Peter Ward: The Medea Hypothesis

Peter Ward: The Medea Hypothesis
press.princeton.edu Will we extend life into space before a catastrophe stops us permanently? Those going into space will be impelled by an exploratory urge. But their choices will have epochal consequences. Once the threshold is crossed when there is a self-sustaining level of life in space, then lifes long-range future will be secure irrespective of any of the risks on Earth (with the single exception of the catastrophic destruction of space itself). Will this happen before our technical civilisation disintegrates, leaving this as a might-have-been? Will the self-sustaining space communities be established before a catastrophe sets back the prospect of any such enterprise, perhaps foreclosing it for ever? We live at what could be a defining moment for the cosmos, not just for our Earth. The colonization of space is an evolutionary step similar to the colonization of land This would be as epochal an evolutionary transition as that which led to land-based life on Earth. But it could still be just the beginning of cosmic evolution. The enormous potential of future life is dependent on our actions today The first aquatic creatures crawled onto dry land in the Silurian era, more than three hundred million years ago. They may have been unprepossessing brutes, but had they been clobbered, the evolution of land-based fauna would have been jeopardised. Likewise, the post-human potential is so immense that not even the most misanthropic amongst us would countenance its being …