Of course we aren’t alone. There are trillions of solar systems out there, we can see that. The problem is that they are all inconceivably distant. We’re more isolated than the remotest small atoll in the Pacific Ocean, with no way of reaching any far shores.
A little tale to put a scale on things….
Barney’s big adventure.
Barney was deep in thought. Down by the sea he foraged for driftwood to keep his family’s fire going. The tide was unusually low, his fish traps were high and dry – it would have to be shellfish again. He was beginning to feel it was time to move the family on to somewhere more promising.
He was used to unfamiliar animals coming down to the shore, but this one was really odd. Alien in fact. What’s more it had an uncanny ability to talk to him. “Barney, hope you don’t mind, we just stopped by to refuel. Hydro-fusion engines can buzz us around fast, nearly 19,000 miles a second.*1 But they gobble up lots of hydrogen – we get that from water. We’ve popped over from the next-door star, Proxima Centauri. All their water stations were fresh out. Even here, we know Mars ran out eons ago. But you Earth-guys still have a good supply. We sent you a message 1st. class light-post, you should have got it 4 years later.*2 We waited another 4 for your reply, but there wasn’t one. So we hopped over on the off-chance. At our speed it’s only a quick 42 earth-year trip anyway, so here we are” .
“I don’t understand your gobbledegook” said Barney. “42 Years? None of our old songs say anything about a message from so long ago.” He pulled his furs round his shoulders and nervously gripped his flint headed spear.
“Hey, relax” said Alien. We’ll be done in a couple of earth-days. The hydrogen generator is installed, the fusion power plant is in final test. We’ve just got to assemble the laser energy gun. Then we’re off. Not much free space here in the Milky Way, all the planets with water are over-crowded anyway. Why not come with us? We’re off to scout out Andromeda – it’s your nearest galaxy, you’ll be there in only 42K lifetimes*3 (Funny that. 42. Seems to be the answer to everything$5) On the way we can teach you about fusion tech, you can teach us those survival skills we’ve forgotten, like eating a Real food meal $1. Must be better than scraping out a precarious existence here”
Barney thought about it. Maybe this would be the answer to his concerns. He went back to the cave for a tribal pow-wow. “Ok” said Barney’s family of 12. “We’ll come”. But 128 cousins said “No, we’re sticking it out here. It’s hard now but in time we reckon we’ll flourish, go forth, multiply and this world will be ours”*4
So Barney and his family climbed aboard the strange Silver Machine$4 and entrusted their future to the Aliens while his cousins stayed put. The spacecraft commander came in, humming Set the Controls to the Heart of the Sun$2 “Hi” he said. “You can call me Major Tom$3 He looked them over. “You don’t seem to have evolved exo-skeletons yet. I’d better take it easy to start with or we’ll crush you. We’ll keep the acceleration down so your weight feels normal. Then when we get to our decilux top speed (that’s 1/10th of the speed of light to you) I’ll throttle back and the weightless fun can begin”
“How long before the fun?” asked Barney.
“Oh, just under 42 earth-days”. said Major Tom.*6 We’ll be well away from your sun and it’s planets, halfway to the next star.
So, 500 generations later, where are they now? Those that stayed and Barney’s adventuresome family who went? Let’s do a quick check.
Barney’s family sped past Proxima Centauri after 42 earth-years and throttled back into econo-hyper-glide, just as the alien commander had said. Sadly, Barney himself had passed away, but his grandchildren were thriving. “You earthlings don’t have much of a lifespan, do you?” observed the alien. “Settle down for a long trip now. We may be travelling fast enough to get all around your earth in a tad over one second, but there’s a long long way to go to Andromeda. After 923,000 light years – that’s 46,000 generations*7, we’ll be leaving your Milky Way galaxy behind. ETA at Andromeda is about a million generations from now”. Barney’s family settled down to study the intricacies of hydro-fusion power as they blasted through space. (There was not much else to do). Each new generation started to look and think a little more like the aliens. Their ribs softened as their exo-skeletons hardened. There were still just a dozen of them. “Control yourselves. One in, one out” said the Alien captain, alarmed at their fecundity and ejecting Barney’s DNA capsule.
Their 128 cousins on earth have indeed prospered. The weather warmed, plants & animals grew and were tamed. They learned to extract useful stuff from the earth itself. No more flint-headed spears! What’s more there was no need for ‘one in one out’ crowd control on spaceship Earth. Over 500 generations – 10,000 years – those 128 cousins became 100 thousand, 100 million, 10,000 million. Planet Earth indeed became theirs. To cherish or despoil.
So who made the right choice? Barney’s family with their 12 descendants? Or their 128 stick-at-home cousins with their 10 thousand million descendants? Only time will tell (Lots of it)
The End.
References:
Facts and figures
*1 If all the nuclear power stations in the USA were hooked up together and powered a laser beam at a spacecraft, it could be accelerated to 1/10th of the speed of light – just as long as it only weighed 1 gram.
*2 Proxima Centauri, the nearest star to our sun, is a mere 4.2 light-years away in our Milky Way galaxy.
*3 Andromeda is the nearest galaxy to ours, 2.5million light-years away, 25million years at the speed of Major Tom’s spacecraft. That’s about 420,000 earth-lifetimes of 60 years each – or 1,260,000 generations of 20 years each.
*4 in 2023 we passed 8,000,000,000 inhabitants, unstoppably en route to a couple of billion more.
*5 latest DNA analysis points to everyone on earth tracing their ancestry back to just 128 individuals.
*6 1G = approx 30 ft/s/s. To reach 20,000 miles/sec takes about (5280/30 x 20,000) seconds, that’s 3.5 million secs, about 1000 hours. Maybe 42 days again?
*7 earth is 923,000 light years from the edge of our Milky Way galaxy. 9,230,000 years (460,000 generations) at the speed they were travelling.
Songs and novels
$1 Incredible String Band – ‘Back in the 1960s’
$2 Pink Floyd – ‘Set the Controls to the Heart of the Sun’
$3 Dave Bowie – ‘Space Oddity’
$4 Hawkwind – ‘Silver Machine’.
$5 So said Douglas Adams, anyway. ‘A Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy’.
Space. It’s a rather big place. Maybe there are other inhabitable planets – but even if they are ‘close’ neighbours it’s going to take much much more time to reach any of them than the whole span of man’s existence on earth to date. Who knows what we will have evolved into by then?
So let’s be clear – we only have ONE practical option. ONE Planet.
Better not mess up.
Welcome page.
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