which has to be updated practically every week. It contains strange, unusual star systems that Stapledon could only have dreamt of—including systems where four or more stars rotate among one another. Many astronomers believe that if you can imagine any bizarre formation of planets, then it probably exists somewhere in the galaxy, as long as it doesn’t violate some law of physics.

  This means that we can roughly calculate how many Earth-sized planets there are in the galaxy. Since it has about one hundred billion stars, there might be twenty billion Earth-sized planets orbiting a sun-like star in our galaxy alone. And since there are one hundred billion galaxies that can be seen with our instruments, we can estimate how many Earth-sized planets there are in the visible universe: a staggering two billion trillion.

  Realizing that the galaxy could be teeming with habitable planets, you will never see the night sky in the same way again.

  Once astronomers have identified these Earth-sized planets, the next goal will be to analyze their atmospheres for oxygen and water vapor, a sign of life, and listen for radio waves, which would signal the existence of an intelligent civilization. Such a discovery would be one of the great turning points in human history, comparable to the taming of fire. Not only would it redefine our relationship to the rest of the universe, it would also change our destiny.