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Life has spent 3.5 billion years adapting to the peculiarities of this planet. There’s undoubtedly much we have yet to learn about the universe, and exploring
by mortenjorck 6y ago
Life has spent 3.5 billion years adapting to the peculiarities of this planet.
There’s undoubtedly much we have yet to learn about the universe, and exploring it is the obvious way to learn. Yet I have long seen it as the height of hubris to think we could replace this planet from which we arose.
Everything from gravity to day length to soil composition, never mind the atmosphere which is at least theoretically reproducible, is something with millions of years of adaptation encoded into our genes, and has no compatible world within our known universe.
We can and should explore, and some will choose to make their home among the stars, but as a species, nothing can replace our Earth.
- criddell 6y agoYou don't think over the next, say, hundred million years our descendants could adapt equally well to other worlds?
- JoeAltmaier 6y agoWe can already change 'our species'. It's changed more in the last 50,000 years than the 3 million before that, just because we started living in close societies. And now we can do it deliberately. Never mind genetics, a large part of our makeup is now mental models, which can simply be taught. "Don't go outside without taking your anti-fungals and putting on sunscreen!"