Do you think humans will inhabit another planet?

[EastEnder]

If the Sun is the problem, if there are humans in a few billion years' time (which I think not), then they'd need to move outside the solar system, and there the distances are too great.

Eventually, but long before that the earth will be rendered uninhabitable whilst more outlying celestial bodies will become more hospitable - so if we are still here, the choice will be to stay put and fry or jump ship and head out to the moons of Jupiter or Saturn. In which case humans (or whatever we've evolved into by then), will indeed inhabit another planet.

(Incidentally, this is the reason I think we've never seen any visiting aliens: while it is likely life has arisen elsewhere in the Universe, the distances are so great as to make them unmanageable for even supremely advanced technology. And even were such technology to exist, the chances of finding us are vanishingly small).

I agree, although there's the danger of being overly pedestrian. If one thinks a bit more "long term" (ok, vastly more long term), it become quite conceivable that a species would colonise the entire galaxy. A suitably advanced society, recognising the limitations of its native solar system, would inevitably consider their long term survival. With vastly advanced technology it may well be possible to send out fleets of robotic ships, targeted at potentially viable planets in other solar systems. Even travelling at, say, 25% of the speed of light (which is quite feasible, you just need a big engine that can accelerate for a very long time), it would most likely take hundreds or thousands of years to reach nearby planets. But once there, the robotic ships could start terraforming the alien environments, whilst also building new versions of themselves which then go on to repeat the process at other planets. Follow that through for a couple of million years and you've made half the galaxy habitable. With so many viable worlds, the advanced species has their pick of places to colonise. Clearly getting there would take a while, but I'm sure if they've clever enough to build such robotic ships, they're more than clever enough to devise ways of transporting themselves in a state of suspended animation or frozen as embryos, ready to be artificially grown and educated on arrival. You don't need warp drive to colonise the galaxy, you just need advanced technology based on ordinary physics and an awful lot of time - but if you were a highly evolved, highly advanced species, aware that the time available in your native solar system was limited, would you not do it eventually - given that the alternative was eventual extinction?

 

[david dissadent]

I strongly suspect that long before we inhabit other planets will would be living in permenant colonies in space habitats. The obsticles are rather lower than many people seem to think. Energy for example is not really that big a problem as you have a supply of energy that is all but limitless, the sun. Once you are actualy in space then things become much easier. The biggest biggest thing will be water. It will be much cheaper from an energy perspective to bring water from the rest of the solar system to high earth orbits than to bring it from earth itself. Once we have identified a sutable source of water somewhere past Mars (asteroid or dead comet), mining it then bringing it back to earth drops the amount of heavy lifiting required by several orders of magnitude.

I would even suggest that we could, if we wanted to, begining permenantly inhabiting space right now if we shifted our perspective on how to get too space.

 

[spring-peeper]

Yes, I think we will inhabit another planet. Once this one has been completely destroyed, we will move on. Like last time - when we destroyed Mars and came here.

 

[Aldebaran]

I know I'm not going to and I doubt humanity will survive long enough to be able to.
But that is just me... I'm having a dark mood today at that.

salaam.

 

[EastEnder]

Like last time - when we destroyed Mars and came here.

We didn't destroy Mars, it's still there.....

 

[Johnny Canuck3]

 

[Demosthenes]

The question is elementary - if humans, or their vastly distant descendants, plan on existing beyond the point at which earth becomes uninhabitable, then the answer's pretty much a resounding "yes".

Whether it happens on a readily conceivable time-scale, as opposed to billions of years hence, is an entirely different matter.

Personally I suspect we'll find some clever way of annihilating ourselves long before we ever get the chance, and it'll be the vastly distant descendants of dolphins or octopuses or highly evolved terrapins that eventually end up making the move.

Or squirrels. I vote for squirrels, they could easily evolve into something like humans.

 

[adc069975]

They already do.

The question is: do extraterrestrial beings not already inhabit our planet??

 

[danny la rouge]

They already do

Go on...

 

[adc069975]

4.6 AU (Sirius) humans earlier in evolution were transported there as an experiment in alternative trajectories of development.

1.1 AU (Alpha Centuri) has few humans left, the rest have disembodied.

 

[danny la rouge]

4.6 AU (Sirius) humans earlier in evolution were transported there as an experiment in alternative trajectories of development.

1.1 AU (Alpha Centuri) has few humans left, the rest have disembodied.

Uh huh. And you know this because...?

 

[DotCommunist]

It's possible I suppose. I think inhabiting a computer will be first though, Singularity and that.

We can't really terraform with any degree of succsess yet imo, nor are our genetics up to to the level of breeding human-adapts for non terran enviroments

 

[DotCommunist]

They already do.

The question is: do extraterrestrial beings not already inhabit our planet??

is this Hubbadry?

 

[adc069975]

Well, molecular technology circles is where I first came across these claims (esp. those involved in it very early on... this is many years ago). As an outsider most of what they talked about is esoteric, but I learned some astonishing things. Similarly I hear quantum encryption and related fields have some 'interesting' (or bizarre) people involved...

Leading me back to my question, really, which I have no means to rule out...

 

[danny la rouge]

I hear quantum encryption and related fields have some 'interesting' people involved, if you see what I mean.

Yes, I see. You are claiming that aliens are leading the way in those fields.

 

[adc069975]

They're involved, but not directly. It has a strange effect on these people.

 

[danny la rouge]

They're involved, but not directly. It has a strange effect on these people.

They're sort of giving clues about the next steps to take, is that it?

 

[xes]

I think it's possible,but it won't happen for a long time. Not in our life times anyway. We need to work out a proper way to travel in space first.

 

[ATOMIC SUPLEX]

If you had an appropriately designed ballon, you could hang around in the level of Venus' atmosphere where it's earth sea-level air pressure and temperatures range from 0 to 50.

Kelvin????!!!

 

[ATOMIC SUPLEX]

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=qeUMpAy1NK0&feature=related

 

[EastEnder]

4.6 AU (Sirius) humans earlier in evolution were transported there as an experiment in alternative trajectories of development.

1.1 AU (Alpha Centuri) has few humans left, the rest have disembodied.

 

[Crispy]

Kelvin????!!!

Centigrade. Apart from the really acid rain, you could happily walk around in the open air at that altitude, whist breathing from a can of oxygen. Tshirt jeans and trainers.

 

[adc069975]

They're sort of giving clues about the next steps to take, is that it?

I don't know.

What I will suggest is that many of these developments are ideally suited to trans-atmospheric warfare, and controlling/reshaping/centralizing environments, disembodiment across distance, so forth. Consider that a communications system like the internet can be extended across whole galaxies in theory (so if it does happen?), and then consider quantum-cryptography. Intergalactic espionage?

 

[Dravinian]

What do you mean by inhabit?

Do you mean, be born, live and die on another planet, or just live on another planet for a period in your life?

If the former, then I think a very very long time, as there just aren't any planets near us that would make that easy and possibly not dangerous or physically changing....ie lack of gravity/too much gravity could have a very negative effect on the growing organs of babies.

If the latter then I think in perhaps 50-100 years, some people will live and work on other planets. Such as miners on Mars seems the most obvious and would likely be the first. I think a Moon base would exist before that, but it isn't a planet so don't really count to the question.

 

[danny la rouge]

Intergalactic espionage?

You think?

 

[EastEnder]

Consider that a communications system like the internet can be extended across whole galaxies in theory (so if it does happen?), and then consider quantum-cryptography.

So would you use cat5 or fibre for that? I reckon cat5, not as zippy as fibre but easier to bend round gas giants and poke through nebula.

 

[Dravinian]

Consider that a communications system like the internet can be extended across whole galaxies in theory

Yeah but your ping would be terrible though wouldn't it.

 

[danny la rouge]

Let's not give the Earthling too many clues, comrades.

 

[Crispy]

Intergalactic espionage?

Subatomic cookery?
Phase-transition tennis?
Chromatographic psychoanalysis?

This is a fun game

 

[Idaho]

I reckon the aliens are all here doing experiments and stuff. I got probed the other day - it must have been aliens.