
Humans will not 'migrate' to exoplanets, Nobel winner says - bitcharmer
https://www.afp.com/en/news/826/humans-will-not-migrate-other-planets-nobel-winner-says-doc-1l97962
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mellosouls
This isn't about an unimaginative scientist, which could be taken from the
headline.

Reading the article, while he supports the claim with the impracticality of
the science in the foreseeable future, he seems more motivated by his
frustration with the idea that if things deteriorate too much here we can just
go somewhere else.

He wants us to treasure our home.

Sounds pretty sensible tbh.

~~~
Certhas
Also note that the headline is wrong. He is talking about planets outside the
solar system. Terraforming Mars is quick and easy compared to flying to a more
habitable planet.

~~~
jacquesm
> Terraforming Mars is quick and easy compared to flying to a more habitable
> planet.

It's super hard compared to fixing Planet Earth.

~~~
cryptoz
> It's super hard compared to fixing Planet Earth.

I don't think that's true. Most of Earth's problems are political, with humans
in charge exercising their power on purpose to make pollution on Earth
_worse_. On Earth you are fighting against rich and powerful people who want
the pollution to get worse (because it temporarily 'enriches' them, ugh). This
is happening at an accelerating rate.

There is no such challenge on Mars to overcome. Nobody is arguing (with any
power) that we should not terraform Mars, but even the US President thinks
that Earthly climate change is a 'hoax' invented by the Chinese to
specifically harm America. _THAT_ is what prevents progress here, not
technological development.

We have technology to 'fix' Earth today and to 'terraform' Mars soon. The main
issue on Earth is that the people with the power to do something good are
choosing to bad instead.

~~~
jacquesm
What makes you think that on Mars there won't be politics? Once Mars is within
reach politics will arrive with the first human settlers.

What the US president believes is not representative for what politicians in
general believe. He's somewhat of an exception (fortunately). Unfortunately,
he's doing a lot of damage but even if he weren't the problem would largely
remain the same.

~~~
ksaj
That's exactly how it'll go. At some point, humans on Mars will become tribal.
Then we can watch history repeat from a distance (all the while it is
repeating here anyway...)

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luxuryballs
Hey at least he says it, sometimes I think half or more of the people who end
up famous for some reason and also talk about going to live on other planets
are only doing it for the hype.

It’s insanely impractical, we’d be millions of times more likely to develop a
way of living under the sea than on another planet, and that is only a few
hours drive away and nobody wants to live under the sea given current
capabilities.

Imagine how much worse life on Earth would have to get (and how much better
undersea living would have to get) to make it a viable place to raise a family
and get old.

~~~
shantly
Earth could take a big ol' comet strike or a nuclear war—or probably both—and
still be better able to support human life than Mars is. You could build a
bunch of super-hardened bunkers and pay people to live in them in shifts,
cheaper than you could build a Martian colony and move people there. It's less
sexy but it gets the job done cheaper, if anyone cares to do it. As for any
other reason to live on Mars aside from temporarily in the name of science—I'm
not seeing it.

~~~
cryptoz
> As for any other reason to live on Mars aside from temporarily in the name
> of science—I'm not seeing it.

Why don't you see the human desire to move to new places? It's a simple matter
of _wanting to go_. No other reason should be required to explain why humans
will go live on Mars.

It's going to happen simply because people want it to happen.

~~~
paulryanrogers
> It's going to happen simply because people want it to happen.

This sounds a lot like the religious arguments for supernatural healing, just
have to believe and try.

Human willpower is limited by the laws of physics. Barring some fundamental
breakthroughs in resource utilization, like cold fusion, I don't see it
happening--no matter the desire to do so. And if the cost is making Earth
uninhabitable then it'd a be foolish to pursue blindly.

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vbezhenar
Men sailed the seas to find new lands not because they ran out of space, but
because they want to explore and spread out. I don't think that it'll change
in the future. As soon as economics allows, men will colonize space.

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stenl
The title of the post is wrong though. He’s talking about migrating outside
the solar system (i.e. to exoplanets), not just to other planets (e.g. Mars).

~~~
dang
Ok, we'll s/other /exo/ the above. Note that space.

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WheelsAtLarge
I suspect that Michel Mayor is right about exoplanets but we might be able to
colonize the moon or Mars. I've wondered how evolution will affect humans that
are born in space colonies. I would think that over a few generations it would
be impossible for a space-born human to return to earth without special
equipment. At the very least the difference in gravity would change how much
weight our bones can support. I would also think that the increase in
radiation would cause many more mutations. So even if we are able to colonize
nearby space humans in space colonies would evolve into different human
species over time.

In some sense, it means that humans, as we are now, could never leave earth
and colonize space.

~~~
coldtea
> _I suspect that Michel Mayor is right about exoplanets but we might be able
> to colonize the moon or Mars. I 've wondered how evolution will affect
> humans that are born in space colonies. I would think that over a few
> generations it would be impossible for a space-born human to return to earth
> without special equipment._

Evolution on such things works on the span of tens of thousands of years, not
merely "some generations".

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JesseAldridge
> "These planets are much, much too far away. Even in the very optimistic case
> of a livable planet that is not too far, say a few dozen light years...We
> are talking about hundreds of millions of days using the means we have
> available today. We must take care of our planet, it is very beautiful and
> still absolutely liveable."

That's actually a good point and one I hadn't really thought about.

The only way I can think of for humanity to get to these other planets would
be to build a network of self sustaining space station colonies. And if we can
do that we don't really need planets any more.

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georgeecollins
It would be easier to change humans to be something that could live
comfortably on Mars than it would be to make Mars that is comfortable for
humans. If Mars is ever really permanently colonized it won't be by "us" as we
are now, but maybe something like us.

In a similar way I could see something we make traveling out of the solar
system, maybe we could even seed life. But it would be something different
than us.

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andrewstuart
Anyone who thinks we'll _ever_ travel to another solar system really truly
fails to understand the distances involved.

The furthest humanity has ever travelled, by way of analogy, is a couple of
millimeters - to the moon. The nearest star system relatively speaking is
another 200 kilometers further.

And sure you can appeal to the "well you never know what humans are capable of
in the future" line of thinking, but that's really just star trek fantasy -
there's not the remotest chance, nada, never.

Here's a fun video that explains and will totally dismiss any idea that we'll
ever get there - apart from Star Trek fantasy:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dCSIXLIzhzk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dCSIXLIzhzk)

~~~
carapace
Not _everyone_ , but most people.

I think anyone dreaming of interstellar travel and not also dreaming about
human life extension is being silly. Until and unless we can live for at least
10Ky there's almost no point in going beyond the heliopause, unless you just
want to live like an anchorite.

Just going to space within our own Solar System will be like living (not just
working) in a very unsafe mine.

Without some sort of "magic" FTL and/or "stasis field" we are as trapped as a
beetle on Hawaii.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stasis_(fiction)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stasis_\(fiction\))

------
LargoLasskhyfv
Why is that a problem, when we could have something like an

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O%27Neill_cylinder](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O%27Neill_cylinder)
?

Multiplied by so many times across OUR solar system, until the building
materials from asteroids, moons, moonlet, whatever runs out?

Why would one try to bend another unfriendly or hostile ecosystem into
something which supports human life, instead of building one from scratch,
with the added benefit of the right (rotational) gravity? Endless solar power.
No storms. No quakes. No radiation, if done right?

------
lyqwyd
"I think there is a world market for maybe five computers."

Thomas Watson, president of IBM, 1943

Mayor’s claim doesn’t seem any more credible than Watson’s. Mayor might wind
up being right, but not due to any deeper insight. It will happen, or it
won’t. My opinion is we will do it as long as we don’t destroy ourselves
first.

He’s also conflating the migration with protecting the earth. I don’t think
there are very many credible people saying we should protect the planet as we
can migrate to an exoplanet.

Protecting the planet is worthwhile, regardless of whether we can flee it.

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Tepix
With nanoassemblers we could send just a tiny mass to an exoplanet, then
transmit our DNA to spawn life there.

The breakthrough project is working on very lightweight probes that travel at
super high speeds.

~~~
defterGoose
Nanotech like that is years away albeit possible. The real problem is the
tyranny of the rocket equation.

~~~
Tepix
The rocket equation doesn't apply to probes accelerated by light that do not
carry fuel.

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viach
Probably this is not that bad that species which can't manage to sort things
out with their own planet are not able to reach other worlds. This is sort of
a natural quarantine. Actually I suspect if we knew the attitudes and
histories of the other civilizations similar to ours we would be grateful the
interstellar distances are that big.

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droithomme
Also, if some distant planet is capable of supporting life, it almost
certainly is supporting life, and that life may not be compatible with ours,
requiring the extermination of either us or them.

Models that claim life is so rare as to be impossible are obviously
speculative, and more reasonably deemed wrong.

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jeffk_teh_haxor
I've come to the realization that planetary colonization is sort of a
dangerous and anesthetizing science fiction fantasy. It allows us to mentally
defer our reckoning of the finite nature of our planet and its resources.

------
LiquidSky
Clarke’s First Law:

“When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible,
he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he
is very probably wrong.”

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarke%27s_three_laws](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarke%27s_three_laws)

~~~
kingkawn
Doesnt this negate itself?

~~~
mLuby
Clarke said it's unlikely for a distinguished but elderly scientist to
accurately predict what's unlikely.

Clarke was a distinguished but elderly scientist.

Therefore it's unlikely that Clarke accurately predicted what's unlikely?

~~~
tempestn
Clarke stated that distinguished, elderly scientists claiming something is
impossible are "very probably" wrong, not that it's impossible for them to be
right. (Also he was more of a science fiction writer than a scientist himself,
although it would probably be fair to loosely call him a scientist as well.)

~~~
bostonpete
He also wasn't elderly when he wrote the first law in 1962.

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867-5309
I will read this fully once Elon wins his Nobel prize..

------
cryptoz
Is someone really advocating for destroying Earth and moving lightyears away?
I've honestly never heard this idea spoken or written down seriously - surely
this is the realm of fantasy and science fiction?

~~~
coldtea
> _Is someone really advocating for destroying Earth and moving lightyears
> away? I 've honestly never heard this idea spoken or written down seriously
> - surely this is the realm of fantasy and science fiction?_

It's part of the "californian ideology" thing (developing from "technological
utopianism").

Not suggesting we destroy Earth, but, "well, destroying it isn't that bad,
surely technology will (handwaving) get us to another planets, it's
(handwaving) inevitable that man will colonize the universe".

