The future of humanity is a matter that requires a serious approach involving many experts. Because it is interesting and extremely important. Scientific American interviewed prominent figures in the field of science and technology, whom we also frequently write about and refer to, to find out from them what the future of humanity will be.
Does humanity have a future beyond Earth?
“I think it is a dangerous delusion to strive for mass emigration from Earth. There is nowhere in the solar system anywhere near as comfortable as the summit of Everest or the South Pole. We need to deal with world problems here. Nevertheless, I think that in the next century, there will be groups of privately funded adventurers who will populate Mars and then possibly other places in the solar system. We should certainly wish these pioneers the best in using all methods of cyber and biotechnological adaptation to an alien environment. In a few centuries they will turn into a new species: the posthuman era will begin. Traveling beyond the solar system will be the lot of posthumanity - organic or not"
- Martin Rees, British cosmologist and astrophysicist.
When and where do you think we will find extraterrestrial life?
“If Mars is teeming with microbial life, I suspect we will find it within 20 years - if it is similar enough to our life forms. If the alien lifeform is very different from what we have here on Earth, it will be difficult to detect. In addition, it is possible that any microbes left on Mars are rare, in places that a robotic lander would be hard to find. Jupiter's moon Europa and Saturn's moon Titan seem to be more suitable locations. And Titan is perhaps the most interesting place in the solar system to search for life. It is rich in organic molecules, but very cold and has no liquid water; if life on Titan exists, it will be very different from life on Earth"
Promotional video:
- Carol Cleland, Professor of Philosophy and Co-Investigator at the Center for Astrobiology at the University of Colorado at Boulder
Will we ever understand the nature of consciousness?
“Some philosophers, mystics and other foaming talkers argue that it is impossible to ever comprehend the true nature of consciousness. However, there are not many reasons for such defeatist statements, but there is every reason to believe that one day, relatively soon, science will come to a naturalized, quantitative and predictive understanding of consciousness and its place in the Universe."
- Krishtof Koch, President and CSO of the Allen Institute for Brain Science.
Will the world ever get adequate medical care?
“The global community has come a long way towards health equity in the past 25 years, but those gains have not reached the corners of the world farthest from civilization. Deep in the rainforest, where people are cut off from transport and cellular networks, death rates are high and access to health care is limited, plus the quality of health care is disgusting. The World Health Organization estimates that one billion people live their lives without ever seeing a healthcare professional due to the remoteness. Community-based health workers could narrow the gap. They could even fight epidemics like Ebola and maintain access to basic health care when hospitals are forced to close their doors. My organization, Last Mile Health,today includes more than 300 health workers in 300 localities across Liberia. But we cannot do this work alone. If the global community is serious about ensuring access to health care for all, it must invest in health workers who can reach the most remote locations."
- Raj Punjabi, co-founder and CEO of Last Mile Health and instructor at Harvard Medical School.
Understanding the Brain: Will It Change Criminal Law?
“In all likelihood, the brain is a causal machine in the sense that it moves from one state to another depending on the previous conditions. The consequences of this for criminal law are absolutely zero. First, all mammals and birds have prerequisites for self-control, which are modified in the process of reinforcement learning (reward for making the right choices), especially in a social context. Secondly, criminal law is aimed at the safety and well-being of the population. Even if we could identify prerequisites unique to serial child abusers, for example, they would simply be barred from moving freely because they are prone to relapse. If we, for example, concluded that a certain Boston priest John Jogen, who tried to seduce about 130 children, “is not to blame for having brains,so let him go home,”the result would have been lynching, no doubt. When rough justice takes its place in the criminal justice system, which is rooted in years of passing impartial laws, things get terrible very quickly."
- Patricia Churchland, professor of philosophy and neuroscience at the University of California, San Diego.
What is the chance that Homo sapiens will survive the next 500 years?
“I think our chances of survival are very good. Even the biggest threats - nuclear war or the environmental disaster that could result from climate change - are not catastrophic in the sense that they will wipe us out completely. And this bogey of ours, in which our electronic offspring will grow up and decide that they can live without us, you can get rid of him simply by turning off"
- Carlton Davis, Distinguished Professor of Physics and Astronomy at the University of New Mexico.
How close are we to averting nuclear catastrophe?
“Since 9/11 [September 11, 2001, there was a terrorist attack on the Twin Towers in New York], the United States has paid significant attention to policy issues to reduce the threat of nuclear terrorism, increasing the security of highly enriched uranium and plutonium and removing them from wherever it can. An act of nuclear terrorism could kill 100,000 people. But still, thirty years after the end of the Cold War, a much greater danger lurks in a nuclear disaster involving thousands of nuclear explosions and from several tens to hundreds of millions of deaths due to a possible nuclear confrontation between the United States and Russia.
Remembering Pearl Harbor, the United States retained its nuclear forces in the event of a possible first strike, with which the Soviet Union could try to destroy all available US forces. Today we do not expect such an attack, but each side still maintains about 1,000 intercontinental nuclear warheads on full alert. Since the flight time of a ballistic missile is only 15-30 minutes, decisions that could lead to hundreds of millions of deaths must be made within minutes. The possibility of accidental nuclear war or even hackers provoking the launch remains.
The Cold War is over, but the "Doomsday Machine", which was born from the confrontation between the United States and the USSR, is still with us - and its trigger is cocked."
- Frank von Hippel, Professor Emeritus of the School of Public and International Relations. Woodrow Wilson at Princeton University, co-founder of the Princeton Science and Global Security Program.
Is sex getting old?
“No, but having sex to conceive is likely to become much less frequent. In 20-40 years, we will be able to extract eggs and sperm from stem cells, possibly skin cells of our parents. This will allow for easy preimplantation genetic diagnosis of a large number of embryos - or easy genome modification for those who want to edit embryos, rather than choose."
- Henry Greeley, Director of the Center for Law and Biosciences at Stanford University.
Can we one day replace all the tissues of the human body through the process of engineering?
“In 1995, Joseph Vacanti and I wrote for this magazine about a breakthrough in artificial pancreas, plastic-based tissues like artificial leather and electronics that could allow blind people to see. All of this came in the form of real products or is undergoing clinical trials. Over the next several centuries, it is quite possible that every fabric could be replaced in a similar way. The creation or regeneration of tissues like those in the brain, which are extremely complex and poorly understood, will require a tremendous amount of research. However, there is hope that research in this area will proceed quickly enough and help people with brain diseases like Parkinson's and Alzheimer's disease quickly enough."
- Robert Langer, professor at the David Koch Institute at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Can We Avoid The Sixth Extinction?
“It can be slowed down and then stopped if urgent action is taken. The biggest reason for the extinction of species is the loss of habitat. That is why I emphasize that it is necessary to collect a global reserve (reserve), occupying half of the land and half of the sea, if necessary. In addition to this initiative (and advancing the science of species ecosystems to a level that is better than the current one), there is a need to discover and characterize 10 million remaining species or so; for today we have found and named only 2 million. In general, it is necessary to expand the ecology, to include in it what the living world should be like, and this, in my opinion, will become the largest initiative in science until the end of the century”
- Edward Wilson Professor Emeritus at Harvard University.
Is it possible to feed on the planet without destroying it?
"Yes. Here's what to do: reduce crop waste, household waste, and meat consumption; integrate quality grain technologies and management methods; educate consumers about the challenges faced by farmers in developed and developing countries; increase public funding for agricultural research and development and focus on promoting the socio-economic and environmental aspects of agriculture that characterize sustainable agriculture."
- Pamela Ronald, Professor Emeritus at the Genome Center and the Department of Plant Pathology at the University of California, Davis.
Are we colonizing space?
“It depends on the definition of colonization. If we mean the landing of robots, then this has already been done. If sending microbes from the Earth so that they live and grow, then there is no, unfortunately, we have not yet achieved this - except perhaps inside the Curiosity rover, where the heat source is located and which was not completely warmed up like the Viking.
If you mean sending people anywhere for a long period of time, without reproduction, this will happen in the next 50 years or so. There may even be a certain level of reproduction, after all, primates remain primates. But if the thought is to build an independent environment in which people can exist with the most modest help from Earth - colonies like the "European" colonies that were built outside Europe - then this will happen far in the future, if at all. Currently, we do not quite understand how to create a closed ecosystem that will be protected from interference caused by the influx of organisms or non-biological events (for example, Biosphere-2), and I suspect that the problem of a closed ecosystem will be much more complex.than the vast majority of supporters of space colonization think. There are a wide range of problems to be solved, such as air handling. We have not even colonized the underwater space of the Earth. And it is even more difficult to colonize space in which there is no atmosphere at all."
- Katharina Conley, planetary defense specialist at NASA.
Will we find a second Earth?
“I bet you do. We have already found out that planets near other stars are much more widespread and diverse than scientists imagined just a couple of decades ago. And we also found that the key ingredient for life on this planet - water - is abundant in space. I would say that nature has rather collected a wide range of planets, including the Earth, and we just have to look for them"
- Aki Roberge, astrophysicist researching exoplanets at NASA's Goddard Space Center.
Will we find a cure for Alzheimer's?
“I'm not sure if this will be a drug per se, but I really hope that in the next ten years there will be a successful treatment that modifies Alzheimer's disease. We have already begun preliminary trials to prevent disease even before a person shows symptoms of the disease. And we don't need to treat Alzheimer's - we just need to delay the dementia by 5-10 years. Estimates show that delaying the dire and costly stage of dementia by five years will reduce patient costs by 50%. In addition, it follows that many elderly people will be able to die dancing ballet, and not in a nursing home."
- Reisa Sperling, professor of neurology at the Harvard School of Medicine.
Can wearable technology determine our emotions?
“Emotions involve biochemical and electrical signals that reach every organ in our bodies - allowing, for example, stress to affect our physical and mental health. Wearable technology will allow us to quantify patterns in these signals over extended periods of time. Over the next ten years, wearable technology will become forecasters for our own health: they will guess your state for the next week with 80 percent accuracy, based on your recent actions. But unlike the weather, smart wearable technology can also identify patterns that we can use to reduce unwanted “storms”: getting enough sleep to reduce stress levels by 60% for the next four days, for example. In the next 20 years, wearable devices and analyzes obtained with their help,can also significantly reduce psychiatric and neurological disorders"
- Rosalind Picard, founder and director of the Affective Computing Research Group at Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Media Lab.
Will we figure out what dark matter is?
“Whether we can define what dark matter is depends on what it turns out to be. Some forms of dark matter can be detected due to the smallest interactions with ordinary matter, but otherwise they will be elusive. Others can be detected by their effect on structures like galaxies. I hope we can learn more through experimentation and observation. But I can't guarantee"
- Lisa Randall, theoretical physicist and cosmologist at Harvard University.
Can we take control of intractable brain diseases like schizophrenia or autism?
“Disorders like autism and schizophrenia remain elusive because neuroscience has not found a structural problem that can be corrected. Some believe that this is because future responses are hiding solely in biochemistry and not in neural circuits. Others argue that neuroscientists need to start thinking in terms of the overall architecture of the brain, rather than specific neuronal failures. However, when it comes to the future, I am reminded of the remark of Nobel laureate Charles Townes that a new idea is beautiful because you don't know about it."
- Michael Gazzaniga, Director of the SAGE Center for the Study of the Mind at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
Will technology eliminate the need for animal testing of drugs?
“If human organs-on-chips prove reliable and consistently rediscover the complex physiology of human organs and disease phenotypes in unrelated laboratories around the world, as early proof-of-concept studies have shown, then we will see them gradually replace the animal model. This will ultimately lead to a significant reduction in animal testing. It is important to note that these devices will also open up new approaches to drug development that are not available with today's animal models, such as personalized medicine and the development of treatments for specific genetic subpopulations using chips that use cells from specific patients."
Donald Ingber, Founding Director of the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University.
Will equality of men and women in science be achieved?
“Equality between men and women can be achieved, but we cannot just sit back and wait for that to happen. We need to "correct the numbers" by bringing in more women in science and technology. We need to improve institutions, reconsider the relationship between career and family, and show new leadership opportunities. More importantly, we need to improve people's attitudes by harnessing the creative power of gender analysis for discovery and innovation."
- Londa Schiebinger, professor of history of science at Stanford University.
Do you think we can one day predict natural disasters like earthquakes in hours or days?
“Some natural disasters are easier to foresee than others. Hurricanes appear over several days, volcanoes often prepare to erupt for several hours or days, and tornadoes arrive in a few minutes. Earthquakes are perhaps the most difficult one. What we know about the physics of earthquakes suggests that we cannot predict them in advance. We can only predict soil damage just before an earthquake, thus providing a few seconds or minutes for alarm. To leave the city, this time is not enough, but to get to a safe place - quite"
- Richard Allen, director of the Berkeley Seismological Laboratory at the University of California at Berkeley.
ILYA KHEL