Colossus-The Forbin Project: a Sci-Fi classic that kicked off the talks!
What’s the future of humanity and life on Earth? Will we have a good multi-billion year run until our Sun swells into a red giant boiling away our atmosphere, or will we first do the job of snuffing ourselves out? Earlier this year, some of the leading thinkers of our time gathered near Harvard University at the Arrow Theater to discuss just these weighty concepts. Dubbed Crossroads: The Future of Human Life in the Universe, each talk in the series was 30 minutes long and solicited an avalanche of enthusiastic questions. Some of the highlights:
-Gerrit Verschuur discussed the Drake equation and just how prevalent any interstellar neighbors might be; at a guesstimated 2,500 light years, we may be pretty, well, spaced out!
-Maira Zuber discussed the future of space travel in the solar system and the difficulties of overcoming probably the biggest engineering problem; prolonged radiation exposure.
-Astronomers Dimitar Sasselov, David Charbonneau, and paleontologist Peter Ward of Rare Earth fame discussed the slew of recent exoplanet findings and the quest for the true coin of the realm; Earth-like worlds around other stars. Most interestingly, the idea was proposed that a “super-Earth” may be more conducive to the development of life, and our own planet may represent the bottom rung of habitability; indeed, as Ward notes, “Rare does not mean unique!” Another interesting proposal by Ward is what he termed the Medea Hypothesis, a sort of anti-Gaia Hypothesis, were the Earthly biosphere may actually occasionally become detrimental to life, and thus fuel mass extinctions. The name comes from perhaps the worst Mom in mythological history!
-Finally, big time elder thinker Freeman Dyson of Princeton urges that our very search methods for life might be flawed, and that we should be looking for “what is detectable, rather than only whats probable.” he also proposed missions targeting such possible abodes for life such as Europa, the icy large moon of Jupiter.
Whatever the future of humanity is, one gets the impression from the visionary speakers presented that it is NOT endless consumerism. The message in the history of life on Earth is clear; evolve or die. No one will save us but ourselves, and the future is collectively ours to choose!