The Future of Consciousness in the Universe
By: Said Lmaghribi
Tags: Galaxy, Earth

vulnerability to annihilation an era he calls the precipice in which humanity lives in the shadow of true existential uncertainty of countless generations of humanity only in the last century roughly one human lifespan have we acquired the means to destroy ourselves this awareness permeates our culture and many have the sense that the end is nigh that humanity has no future and perhaps doesn’t deserve one our news feeds music film and literature reflect this vague atmosphere of impending apocalypse runaway climate change mass extinction nuclear war unaligned artificial intelligence and yet while the risks to our continued existence are real and in some cases growing the truth is that these risks are far from insurmountable and even now the long-term survival of humanity and our descendants remains a real possibility the enormity of our potential can be viewed through two lenses our physical potential to explore a vast and mysterious universe.

and our mental potential to explore an equally vast and unfathomably valuable dimension of consciousness today we will explore both of these lenses physical and mental for the sake of shedding light on the surprising cosmic significance of our unique historical moment part one cosmic reach could we really settle other planets could we ever traverse the vast gulfs between stars could our descendants truly come to inhabit deep time we will consider the possibility that we do survive the precipice with our potential intact and what we and our descendants could eventually author on the cosmic stage for the moment taking humanity out of the equation scientists predict earth is likely to be habitable for another 500 million to a billion years in this time among other changes the moon’s gravitational pull will gradually stretch the length of an earth day and continental drift will reshape the surface of the planet the occurrence of major natural cataclysms will accumulate in probability such as the eruption of super volcanoes and earth asteroid collisions these events while devastating are in fact quite unlikely to put a permanent end to earth’s habitability for complex life it is only after hundreds of millions of years that earth life faces certain existential risk from natural origins.

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the threat will eventually come from our star the sun at 4.6 billion years old the sun is about halfway through its lifespan throughout its life the sun has grown steadily brighter and will continue to do so as it ages eventually this brightening effect will begin to pose serious challenges to any then existing life on earth unchecked the increasing glare of the sun will boil off earth’s oceans and with them all prospects for complex life will also quickly evaporate our descendants however may be more than capable of averting this disaster if they can find a way to block one tenth of the sun’s incoming light perhaps even converting it into usable energy we may be able to extend earth’s habitability for another billion years or more for an advanced civilization with the abundant resources of our solar system such a feat is far from impossible and if successful will effectively save all then existing life on earth long before this time our descendants may carry out other ambitious interventions such as scrubbing our atmosphere of the pollutants of industrial civilization re-engineering collapsed ecosystems and resurrecting the species we drove prematurely to extinction a future civilization may also capture a significant amount of the total energy given out by the sun massive solar collectors placed in orbit around our star could store and distribute its energy wherever we need it interventions by our descendants may significantly prolong.

earth’s habitability for life and yet eventually our continued survival will require us to move on from this planet and indeed anywhere else we might have settled in the solar system the threat once again will come from the sun between four and six billion years from now our star will enter the final stages of its life in which it will dramatically grow in size eventually ballooning outwards beyond earth’s current orbit finally exhausting its remaining energy and dying long before this time our best hope will reside in our nearest star system alpha centauri located approximately four light years from earth alpha centauri is a triple star system three orbiting stars the nearest of which is proxima centuri there is now evidence that this star is orbited by a roughly earth-sized rocky planet located in its habitable zone this planet is known as proxima b by this stage we may not strictly need such a planet to establish a foothold in this system perhaps by then our descendants will occupy habitats that transcend the need for a planet and yet the existence of proxima b is a stroke of fortune that may be of great value to our descendants.

but could we ever reach this distant world the possibility of true interstellar travel is often met with skepticism but it should be pointed out that much of this skepticism is directed to what is possible in the relative short term the next century or so we’ve simply not yet developed the technology to transport ourselves between stars and yet while this may prove to be very difficult and time consuming there are in fact no known limits that make interstellar travel impossible and should we survive this vulnerable moment in our history we will have millions of years to plan such a voyage and if necessary thousands of attempts if our descendants do arrive at Proxima Centauri a settlement built from local resources could eventually establish a thriving new center of civilization and we could also take the rest of life along with us transporting the seeds and cells required to birth new biospheres on new worlds future generations may have the means and desire to undertake this voyage millions of years before the sun’s death forces our evacuation from the solar system.