iBook The Future of the Universe - 7. Between Now and Then

iBook The Future of the Universe - 7. Between Now and Then

Predictions concerning the future development of technology have, throughout recorded history, been notoriously poor, and this will probably always be the case. The future cannot be read, but it can be dictated to, and this is humanity’s best hope for longterm survival. Indeed, our actions in the here and now will both influence and shape future events. The distant future of our descendants is not disconnected from our present. The scale of engineering capabilities in the far future is entirely unknown to us. Certainly we can try to guess what might be, and without doubt we can try to steer research directions. But history tells us that it is more often the unexpected discovery that enables truly revolutionary advances. There is no obvious reason why such serendipitous advances should not continue to come about in the future, which begs the question, do we (that is, all humanity) actually have a long-term future? Lord Sir Martin Rees,1 former president of the Royal Society of London, and an authority certainly worth listening to, has placed the odds of humanity surviving into the 22nd century at no better than 50/50. Oxford University philosopher Nick Bostrom2 concurs with the estimate of Rees and suggests that our chances of surviving this century are perhaps even lower, but probably better than 1 in 4. Bostrom further writes, “The most serious existential risks for humanity in the 21st century are of our own making. More specifically, they are related to anticipated technological developments.” Thus, more specifically advanced technology will either be our salvation, or it will be our doom. Do We Have a Near-Term Future? The philosopher Jacques Derrida has argued3 that the future “can only be anticipated in the form of an absolute danger…. [It] can only be proclaimed, presented, as a sort of monstrosity.” Derrida’s 197 198 Rejuvenating the Sun and Avoiding Other Global Catastrophes rather dire outlook may only relate to the near-term future. As of this writing, for example, the journal Science has just published the results of an extensive, four-year survey on global fish stocks.4 The study concludes that commercial fisheries will collapse worldwide by 2050. Here is a near-term future monstrosity which we can only hope doesn’t come to pass. With respect to the distant future, however, say hundreds or thousands of years beyond the lifetime of any human being alive today, the consensus of thought must surely be one of hope, even of a future utopia. Unless we (that is, all humanity) have some collective sense or belief in a better future for our children and their distant descendants’ children, then surely there is no point in conserving anything. Indeed, why should we not simply continue to consume, waste, use, and abuse all that we possibly can with absolutely no regard for the consequences? If, on the other hand, we really do have a desire to secure humanity’s long-term future, then our collective attitude toward what we are doing to the world, the climate, and to our fellow human beings must change now, and we must begin to think, regard, and plan for the long-term. What Price the Future? The evolutionary line that has led to our emergence has never been broken. Not once has the chain that links us to the very first primeval life forms been severed. Indeed, remarkably to think, not once in its entire 3-billion-year evolutionary history has life been fully exterminated.5 There have always been survivors. And, as with the past, so with the future; there is no specific reason to think that the tenacity of life should weaken or wither as we move into the deep future. The indomitable Charles Darwin summed up the situation beautifully in The Origin of Species, published in 1859: “Of the species now living very few will transmit progeny of any kind to a far distant futurity…. As all living forms of life are the lineal descendants of those which lived long before the Silurian epoch, we may feel certain that the ordinary succession of generations has never been broken, and that no cataclysm has desolated the whole world. Hence we may look forward with some confidence to a secure future of equally inappreciable length.“6 Between Now and Then 199 A billion years from now, even 4 billion years from now, life will still exist on Planet Earth. Whether any of that distant life will be directly derived from those human beings alive today, however, is very much an open question. For the first time in history, starting from about 50 years ago, humanity has had the power to destroy itself. Indeed, the weapons of mass destruction are now multitude (Figure 7.1). The threat of an uncontrolled catastrophe was certainly on the minds of some of the scientists who pioneered the development of the atomic bomb. Before the first Trinity bomb was exploded Figure 7.1. The atomic bomb explosion over Nagasaki, Japan, on August 9, 1945. As a result of this one detonation some 74,000 people were killed and a futher 75,000 people injured. By modern standards the Fat Man bomb that decimated Nagasaki was a mere firecraker. 200 Rejuvenating the Sun and Avoiding Other Global Catastrophes near Alamogordo, New Mexico, on July 16, 1945, a series of approximate calculations were made by Hans Bethe (later a Nobel Prize-winning physicist) and Edward Teller (later an Ig Noble Peace Prize winner7) to show (or was it to reassure themselves and others?) that a nuclear detonation wouldn’t ignite the Earth’s atmosphere. Teller co-authored, in 1946, a more detailed report8 for the Los Alamos administration in which it was surmised (after the fact) that “[N]o self-propagating chain of nuclear reactions is likely to be started” in the atmosphere directly heated by a nuclear blast. Indeed, the report comments, “The nuclear reactions most to be feared in air are the reactions of pairs of nitrogen nuclei.” This is a remarkable comment and, although the report concludes that N + N reactions are highly unlikely to propagate within the atmosphere (and, indeed, this is the case), one wonders what the threshold for safety was considered to be. If the risk for ignition had been, say, as high as 0.01 percent, would the program of bomb development have been allowed to carry on? In the modern era a number of new technologies are actively being pursued and developed, all of which pose potentially global disasters. Examples of such activities are the weaponization of space,9 nanotechnology, and biological engineering.10 Not that such technologies should be stopped, but are we sure they are being pursued safely and with due concern for their long-term consequences? Again, by ‘safely’ we are not referring to laboratory accidents or leaks, but literally the unintentional development of diseases and nano-robots that could destroy us. We tinker with such technologies at our own risk and, it appears, with absolutely no regard for the distant future consequences of such developments. What are acceptable risks and who gets to decide what is acceptable are important questions, yet humanity seems to be incredibly under-prepared to deal with such issues. Important climate change and global warming issues, clearly demonstrated to be a real phenomena, are continuously downplayed by some governments and self-serving, industry-sponsored lobbyists. Clearly, for some, the devastation of Earth and the impoverishment of great swaths of humanity along with it is a worthwhile price to pay to achieve short-term profits or certain political goals. The inexcusable mindset that views the future as someone else’s Between Now and Then 201 problem – if it continues – will destroy humanity, and we probably deserve no better. The time to think of the future is now. For example, Margaret Beckett, the British Foreign Secretary, nicely summed up the situation with respect to climate change when, during an address to the U.N. General Assembly on September 21, 2006, she said, “While it will not cost the Earth to solve climate change, it will cost the Earth, literally and financially, if we don’t.” Thinking Long-Term The rejuvenation of the Sun, the terraforming of Mars and Venus, the colonization of the Solar System at large are all set in the far future, but to realize that future humanity must begin to act and organize now. Again, Oxford philosopher Nick Bostrom has argued11 that humanity should not only begin to think long-term but it should also maximize the pace of ‘safe’ technological development. Part of Bostrom’s point is that any delay – even by just a few years – in the colonization of our Solar System (and perhaps beyond) has direct and negative consequences for the potential well-being of our distant descendants. Indeed, the future potential existence of innumerable sentient beings living worthwhile and fulfilled lives is denied every time we, in the here and now, accept short-term gains over long-term investments. One of the most encouraging attempts at forward thinking and planning to emerge in recent years is that by the Long Now Foundation.12 Its purpose is to replace the inherently sad and often morally bankrupt faster/cheaper economic policies that seem to permeate our current world with a philosophy of stewardship, reflection, and appreciation of both the distant past and the distant future. One of its symbolic projects has been the construction of the Long Now Clock (Figure 7.2). The purpose of the clock is to break away from the current everything-now mindset of our present lives. The Long Now Clock ‘ticks’ once per year. The aim is to allow the clock to evolve and be maintained for at least the next 10,000 years with each generation passing on the responsibility of stewardship to their immediate descendants. 202 Rejuvenating the Sun and Avoiding Other Global Catastrophes Figure 7.2. Prototype of the Long Now Clock. The clock is on display at the National Science Museum in London, England. The two outer columns contain the drive weights that power the clock, while the central column contains the binary mechanical computer (lower part) and the dial face (upper part). The dial shows the year as a five-digit number, as well as the sky locations of the Sun, Moon, and brighter stars. (Image courtesy of the Long Now Foundation) Taking the Next Step Astronomer Richard Gott III has argued that “the odds are against our colonizing the Galaxy and surviving to the far future, not because these things are intrinsically beyond our capabilities, but because living things do not live up to their maximum potential.“13 History, in other words, is against the human race surviving. Gott continues, however, “We should know that to succeed the way we would like, we will have to do something truly remarkable (such as colonizing space), something that most intelligent species do not do.” Indeed, we would argue, Gott is absolutely right. For Between Now and Then 203 humanity to survive at all, it has to realize that there is a distant future and that the future begins now. In Chapter 2 it was suggested that the first steps toward securing humanity’s long-term future might be the development of a planetary defense initiative against direct impacts from nearEarth asteroids and comets. When might such an initiative begin? The scientific rationale for beginning an asteroid defense program has long been established, but the political and financial will has been found wanting. This, we would suggest, will possibly change in the not-too-distant future, but it might require the occurrence of a Tunguska-scale impact (recall Figure 2.2) before any serious political action is taken. Such an impact event will likely occur within the next few hundred years14 (see also Figure 2.4). What, then, are the possible time and engineering scales upon which the near-term future might be built? Table 7.1 represents a summary of possibilities. Table 7.1. An outline scenario for humanity’s colonization of the Solar System. The first column indicates the anticipated time interval, measured from ‘now,’ when various engineering options might be initiated. The second column indicates the engineering scale of the projects being undertaken. The third column offers some speculations on what might be achieved in each of the various time intervals. Timescale (yrs) Physical Scale (km) Examples of Engineering Projects Now 10−1 International Space Station 25 – 50 100 First Moon base/solar sails/space tourism 50 – 102 101 First asteroid/comet defense systems deployed/main-belt asteroid mining 102 – 103 101 – 102 Terraforming of Earth’s atmosphere/space elevator construction/asteroid colonies established/Moon settlements 103 – 104 102 – 103 O’Neill colonies/terraforming of Mars/terraforming of Venus/mining of Mercury 105 – 106 104 – 105 Greater Solar System colonization and the expanded utilization of its resources 107 – 109 105 – 106 Solar rejuvenation/stellar husbandry/planetary/orbit manipulation 204 Rejuvenating the Sun and Avoiding Other Global Catastrophes In a remarkable series of studies15 industry consultant Theodore Modis demonstrated that during the past two centuries humanity has ridden a remarkably stable 56-year repeating energy cycle. Cycle troughs correspond to times of great innovation and upheaval, while cycle peaks correspond to times of prosperity and economic boom. The peaks are inevitably followed by economic (especially so, given its present short-sighted nature) bust. Bruce Cordell has further argued16 that, with respect to space exploration, the last Modis cycle peaked in the late 1960s – a time which saw the development of the Apollo Moon-landing program. If the Modis cycle holds true, the next epochs at which new exploration thrusts and innovations in space engineering are likely to be seen are in the decades17 that contain the years 2025 and 2081. At the risk of making predictions (even for the near-term future), we would suggest that perhaps during the 2025 Modis peak humanity will see the initial deployment of a space-based asteroid/comet impact avoidance network. In addition, the first use of large solar sails and the initial construction of what will become the first permanently occupied structures on the Moon will take place in this timeframe—the latter having already been announced as a NASA goal. Space-based tourism (currently an industry in the making) will also become an established publicsector business venture over the next quarter century. During the 2081 Modis cycle peak one might hope to see the development of a terrestrial space elevator,18 the establishment of mining factories on the Moon and in the main-belt asteroid region, and the first human exploration of Mars. It is also likely that within this timeframe the first active steps toward the large-scale ‘geoengineering’ of Earth’s atmosphere will take place. Those inspired to make wagers on such possibilities are invited to visit the Long Bets Foundation website at http://www.longbets.org/about. Beyond the end of this century, all bets are off on exactly when subsequent large-scale space engineering projects might be initiated. Indeed, the planning and construction timescales for these deep-future projects become very long, and certainly longer than that of a human lifespan. It does not seem unreasonable, however, to think that the terraforming of Mars might be completed during the projected 10,000-year time span of the Long Now project. Between Now and Then 205 On November 20, 2006, Stephen Hawking was awarded the United Kingdom’s highest academic honor – the Copley Medal of the Royal Society of London. In response to this event, Hawking commented upon humanity’s future and argued that the human race, in order to secure its long-term viability, must move to a new planet beyond the Solar System. Hawking’s sentiments are certainly sound, but humanity has absolutely no need to cast itself adrift in interstellar space to secure its long-term future. The extensive colonization of the Solar System and the active rejuvenation of the Sun make much more sense than simply abandoning home and heading for the stars. Interstellar space travel is full of uncertainty and provides no guarantee of a successful outcome. Not only this, as was suggested earlier, but the utilization and colonization of the Solar System will potentially benefit all of humanity, not just a select few. We have deliberately avoided any discussion of the economic costs relating to the various engineering projects outlined in this book. Economics, at least in its present form, is entirely focused on short-term goals and to a certain extent we would also question, what price the survival of humanity? If we had the technological expertise and ability to avert a natural disaster that might otherwise result in the deaths of many millions of people, would that technology be held in check simply because it cost too much? We certainly hope not. Future Earth How many human beings can the world support? Currently of order 6 billion people eke out an everyday existence on every single continent of Earth (including the researchers who live and work in Antarctica). Humanity seemingly thrives and goes blindly about its business with little regard for the future. This has been our history. Humanity’s ‘footprint’ is no longer irrelevant to the workings of nature, however, and we continue to destroy the environment at our own peril. Many estimates have been made concerning the number of human beings that Earth can reasonably support, with the numbers typically falling between 8 and 12 billion people.19 Irrespective of the actual number (at this stage), projections on 206 Rejuvenating the Sun and Avoiding Other Global Catastrophes human population growth by the United Nations indicate that Earth’s human-carrying capacity will be realized within the next 100 years (and probably within the next 50). This is another reason that humanity must begin to think of the future now; we can no longer assume that a ‘business as usual’ approach will work. The long-term future leading to the rejuvenation of the Sun certainly begins now, but the realization of that distant future is critically dependent upon what happens on this Earth within the next century. If humanity manages to realize a distant future it is certain that those of us alive today will have virtually nothing in common with that future, other than lineage. Indeed, the people that might rejuvenate the Sun will likely know absolutely nothing about our world. Continents will have collided, split apart, and regrouped, and new mountain ranges will have formed and been weathered away many times over by the time that solar rejuvenation might begin (starting, perhaps, a few hundred million years from now).20 The only common link between the future stewards of Earth and us will be an existence tied to the Solar System and a desire to secure the viability of the Solar System as a safe abode for life for as long as is humanly possible. We shall not cease from exploration And the end of all our exploring Will be to arrive where we started And to know the place for the first time T. S. Elliot, Little Gidding Notes and References 1. Sir Martin Rees, Our Final Hour. Basic Books, New York (2003). 2. N. Bostrom, Dinosaurs, dodos, humans. Global Agenda, February, 230–231 (2006). See also: http://www.nickbostrom. com/. 3. J. Derrida, Of Grammatology. John Hopkins University Press, Baltimore (1967). 4. Boris Worm and co-workers, Impacts of biodiversity loss on ocean ecosystem services. Science, 314, 787–790 (2006). 5. From the safety of much of the Western world this seems a rather trite statement. If one doesn’t live in an Earthquake zone, an active volcanic region or on a seasonally hurricane-lashed coast, it is easy Between Now and Then 207 to forget that nature has immense destructive power. An undersea landslip of just a few meters off the coast of Indonesia on December 26, 2004 resulted in the death of some 230,000 people along the coastal regions of the Indian Ocean basin. Indeed, 168,000 deaths occurred in Indonesia alone. This number is about the same as the entire population of the city of Regina, Canada. The staggering destruction that can be unleashed by nature is described in chilling detail by Bill McGuire in his book, Global Catastrophes: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford University Press, Oxford (2002). 6. From Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species. John Murray, Albemarle Street, London. Chapter 14 (1859). Darwin’s complete text can be found at http://www.kellscraft.com/ index.html. 7. Teller’s Ig Noble Peace Prize was awarded in 1991 in recognition of “his lifelong efforts to change the meaning of peace as we know it.” More details can be found at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ List_of_Ig_Nobel_Prize_winners. 8. The report by Teller and co-workers, Ignition of the atmosphere with nuclear bombs, Los Alamos Technical Report LA602 is available at http://www.fas.org/sgp/othergov/ doe/lanl/docs1/00329010.pdf. Specifically it was the N + N reaction that was considered in the report since nitrogen is the most abundant element within Earth’s atmosphere. 9. The U.S. government, for example, has recently adopted an aggressive and strongly negative stance with respect to the banning of space weapons. In an unclassified strategic document [see, http:// news.bbc.co.uk/2/shared/bsp/hi/pdfs/18_10_06_usspace.pdf], it is stated that “The United States will preserve its rights, capabilities, and freedom of action in space… and deny, if necessary, adversaries the use of space capabilities hostile to U.S. national interests.” Mike Moore [Watch out for space command, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientist, 57, 24-25 (2001)], discusses the apparent U.S. planning and build-up towards an arms race in space. 10. Lord Rees (Note 1) has highlighted the dangers posed by nanotechnology and the development of ‘superbugs’ through biological engineering. 11. N. Bostrom, Astronomical waste: The opportunity cost of delayed technological development. Utilitas, 15, 308–314 (2003). See also note 2. 12. The foundation’s web page can be accessed at http:// www.longnow.org/. A few of the thoughts presented in this section are discussed in M. Beech, The clock of the Long Now—a reflection. Journal of the Royal Astronomical of Canada, 101, 4–5 (2007). 208 Rejuvenating the Sun and Avoiding Other Global Catastrophes 13. J. R. Gott III, Implications of the Copernican principle for our future prospects. Nature, 363, 315–319 (1993). 14. Peter Brown and co-workers, The flux of small near-earth objects colliding with Earth. Nature, 420, 294–296 (2002). The authors conclude that Earth is hit by a 10-Mton explosive equivalent energy object, which is something like the energy released by the Tunguska impact, at intervals of about 500 to 1,000 years. 15. Theodore Modis, Prediction – Societies Telltale Signature Reveals the Past and Forecasts the Future. Simon and Schuster, New York (1992). 16. Bruce Cordell, Forecasting the next major thrust into space. Space Policy, 12 (1), 45–57 (1996). 17. Modis has recently argued [The limits of complexity and chance. The Futurist, May-June (2003)] that the next major epochs of milestone innovation and growth will be circa 2038, 2083, and 2152. These epochs are not specifically related to space exploration (as studied by Cordell—see Note 16), but involve the appearance of new milestone technologies such as computers, the Internet, the automobile, transistor and integrated circuits, DNA sequencing, and so on, as witnessed during the past century. 18. A space elevator provides a physical link between Earth’s surface and space. Stretching to some 35,786 km above Earth’s surface, the geostationary point, the space elevator remains fixed above a specific location on Earth’s equator. For further details, see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_elevator. 19. Joel E. Cohen, Population growth and Earth’s human carrying capacity. Science, 269, 341–346 (1995). 20. An issue not specifically addressed in this book relates to the gradual slowing down of Earth’s geological activity. Indeed, as Earth’s interior continues to cool off in the deep future, so surface tectonic activity will halt, bringing to a close, for example, the CO2 cycle (see Figure 2.18). Earth’s atmosphere will eventually need continuous manipulation and rejuvenation. This, however, will be an ‘old technology,’ honed through the terraforming of Mars and Venus, by the time the process is required to start on Earth. Likewise, the Moon will eventually slip out of a co-rotating state, as it drifts further away from Earth - the current rate of increase in its orbital semi-major axis being 38 mm / yr. Some commentators have seen this drift as a major issue, but it could be a trivial problem to solve by the time that action is actually required. The point being that many tens of millions of years from now, if humanity is still thriving, resetting the Moon’s orbit through controlled flybys of asteroids, cometary nuclei, or Kuiper Belt objects will be a commonplace engineering process.