Duty Of Preservation
Impression:
I just listened to Dr. Chris Mason on the Lex Fridman podcast. I absolutely loved this conversation. They talked about the ideas in Dr. Mason’s book: “The next 500 years“. What kind of technology in the domains of physics, biology, and computer science will help us get to other worlds? Should we focus more on building the best vessels for interstellar space travel or should we invest in changing our biology to maybe live longer for long-lasting journeys? The Lex Fridman podcast is my favorite podcast out there and I find it endlessly inspiring. In this post, I have written about some of the things that stayed with me from this conversation.
Duty Of Preservation:
Why are we so inspired by the idea of journeying into outer space? We are the only known form of life that can reflect on our own mortality. Dr. Mason says that this gives us a responsibility to preserve life. We cannot survive on Earth long-term, on a cosmic time scale. This means that we must venture out to other planets/moons in our solar system and eventually to other stars. Life is special in a way that it is so rare in the universe (so far as we can tell). If we humans have the ability to ponder on our own extinction; from the expanding sun, from nuclear war, from an asteroid collision, and dozens of other things, then we must also find the resolve to solve these problems and keep nurturing this weird and rare gift that we have.
The Heat Death of the Universe:
In Christopher Paolini's “To Sleep in a Sea of Stars“ there is a religion called Entropism. Entropists address people as prisoners and spend a lot of time walking around telling the other characters that nothing really matters. The religious ideal for entropists is the heat death of the universe. The concept that disorder will keep happening until there is no order to be disordered (something like that). It is rooted in the second law of thermodynamics.
Scientists gave the measure of disorder in the universe the name of Entropy. The second law of thermodynamics states that the entropy of the universe must increase (it could stay the same), but it can never decrease. This proposal leads to the hypothesis of heat death. A time in the distant future when all the stars die out. Eventually, everything will come to the same temperature and Intelligent life will not be able to exist in this universe because these conditions wouldn’t allow it (Anthropic principle in reverse).
This made me think about the duty of preservation. We can only preserve for so long. The universe will be quiet one day, which does make us prisoners, in a way, as the entropists say. But cheer up, that day is an incomprehensible amount of time away (but the universe will wait).
Lava tubes on Mars:
Lava tubes are exactly what they sound like. For example, on Earth when the volcano travels under the surface, it leaves a cylinder-like structure. These tubes also exist on the Moon and Mars. They are prime candidates to set up labs and colonies on long-term missions. Some of their benefits include; (1) Since the tubes are under the surface, they provide natural shielding from the sun's radiation. This is not a problem for us because Earth has an amazing magnetic field that shields us from solar wind and solar eruptive events like Solar Flares, Coronal Mass Ejections (CMEs), Solar Energetic Particles (SEPs), etc. Mars does not have a strong magnetic field so there is an issue of excess radiation on the surface. (2) Since the tubes are under the surface they are safe from extreme surface events on mars. These include events such as extremely low temperatures and huge dust storms (like the one in The Martian). If life exists on Mars, it might be in these tubes because they may contain liquid water if the temperature in them is appropriately hot.
