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« Phil's Baggage | Main | The New American Courthouse » May 1, 2008Life, AbundantlyNick Bostrom, Director of the Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford University mulls the implications of finding - or not finding - life on Mars, and theorizes in great detail why if we find even the lowest of life forms there it suggests that it will soon (in evolutionary terms) be lights-out for the human race. In a nutshell, Bostrom's argument is this: Given the sheer number of solar systems and planets in the universe, the existence of life on another planet so close to our own would suggest that the there is life on many planets. Because we haven't found any evidence of life elsewhere in the galaxy or universe, it suggests that, despite hundreds of billions of years, life has not evolved anywhere to the point of being able to move out from its home planet into space. That suggests that there is some "great filter" in the evolutionary process for all species that prevents any species from evolving to the point that it can colonize the galaxy or the universe. The existence of life on Mars would suggest that, on our evolutionary timeline, our "great filter" is ahead of us, not behind us. Bostrom theorizes that this filter is likely the development of some technology which leads to the destruction of the species before it can move out from its home planet into space. Thus, life on Mars = we're doomed to destroy ourselves, and soon, before our rockets and technology are advanced enough to colonize space. It's a complex argument built on numerous assumptions, and an intriguing read, but Bostrom forgot one alternate possibility. If you believe the alternate possibility, then bacterial life on Mars - or intelligent, technologically advanced life on the Planet Zeebo in the 43rd solar system past Alpha Centauri - doesn't portend doom for humanity at all. Posted in Faith & Culture
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