Humans should turn out to be interstellar species as we’re ‘one pandemic away from extinction’
Avi Loeb has emphasised the need for humans to embark on interstellar expeditions, as we face a race against the clock to set up another base somewhere should there be a pandemic
We need to get outta here, says Avi(Image: Getty Images)
Humans need to figure out space travel, or we could be staring down the barrel of extinction, a theorist has claimed.
Astrophysicist Avi Loeb – the bloke who made his name by ranting about the 3I/ATLAS “space ship” – has claimed our current “single-planet civilisation” is one pandemic away from extinction. So, if a COVID-19-type virus should reemerge, we are done for…
On his blog, Avi wrote: “If humanity gets through the next century without a civilizational catastrophe, we will have the opportunity to become an interstellar species. A single-planet civilization is one pandemic away from extinction. An interstellar civilization is much more difficult to extinguish.
“Venturing to space provides the insurance policy that transforms humanity from a fragile transient into a potentially enduring entity. Settling on a nearby rock, like the Moon or Mars, is not optimal because of the harsh living conditions there. It is much better to construct a kilometer-scale, habitable space platform artificially.”
Avi hashed out a rough plan for how humans can get “interplanetary”, plugging his own projects in the process.
Avi wrote: “I am not naïve enough to imagine a political reality in which the 2.4 trillion dollars allocated each year to military budgets worldwide will be repurposed to space exploration out of an epiphany of our leaders.
“Instead, I am hoping that through my leadership of the Galileo Project or the UAP Science Advisory Council to the U.S. Government, we will discover technological artifacts from interstellar civilizations. Such a finding might change our priority and inspire us to imitate our cosmic neighbors. Witnessing a more accomplished sibling in our family of intelligent civilizations will encourage us to do better.”
Avi then suggested we “hitchhike” objects like 3I/ATLAS “which was moving at 58 kilometers per second — several times faster than our fastest interstellar probes so far.”
He added: “Such an object would bring us to the nearest star system, Alpha Centauri, in 22,000 years. To cross the Milky Way galaxy will take a billion years. Synthetic biology might allow us to design astronauts that survive long interstellar journeys and adapt to the harsh conditions of space.”
