Is there life in outer space? Maybe, so let’s not annoy it
After already earning big bucks at the Chinese box office, The Wandering Earth is looking like the blockbuster to beat in 2019. In the megabudget sci-fi, the sun is dying and Earth needs to shift to a new galaxy to survive — but efforts to do so put the planet on a collision course with Jupiter. Will the world be saved, or are we headed for cosmic catastrophe? The appetite for daring space adventures among Chinese cinemagoers has been steadily growing over the years, but it has arguably hit a peak since China’s Chang’e 4 mission successfully managed to sprout cotton seeds on the far side of the moon.
The Wandering Earth is set in the distant future, but with global issues such as climate change and rising sea levels sending a chill down the spine, more people are now looking to the skies and asking whether humankind could one day spread to Mars and Venus, our closest neighbors, or another planet in the solar system.
Not to be mawkish, but if so, my first concern would be whether we’d turn out to be as destructive as a species there as we’ve been on Earth.
Just look at the amount of “space junk” we’ve already produced in less than 70 years of space travel — more than 500,000 pieces of orbital debris, according to NASA. And that’s not including the many probes and rovers we’ve sent to other planets to unlock the mysteries of the solar system.
David Grinspoon, astrobiologist and senior scientist at the Planetary Science Institute in the United States, is a little more optimistic than me about our forays into the “final frontier”.
In a talk at Duke Kunshan University last month, he described the Chang’e 4 mission as a “baby step” toward humans being able to survive on other worlds, explaining that if we want to go to other planets to live, not just to visit, “we’ll have to learn how to build self-sustaining, ecological habitats”.
In other words, we’d need to replicate the favorable conditions we have (for now) on Earth. And understanding how to do that could actually make us better at protecting the environment here, Grinspoon suggests.
But isn’t letting Earth life-forms loose on a mysterious planet risky?
The seeds grown on the moon died when the experiment was ended, and they will now decompose in enclosed canisters, according to China’s national space agency. But Grinspoon, a NASA adviser, said there is already discussion in some quarters about carrying out similar tests on Mars.
“Chances are the same thing would happen (on Mars); the seeds would die, the radiation would kill them and nothing would happen,” he said. “But … we can’t be 100 percent sure that they wouldn’t go on and survive.”
When it comes to space, us Earthlings are unlikely to stop wandering anytime soon. But perhaps we should try to tread lightly. Going by the movies I’ve seen, if there is life on Mars, it’s probably best we don’t annoy it.