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And welcome back to Coast to Coast. George Norry with you, Chris Nippy with us as book worlds without End, Chris, is it possible? Is it conceivable that we are the offspring of a civilization that left its planet because it had to?
It's possible, It's conceivable. But biologists would say they've uncovered evidence four billion years disco on the Earth of how we started from sort of primordial sludge and gradually grew more complicated and biology evolved over that time.
It would be intriguing though, wouldn't it.
Yeah, definitely, And there's no reason that intelligent and advance life shouldn't exist beyond the Earth, given how many biological experiments they are likely to be.
Give us a scenario, Chris, kind of paint us a picture of the moment before the decision is made to leave planet Earth. What's happening on the planet.
Well, it's a probably a dire scenario of some global pandemic or a nuclear war or environmental degradation that far exceeds what we're seeing right now. Where you know, people maybe for a while can live in little bubble domes and small environments, but it's not sufficient to house the population of the planet, so we have to go somewhere else.
Do we have the technology now to go to a different place? I don't think so, do.
We We don't. At the energy costs is enormous, and the physics behind that is pretty implacable. It's hard to get around, you know. And also the time taken to go beyond the Solar System would be enormous. We'd have to develop some suspended animation technology that we don't have yet.
We haven't learned how to bend space and time and travel that way too.
Like the right the technology. I mean, you know, people get excited about Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos from the space program that's going on in the private sector, but those are still chemical rockets, not very different from you know, the Saturn five. So we haven't really advanced that much on rockets.
In your opinion, if we kept doing the way we're doing it today, how long does planet Earth got to list?
What do you think, Well, if we get on top of things, you know, I mean hundreds, hopefully thousands of years, I don't think it's going to go South very quickly, but because at least everyone's paying attention now, well most most people are paying attention. I mean, if we were asleep at the switch, then I wouldn't give us more than a few decades if.
There were no people on the planet, a couple billion more years. Do you think the planet could exist on its own before the cordiate?
Life is very durable and robust, and it exists. You know, simple forms of life exist in very difficult environments, and you know life is going to survive long beyond us. The Sun will eventually call a halt to the whole thing in about four and a half billion years.
What was that aha moment when you woke up and said, I'm going to write worlds without end?
Well, I think it was when papers were coming out almost every week finding new earthlike planets, you know, like ringers for the Earth, almost Earth clones, and I was thinking, Wow, these are places where there's no reason there shouldn't be biology. We just don't know how to detect it yet, and that just makes your imagination go.
Do you think, though, that we're really destroying the planet today?
Well, we're running out of the environment, you know, we're using more of the environment. I read a biology article that said that our metabolic footprint of a modern industrial human it's sort of like King Kong. So each human is sort of like a King Kong in their footprint literal and metaphorical and energy on the planet. And that's a pretty scary thought.
Are there other planets out there that could support life that you think are out there besides the ones that you just mentioned.
Yeah, there are. There seem to be hundreds that are about the Earth's size, about the Earth's mass. They're at the temperate zone where there should be water on the surface, and water is not a very rare molecule in the universe.
I mean, could we start breathing there like right away?
Well, we don't. That's a good question because the atmosphere. That's a difficult experiment to measure the atmosphere, So we don't. We haven't found an atmosphere that is a ringer for the Earth yet, and that's partly because we haven't done that experiment. It's just very hard to measure the atmospheres.
And I wouldn't want to live with a mask on for the rest of my life, would you.
No, No, that's not good. You might as well, live on Mars in a bubble dome if you're going.
To have a mask on and then you always have that risk you're going to run out of oxygen or who knows what.
Yeah, I mean, this is still a pretty nice planet, whatever we're doing to it, it's still the best place.
How many spaceships would we need to colonize a planet?
Well, the minimum viable colony, according to biologists for genetic de and not having the sort of recessive gene issues is about one hundred and twenty or one hundred and thirty. So that's that's a minimal colony and you probably, well Elon Musk will tell you only need one of his big spaceships to get that many people to Mars.
Is it worth keeping life going like that?
Well, some people think that it's an adventure we should do regardless of what happens on Earth. That it's it's the goal of humans to explore, because we explore the Earth and now we're exploring off Earth, and some people are going to do this, you know, regardless of what happens on the Earth. It's just a crazy adventure that people will do.
I think what about the moons for these exual planets, do they have any They might.
And that's a good question, that's a that's beyond the payout. That's hard to do. So we have not detected an axo moon or a moon around an exoplanet just because they're small and that's the limit of technology. But yes, we imagine they must exist, just like their moons of the planets in our Solar system.
Can we send a probe to an excele planet or just too far away?
They're too far away. But there's a project called Breakthrough Starshot, which is funded by a Russian billionaire called Jury Milner one hundred million dollars at least, and they're planning to send fleets of nanobots, you know, gram sized spacecraft with solar sales, sending them at about five percent of light speed to Proximust Centauri, that nearby star that does have
an Earth. That's a very visionary project, and they haven't you know, they're solving technology problems at the moment, but they plan in fifty or sixty years to get those probes to Proximust Centaury.
Well, look what we've done in fifty or sixty years already. You know, we got to the moon and here we are doing our thing with little rover missions.
Now it's very hard to extrapolate. I mean, you know, think of fifty years of technology with computers or cell phones or whatever it is, and try and project fifty years more.
It's really hard to do. What is your view of the Big Bang? I have to ask you that.
Sure, it's you know, every now and then it takes some knox people say, oh, they found big galaxies in the early universe with James Webb, and that's that sort of knock knocks a hole in the Big Bang. I don't think the Big Bang theory is in trouble, but our understanding of how galaxies form and when they form is not very clear, and that's because we don't know what dark matter is or dark energy.
What is the Big Bang? What I mean, how can something have started from nothing?
Well, that's a problem. So the theory is interesting because it doesn't really answer that question. It just describes what happens from a very dense early hot state thirteen point eight billion years ago, and it just describes that going forward. It doesn't say what caused the Big Bang, and it doesn't say what came before.
What do you think was before.
Well, the universe started, if you believe the theory as a quantum entity, because the universe, the whole universe, one hundred billion galaxy, was one smaller than an atom, So it was a quantum event, and maybe there are other quantum events. So people speculate about what they call the multiverse, other universes emerging out of the thing that led to the Big Bang, so that our universe is not unique.
Is it conceivable biblically speaking, that it was just formed by God out of nothing.
It's totally possible because the science doesn't speculate a cause. The science is just mute on the cause. The theory doesn't describe it. So you know, you're free to imagine whatever cause we want actually for the universe itself.
Now you've already said that you would prefer to stay and leave. But given a choice, what would you do?
Oh, I'd stay. I mean it's going to be those explorers, those adventures, apart from the sheer danger, you know, many will not survive. As you said, it's going to be a tough in existence in a bubble dome or using a map to breathe in an imperfect atmosphere. You know, away from your friends and your family and everything that's familiar to you. You know, that's a lot of hardship.
What would their rationale for leaving bee.
It would just be the same rationale that leads people to go up Mount Everest where there's no air, or go to the Antarctic where it's bone chilling and cold, or go in the deep ocean where it can crush you in a microsecond. As we know, same thing. You know, the people who do that will also want to leave the Earth and go to another planet.
Well, but those people who have just experimented with all these other things you've just mentioned, always planned on coming back, coming back down from Mount Everst, coming back from the view of the Titanic.
Right, they did. But I think if they were smart and if they were savvy, they understood that, you know, one in three or one in five people die on Everth so you know, they understood there's a good chance they might not come back. And if you're leaving the Earth, you've got to know that going going into the adventure, if.
You were addressing the United Nations ready to tell them that, folks, we must exit the planet, and assume we had the technology and we had the planet picked, how do you select the people?
Oh, that's really hard. And then I don't know any rational way to do it. I mean the biologists would say, you want to balance gene pools, so you'd have to have a lot of genetic diversity, But you just have to have some huge, crazy global lottery. I guess that's the only rational way to do it. It would have to be random.
Rather than leave the planet as this, because we think it's going to be over, should we just have some volunteers go to these other planets just to start a new civilization.
Well, I think that might happen. I mean it may take century or more. It's not going to happen in a decade, but it could happen, and it'll be like a new branch of the human experiment, because when a subset of humans go to another world, there will be genetically a small gene pool, and so they will diverge from the human tree of life, if you like, and eventually become a new species, which is kind of a crazy thought.
I mean, if they built a bubble on Mars the size of half a football field, let's say I still wouldn't want to go and spend the rest of my life there, would you?
I don't think so, but of course we could do that. I mean, you just just describe a Mars base that is totally within reason to do in maybe fifteen or twenty years, so that will probably happen, and people will volunteer and they will go and maybe they'll be able to come back. Mars is not so far away. It's not only going to another planet in another Solar system.
I just saw some video, Chris from the International Space Station. I'd be bored out of my mind up there.
That's right. How do you entertain yourself? I mean, how do you recreate? How you know? How do you stay sane? You've got a limited number of people to talk to as well.
We're going to take calls with Chris emp and in a day to questions for Chris, if you would just tell us if you would take a trip like that, a permanent trip. You've been given the offer to go to a different planet to start a new life, would you go? And what do you do about food and stuff like that? Chris? That's a mess.
Yeah, I suppose we know. I mean we've seen from the Martian that you can grow potatoes, on Mars. That's not even fake. You can so I think we could grow food.
After a week, i'd be tired of eating potatoes.
Well, you know, probably eating pills mostly rather than.
Potatoes should be interesting, possible, scary. Let's hope we never have to get to that point.
I agree.
World's willout end tell me about to cover all those little planets? What planet is that?
It's an Earth clone? You know, a real Earth clone that we found some hundred light years away, sort of viewed prismatically, just to give the sense that there are many of these out there.
You think if there was a poll taken from planetary system wide, what do you think the percent would be about those people who would offer to go to a different planet. I think it might be surprisingly high.
Maybe. I think you're right that it's a harsh environment. It's a scary prospect. I think it would be small ish. But of course you don't need that many, because you can't send that many.
The people who would be apt to go might be those that are unhappy with living here right now.
Yeah, I don't know if that forms a very good gene pool for a new civilization or a new society.
Actually, And then how do you structure, organization law, all these things.
Well, there's no space law. So that's an interesting point. I mean, space law doesn't really exist because there's some jurisdiction. The un doesn't run the law of space. So it'll be a wild West. They'll have to make their own laws.
As they did when they came to the United States North America. Exactly interesting take on all of that. What a scientist say about this possibility, Well.
They acknowledge it's possible. It's difficult to go to another planet, especially in the Solar System Mars. Mars is probably going to happen in decades, going to another star. Everyone thinks that's centuries away just because of the energy requirement, but it still might happen.
With these extra planets that have been discovered, have we ascertained whether it has liquid water?
Yes, we've found evidence for a water, vapor or liquid water. Not a huge number, but a significant number of these planets. And we know the conditions are right for liquid water, and we know that liquid water is a pretty common molecule in the universe. Actually, so the Earth is not
even the most watery planet we've found Earth. The Earth's oceans, we're pretty small percentage of the planet's mass, and there are exoplanets out there with ten percent of their total mass or twenty percent of oceans.
That's one hundred times the Earth socian years ago. Seth Shostak told us that he believes the primordial soup is the same throughout the universe, and I would agree with that. How about you sure?
I think chemistry is universal because of astronomers and I do cosmology and look billions of light years away to distant galaxies. They have the same chemical ingredients. There's carbon, nitrogen, oxygen billions of light years away. There's water, you know, billions of light years away and other galaxies. So you know the corimordial soup is going to have a universal chemical composition.
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