You could live on new planets (in 500 years)

DNA editing means humans could live on new planets within 500 years, a genetic engineering expert who has worked with Nasa has suggested.

Chris Mason, professor of physiology and biophysics at Weill Cornell Medical College in New York, argued that technological advances would one day allow humans to engineer their bodies to survive extraterrestrial conditions.

The professor outlined a detailed plan for how the human race could settle on potentially hundreds of exoplanets when Earth is no longer able to sustain life.

The sun’s gradual increase in size and brightness means that within the next five billion years, Earth will become uninhabitable.

But in researching his new book, The Next 500 Years: Engineering Life to Reach New Worlds, Prof Mason said he discovered the increasing luminescence of the sun will make the planet intolerable for humans within the next billion years. “And so this means we can’t stay here forever, as wonderful as it is. At some point we would have to go,” he told an event hosted by New Scientist magazine.

He argued that genetic engineering was a “duty we have not only to ourselves, but to all creatures” to ensure the survival of life.

The geneticist, who previously worked on a Nasa study of identical twin astronauts Scott and Mark Kelly, said research into the impact of space travel on DNA had provided valuable insight into how to protect humans for future life away from Earth.

He outlined how genetic engineering could allow humans to overcome the challenges settling on another planet posed, for instance allowing humans to produce their own amino acids or nutrients.

Prof Mason said his multistage proposal included plans for a “generation ship”, where people live and die in the same spacecraft on their way towards a new world, by the year 2500.