Since we were all children, we’ve seen sci-fi movies where astronauts were flying boundlessly across space. What could possibly hinder such a scenario in real life when humans already went to the Moon over half a century ago? Didn’t technology and science evolve tremendously since that huge event? Of course they did, but we still need something else.
In the era of Artificial Intelligence and supercomputers, it’s at least peculiar not to be able to go to another planet. Despite the fact that distances are enormous between planets, we have high hopes that astronomers will reach our neighboring planet Mars after the Artemis program. While the Moon is located at 384,400 km away from Earth, we would need to travel at least 54.6 million kilometers for arriving at the Red Planet. But why didn’t it happen already for humanity to go there? Let’s find out:
Not investing enough in space exploration
Let’s consider, for instance, how NASA handles things in this area. The world’s most renowned space agency has the following budget for the fiscal year 2020: $22.6 billion. It surely means a lot, but it only represents 0.48% of the $4.7 trillion the USA wants to spend in the fiscal year. This is surely way too little considering that successful space exploration could mean the survival of the human race for the far future. Whether we like to admit it or not, Earth’s resources are limited, and finding ourselves another home among the trillions of trillions of other planets out there should be a priority.
Education should be improved
Humans are selfish by nature, which means that they’ll care more about the present and their own comfort than they’ll ever care about the future. Let’s say it plainly: nobody cares what will happen after one hundred, one thousand, or a million years. Nobody seems to care about what we will leave for our descendants, and too many people don’t hesitate to pollute the environment in various ways. We can’t overlook these sad aspects, and people should be educated in a better way if they truly want to care about their own species. The human race also includes the future, which means that we should all do our best to make the world a better place.
Be careful what you wish for!
Many of us have been dreaming of encountering highly-advanced alien civilizations that can grant our wishes, tell us the secrets of the Universe, and shake hands with us. But life forms from other planets can also be very hostile for various reasons: they could want to enslave us, steal some element from us that they can use in much more productive ways, or be willing to find out the secret of the craps game.
The renowned astrophysicist Neil DeGrasse Tyson proposed the idea that highly-advanced alien civilization might consider us humans way too insignificant and uninteresting. He defended his claim by making a comparison between our DNA and the one of chimpanzees. The difference is only one percent, and it’s obvious that (most) humans are vastly superior in intellect to chimpanzees. But let’s imagine, DeGrasse Tyson says, that the DNA of an alien would be one percent more developed than the human one. That could mean that the smartest man on Earth is nothing for such kind of aliens. The American scientists even made the following statement:
You don’t walk by the worm on the street and say, ‘Gee, I wonder what he’s thinking.’ No, you step on the worm,
Whether we like it or not, he says that that’s how aliens could see us, humans.
Therefore, there’s one serious chance that a good part of astronomers are afraid of encountering alien civilizations. However, we cannot blame them for that.
The Universe could be teeming with life, or we could be the only intelligent species living in it. Hopefully, we’ll find an irrefutable answer someday.
