Epilogue: The Future of Humankind Could Depend on Unicellular Life (original) (raw)

Is Humanity Doomed? Insights from Astrobiology

Astrobiology, the study of life in the universe, offers profound insights into human sustainability. However, astrobiology is commonly neglected in sustainability research. This paper develops three topics connecting astrobiology to sustainability: constraints on what zones in the universe are habitable, the absence of observations of extraterrestrial civilizations, and the physical fate of the universe. These topics have major implications for our thinking and action on sustainability. While we may not be doomed, we must take certain actions to sustain ourselves in this universe. The topics also suggest that our current sustainability efforts may be of literally galactic importance.

The Search for Life in the Universe

2016

Each recent report of liquid water existing elsewhere in the solar system has reverberated through the international press and excited the imagination of humankind. We have come to realize that where there is liquid water on Earth, virtually no matter what the physical conditions, there is life. Dr. Lynn Rothschild, an evolutionary biologist known for her work on life in extreme environments and a founder of the field of astrobiology, tells us about intriguing new data. The prevalence of potential abodes for life in our solar system and beyond, the survival of microbes in the space environment, modeling of the potential for transfer of life between celestial bodies, and advances in synthetic biology suggest that life could be more common than previously thought. Are we truly "alone"?

Generating life on earth : five looming questions

2015

Events on Earth stand in marked contrast with events on other planets, such as the gases that swirl around Jupiter, or the winds that blow on Venus. On Earth, climatological and geomorphological processes continue in the Pleistocene period more or less like they did in the Precambrian. But Earth history is quite different because in biology — unlike physics, chemistry, geomorphology, or astronomy — something can be learned. Once upon a time, signals appeared! Where once there was matter, energy, and where these remain, there is information, symbolically encoding life. There is a new state of matter, neither liquid nor gaseous nor solid, but vital. With the passing of cold and warm fronts or the uplifting and eroding of mountains, there is no natural selection. Nothing is competing, nothing is surviving, reproducing, nothing has adapted fit. To come into being, to survive, an organism needs to gain, to use, to transmit relevant information. If we ourselves are to gain the information...

The Search for Life as a Guidepost to Scientific Revolution

Bulletin of the AAS, 2021

The planetary science community should embrace the search for life as a prime organizing science principle of the decadal survey. The discovery of life beyond Earth, particularly in the form of extant life within the solar system, would be a discovery of such significance that it would be a discontinuity in human knowledge-a scientific revolution. The National Academies' Astrobiology Strategy (National Academies 2019) outlined practical steps that the planetary community should follow to pursue this goal. The planetary community should also prioritize in-situ and, ultimately, sample return missions focused on the habitable environments in our solar system, and work closely with the astronomy community on the detection of habitable exoplanets. Ambitious mission goals need not require ambitious mission budgets. A comprehensive search for life must find ways to diversify its efforts beyond flagship missions into mid-and small-class programs in order to increase mission cadence and thus the potential for biosignature detection. The search for life in our solar system presents a unique opportunity, if embraced by the planetary science community, to implement a clear, encompassing strategy that integrates multiple scientific disciplines and solar system destinations. If life exists to be discovered, the outcome would be, at minimum, historic and, at maximum, revolutionary to the applied sciences of biology and medicine. We have the capability. We know where to look. The time is right. Finding Life is a Scientific Revolution Waiting to Happen The scientific revolution that began in the 16th century coincided with the application of natural

Astroecology, Cosmo-Ecology, and the Future of Life

Astroecology concerns the relations between life and space resources, and cosmoecology extrapolates these relations to cosmological scales. Experimental astroecology can quantify the amounts of life that can be derived from space resources. For this purpose, soluble carbon and electrolyte nutrients were measured in asteroid/meteorite materials. Microorganisms and plant cultures were observed to grow on these materials, whose fertilities are similar to productive agricultural soils. Based on measured nutrient contents, the 10^22 kg carbonaceous asteroids can yield 10^18 kg biomass with N and P as limiting nutrients (compared with the estimated 10^15 kg biomass on Earth). These data quantify the amounts of life that can be derived from asteroids in terms of time-integrated biomass [BIOTAint = biomass (kg) × lifetime (years)], as 10^27 kg-years during the next billion years of the Solar System (a thousand times the 1024 kg-years to date). The 10^26 kg cometary materials can yield biota 10 000 times still larger. In the galaxy, potential future life can be estimated based on stellar luminosities. For example, the Sun will develop into a white dwarf star whose 10^15 W luminosity can sustain a BIOTAint of 10^34 kg-years over 10^20 years. The 10^12 main sequence and white and red dwarf stars can sustain 10^46 kg-years of BIOTAint in the galaxy and 10^57 kg-years in the universe. Life has great potentials in space, but the probability of present extraterrestrial life may be incomputable because of biological and ecological complexities. However, we can establish and expand life in space with present technology, by seeding new young solar systems. Microbial representatives of our life-form can be launched by solar sails to new planetary systems, including extremophiles suited to diverse new environments, autotrophs and heterotrophs to continually form and recycle biomolecules, and simple multicellulars to jump-start higher evolution. These programs can be motivated by life-centered biotic ethics that seek to secure and propagate life. In space, life can develop immense populations and diverse new branches. Some may develop into intelligent species that can expand life further in the galaxy, giving our human endeavors a cosmic purpose.

Epilogue: The Origins of Life in the Solar System and Future Exploration

Space Science Reviews - SPACE SCI REV, 2007

The broad investigation of life in the universe must address its long-term survival (the primary focus of this book) and also its origins. Studies of survival address the evolution of the planetary environment, its habitability, the adaptability of living systems to changing conditions and possibly co-evolution of life with its host planet. Studies of origins explore the conditions necessary for the appearance of the first living organisms and the processes of prebiotic chemical evolution. Life emerged on Earth after a period of chemical evolution that involved liquid water, inorganic nutrients, organic matter and energy. The availability of these ingredients seems a sine qua non for the evolution of inanimate matter to living systems capable of replication, adaptation and Darwinian evolution. Environmental conditions determine the availability and utility of these ingredients, as well as the kinetics of the associated chemical reactions. For example, the potential role of hydrother...

19. The Human Quest to Live in a Cosmos

Living Earth Community, 2020

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Seeding the Universe with Life: Securing Our Cosmological Future

“It is the human purpose to propagate life” Life is unique in Nature, and for us, it is precious. Life is unique in its complex patterns, and in its purposeful self-continuation. We belong to life and share its drive for self-propagation. Belonging to life then implies a human purpose to secure, expand and propagate our family of gene/protein life. This purpose is best achieved in space, where life has an immense future. We can start now secure this future, by seeding with life new solar systems. New species can develop there into intelligent beings who will further expand life in the galaxy. Filling the universe with life will give then our human existence a cosmic purpose.