Does anyone else ever think about aliens and space colonisation here? If so, I’d like to hear your opinions. My views are influenced by the thoughts of Stephen Hawking, Michio Kaku and other clever people.
Whenever I find myself with nothing to do (eg. trying to fall asleep at night) my mind will occasionally wander off onto these topics. I believe that humanity is now, or soon will be, at the most dangerous time in its existence. These next few centuries could make or break us. We’re in the slow process of transitioning into a united global power. We haven’t yet harnessed full control over the planet, but emerging technologies could do this. We’re getting to the point where we’ll soon be able to artificially control the weather, for example, and generate power from the earth itself - instead of relying upon dead plants. We’ve got ourselves a global language (English) and we’re slowly relying less and less upon archaic belief systems.
Unfortunately we’ve also got many obstacles in our way.
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Nuclear weaponry
We have nuclear weapons and we are still rather ignorant of their effects, if they were to be used. A nice, cool nuclear winter, followed by a scorching nuclear summer, would certainly bring us to our senses - if we survived it. Personally, I doubt we would survive this. -
Climate change
The second obstacle to our ultimate survival as a species is a runaway greenhouse effect. Climate change is upon us. If the weather systems we’re used to were sufficiently interrupted, it’d result in crop failures and huge famines - a big threat to civilisation. -
Asteroid
As far fetched as it may seem, the earth is in quite a lot of danger from an asteroid collision. The earth has been hit before by asteroids big enough to reset life on earth, and is constantly hit by smaller ones. If we’re really unlucky, we might even be gobbled up by something like a roaming blackhole.
As advanced as we are, in the grand scheme of things, we’re very primitive and bound to our little rock. If anything bad happens here, we’re pretty much finished as a species.
Here’s where the aliens come into it. Given the size of the universe, and the probability of “earth-like” planets, it would not be completely ludicrous to expect that intelligent life exists out there somewhere. Personally, I think aliens do exist… but we haven’t met them yet. If we have met them already, then they aren’t the type of aliens we need to fear. We need to fear the aliens that make contact.
If aliens come to us and make contact, then it means that they are more technologically advanced than we are. This puts us at a serious disadvantage. Look at what happened to the native human populations of Australia and America when lifeforms with greatly superior technology made contact - it didn’t go well for the natives. Even if the aliens have good intentions, their influence will still be dominant and things will go badly for us. We’d be at worst wiped out by the aliens, and at best we’d live as severely disadvantaged members or second-class citizens of an alien society.
Therefore, it seems to me, that the longer humanity remains on earth the higher our chances of going extinct become. We have to get off world. We have to improve our presence in the solar system and beyond. We have to put petty cultural and religious differences aside or perish. If we’re alone in the universe, and there are no aliens, rushing to space will save us from earthly threats like nuclear war, global warming and asteroids. If we aren’t alone in the universe, then rushing to space will DEFINITELY improve our chances.
Anyway, I look forward to reading your answers and bettering myself in the process.
