UFO'S of UAP'S, ASTRONOMIE, RUIMTEVAART, ARCHEOLOGIE, OUDHEIDKUNDE, SF-SNUFJES EN ANDERE ESOTERISCHE WETENSCHAPPEN

When you have more money than God, what’s next? What could the man who has everything possibly want? Well, transforming humanity into a space-faring civilization, and the immortality that comes with it, seems a likely bet and that looks like the direction many of these billionaires want to go. Amazon founder and Lex Luthor doppelganger Jeff Bezos recently spoke at a members-only event at New York’s Yale Club about his space colonization ambitions with his company Blue Origin. At the event, Bezos described his vision for the future which, according to him, would see one trillion humans living in space, a society of “thousands of Mozarts and Einsteins,” and an Earth whose natural beauty and environment has been preserved by moving heavy industries off-world.

According to Business Insider, who transcribed the speech, Bezos said:

“The solar system can support a trillion humans, and then we’d have 1,000 Mozarts, and 1,000 Einsteins. Think how incredible and dynamic that civilization will be.

But if we’re going to have that, we do have to go out into the solar system. You have to capture more of the sun’s output, and we have to use all of the resources that are out in space, in terms of minerals and not just energy. And that’s very doable, but we have to get started.”

The alternative to going to space, according to Bezos, is bleak. Citing compounding energy use, he says a future locked on earth would be one of “population control and energy rationing,” and that’s not the future he wants for his grandchildren’s grandchildren.

NASA concept for a lunar base, which would construct large ships and space stations

Unlike Elon Musk, who is also deep into the new billionaire space race, Bezos doesn’t believe we should colonize other planets. Instead, he says we will build giant “O’Neil-style” cylindrical space colonies:

[T]he space colonies we’ll build will have many advantages. The primary one is that they’ll be close to Earth. The transit time and the amount of energy required to move between planets is so high. But if you have giant space colonies that are energetically close and, in terms of travel time close to Earth, then people will be able to come and go. Very few people are going to want to leave this planet permanently — it’s just too amazing.

On the matter of what happens to the Earth, Bezos says that the goal of building a space-faring civilization is to protect it. Locked down here we have no choice but to exploit all of the finite resources, but in space that won’t matter. He says:

“Ultimately what will happen, is this planet will be zoned residential and light industry. We’ll have universities here and so on, but we won’t do heavy industry here. Why would we? This is the gem of the solar system. Why would we do heavy industry here? It’s nonsense.”

Jeff Bezos says he now believes Blue Origin, his private aerospace company, is the most important work he will ever do. To fund this important work, Bezos reportedly liquidates $1 billion worth of Amazon stock every year. The company is focused on building a low-cost, reusable launch vehicle, which Bezos believes is the key to extending our reach to the stars. He says:

“The fact of the matter is we don’t have forever, and the first step — I don’t know all future steps — but I know one of them is we need to build a low-cost, highly operable, reusable launch vehicle. No matter which path you take, it has to go through that gate.”

Artist’s conception of the inside of an O’Neil space cylinder.

Now, I’m feeling a little bit confused. On one hand, Jeff Bezos is Lex Luthor. On the other hand, he’s right. If we could sure that this future, no matter who gets to have their statue built, is the one that’s coming, I think we’d all sleep a little easier and worry a little less. There are all sorts of problems with Jeff Bezos and Amazon. There are all sorts of problems with everybody. But there is something singularly beautiful about dreaming of the stars. To quote astronaut David Scott as he was standing on the surface of the Moon:

“As I stand out here in the wonders of the unknown at Hadley, I sort of realize there’s a fundamental truth to our nature, Man must explore . . . and this is exploration at its greatest.

For when I look at the Moon I do not see a hostile, empty world. I see the radiant body where man has taken his first steps into a frontier that will never end.”

In the 1988 science fiction film Alien Nation, a group of alien immigrants arrives on Earth and attempts to assimilate into society beginning with a “colony” in Los Angeles. Set in 1991, it explores many of the common themes prevalent in such films, which include xenophobia, extraterrestrial invasion, and alien life in general.

The aliens in the film, which are called the Tenctonese or, informally, the “Newcomers,” are for the most part very much like humans in appearance, apart from both sexes having bald heads that feature exotic patterns. Despite their similar appearance, they possess a number of physiological differences; namely, contact with salt water is deadly for the Newcomers.

Apart from this primary difference, the Newcomers in Alien Nation are more or less human-like (as are most aliens in science fiction, if they aren’t depicted in the other tired “octopoidal” trope). But if and when we eventually find intelligent life elsewhere in the universe, how much like us will it really be? Would aliens enjoy the same sorts of things humans do–such as food, arts, and entertainment–and if not, how would they differ?

As far as having an appreciation for the arts, some have argued that aliens would absolutely be like us in that respect. Writing for Space.com in 2010, Clara Moskowitz noted that, “Art may attract aliens more than academics because any extraterrestrial civilization that we are able to get in touch with is likely to be much older than us and more technically advanced.” Moskowitz, reporting on the SETIcon Conference on the search for extraterrestrial intelligence held that year, noted that experts in attendance were optimistic about ET’s interest in the cultured side of human existence.

Part of this has to do with the fact that aliens likely wouldn’t be as interested in learning about math and science from us. Especially if they were able to travel to our planet from elsewhere in the cosmos since this would require more advanced knowledge of physics than we already possess. “However,” Clara wrote, “our art and music is singularly human, and could likely be fascinating to an alien species.”

While soaking in their fill of Earthly culture, aliens would no doubt be inclined to try our culinary offerings, too. However, aliens might want to take in more than just their fill of what Earth has to offer to interstellar diners, according to social scientist and chef Christy Spackman at ASU’s School for the Future of Innovation in Society. Spackman (much like this author) began to think about the common stereotypes about aliens that emerge in common sci-fi depictions of them. This led her to consider what a “sensory meal” shared with aliens might be like if they were to visit Earth; among the things we might have to offer them include “feasts of light,” and how it interacts with the eyes (that is, if the aliens in question have ocular organs like ours). Also on the list were olfactory feasts (again, as with before, that’s if the aliens have noses, or something akin to one that assists in detecting aromas), and a host of other things.

“It calls for generosity of spirit,” Spackman said of her sensory feasts, “both in those who are producing and for those who are consuming, and a willingness to say, ‘This will never be perfect, so we can meet at the good enough’.”

Also, if aliens are really anything like us, after partaking in a feast, they may need to pencil in a bit of time for a nap afterward. Then again, one popular theory about our inability to find aliens already involves the notion that it’s because they may be hibernating, in which case going back to sleep may not be quite so appealing. However, part of the rationale for this theory involves alien life that has graduated beyond the stage of biology; that is, aliens who have shed their natural state in order to inhabit artificial or synthetic forms, which are hypothetically capable of sustaining themselves in harsh environments where biology simply could not thrive.

“Having essentially uploaded their minds onto powerful computers, the civilizations choosing to do this could enhance their intellectual capacities or inhabit some of the harshest environments in the universe with ease,” wrote Robert Hart in an ASU collaboration with Slate in 2017. The idea is that such aliens might estivate–that is, spend a particularly hot period in a state of near or complete dormancy–awaiting a period in the future where the universe has cooled to a point that they may operate more efficiently (entropically speaking, of course).

If we’re ever to know the full extent to which aliens may end up being like us, they will probably need to have something else in common with humans: just like we search for other forms of life, they will likely have to be searching for us. Of course, while we continue to look for intelligent life on other worlds, it remains to be shown whether or not we truly have much of it on this world… perhaps with time, and a little luck, aliens will eventually find us and can shed some light on that age-old earthly question, too.

{ https://mysteriousuniverse.org/ }