Some people believe that if we stay on Earth, people will cease to exist. In an article published in June, Elon Musk warned of a cosmic inevitability: Life on Earth will disappear unless we become a multi-planetary species. There are two ways, Musk wrote: “One way is to stay on Earth forever, until an event occurs that brings the end of all living things. I'm not trying to make an apocalyptic prophecy, no, it's just that history makes us understand that the end is inevitable. The alternative is to become a civilization conquering space and a multiplanetary species, and this, you see, is correct."
Survival, coupled with fear, remains the basic instinct of humanity, which will cause it to become a multi-planetary species. And while hypothetical mass extinction events, such as an asteroid crash or nuclear war, may confront us with the fact, we have advanced technologies - or good theories on how to do such technologies - to protect the future of humanity. What then makes us think about the colonization of Mars?
Powerful solar flares
Increasingly, scientists and futurists are worried about possible solar superflares (SSBs). A typical solar flare is a perfectly normal part of our star's sunspot cycle, causing bursts of cosmic radiation. But SSE is a powerful solar flare. The star releases energy equivalent to 475 billion nuclear bombs in just a few hours or even seconds, says Scott Fleming, astronomer and archivist at MAST. Their energy is released in the form of X-rays, gamma rays, radio waves, visible light, and ultraviolet radiation.
For a long time, scientists did not believe that such a possibility deserves attention, but new discoveries changed their opinions. Over the past few years, the Kepler Space Telescope has found that distant, sun-like stars flare up quite often. Scientists began to wonder what would happen if a SWE happened on our Sun, which has spurred new research.
If a TCO occurs, the first thing to be hit is the electrical infrastructure. Cell phones, computers, cars, artificial lighting - the technologies on which our society completely depends - will cease to function, which will send the global civilization into a tailspin and into a new dark age.
Promotional video:
CERs can also affect the environment. It can destroy the remains of the ozone layer, which will damage the ecosystem and cause mass extinction. First, the warm gases will leave the atmosphere and the planet will cool down. But later, the Earth will be left defenseless against constant bombardment of ultraviolet rays, which will allow them to reach the surface and devastate it.
At the poles, where ozone holes have been growing since the 1970s, cold seas quickly absorb carbon dioxide, reducing the amount of oxygen available in the ocean and making Earth's water more acidic. This kind of change threatens phytoplankton, which is the backbone of the food chain. Its deficit will put the whole chain on the domino principle.
But the most real threat lies in the distant possibility of a second subsequent major outbreak before our ozone layer is fully recovered from the first. Without an ozone layer to protect us, ultraviolet radiation from the second SWS will cause radical DNA mutations, causing irreparable damage to fertility and altering physiological functions. Even extremophiles can disappear (although this scenario is completely unlikely).
Until now, humans have not yet observed the NNE of our Sun. Partly because they don't happen that often; partly because our civilization is too young. But unstable atoms trapped in tree rings show that mild SLEs have hit the Earth before.
Despite all these fears, scientists have not yet decided how often such catastrophic events occur. However, Kepler telescope data on the frequency of flares on other stars over the past 400,000 years has helped researchers estimate how often NERs occur in stars similar to our Sun. According to their data, the Sun issues SSV every 20 million years.
If the last CER was in 775, the wait will take a very long time. It turns out that if people like Musk are looking for a justification for colonizing another world, CER will not be the most convincing motive.
But the story doesn't end there. While a full-blown SWN will not be deployed in the near future, a weaker but destructive solar flare is likely to occur this millennium, according to a paper published in the Astrophysical Journal. “We assume that the total losses could exceed the current GDP of the world in the event of certain superflares,” the study authors write. An event like this may not put an end to our species, but it will definitely destroy our society, destroy the economy and limit access to the resources necessary for survival.
However, in order to understand the nature of NERs, astrophysicists must know exactly how they are born in stars. Without knowing the interior of our Sun, scientists cannot predict TCO earlier than a week in advance. TCO may be more risky than we think.
Other threats to Earth?
The threat of a solar superflare may not be enough to rid this world of us, but there are other apocalyptic scenarios that may be more motivating. Brian Wilcox, JPL member and space robotics technology developer and member of the NASA Planetary Defense Advisory Council (NACPD), reflects on the technical aspects of preventing asteroids and comets from hitting Earth.
“My research has shown that the asteroid problem was really not as serious as some people claim, because to a certain extent we track all large objects in the inner solar system,” Wilcox says. "It is estimated that 98% of 1-kilometer objects in the inner solar system have already found a place for themselves, and long before we found them."
As we confirm the positions and trajectories of asteroids, Wilcox says, collisions of these objects with the Earth, which we cannot prevent, become less and less likely. When scientists identify a possible asteroid threat, they know that there is a seven-minute window before it hits Earth. In the past, scientists assumed that all asteroids had an equal chance of colliding. "Either you get in or you don't," adds Wilcox. But after many observations, we have obtained quantitative confirmation that the vast majority of asteroids traveling through the inner solar system are not going to collide with the Earth. “Long-period comets that come from behind Neptune are still cause for concern, because we can think for a long time, but they are a hundred times less dangerous,than the asteroids of the inner solar system,”he says. There seems to be nothing to worry about.
If a celestial object ends up on a collision path with the Earth, we can stop it in several ways. This year, NASA began developing DART, a spacecraft designed to launch a huge object into an asteroid in order to deflect it off course. Lasers could do something similar.
Wilcox himself doesn't care about asteroids. Supervolcanoes, however, are a completely different story. They are much, much more dangerous than asteroids.
A supervolcano can produce devastating effects in just one eruption. It can throw enough dust and other particles into the atmosphere to block the light from the sun, suspend photosynthesis, and lead to mass starvation. And to predict when the supervolcano will erupt, we have no way yet.
We know that Yellowstone erupts every 620,000 years or so, but as with the NER, human civilization has not yet existed long enough to witness such an event. The last known supervolcano erupted 75,000 years ago in Indonesia and evidence shows that it ejected nearly 100 billion dump trucks of molten material into the atmosphere.
But Wilcox believes that none of these examples provide sufficient motivation to leave Earth. In fact, even a pandemic does not justify the creation of a colony on another planet like Mars.
A flight to Mars, he says, won't keep our species as good as settling on many asteroids. “If a pandemic were our main problem, the fastest way to defend ourselves would be to create asteroid settlements on terraformed asteroids that could provide habitat for up to 7,000 people,” Wilcox explained. "We would have many colonies on asteroids instead of just one Mars."
Asteroids are not only easier and cheaper to master than Mars; they are safer in terms of distance. A flight from Earth to Mars takes from several months to several years. It will take even longer to get to the asteroid belt, or any near-Earth asteroid that we might inhabit in the future. This is longer than the incubation period of any disease lasts - by the time the astronauts arrive at their new home, the most dangerous diseases have already done their job. “The hope is that medicine is progressing enough so that we can develop tests and prevent the sending of infected people to space colonies,” Wilcox says. You will need to make sure that no one takes a dangerous disease with them.
If we have to get off Earth, the Moon could be a kind of viable option. We can mine rocket fuel on its surface, and it won't take long to get there. Tubes made of ancient lava flows offer sheltered places for humans to build colonies that we could shield from solar radiation.
So Mars is our best bet?
If we are concerned about NERs, Mars initially appears to be a promising option for colonization. The red planet is about twice as far from the Sun as the Earth, so less solar radiation will reach its surface.
In fact, Mars would be much more dangerous to humans in the event of an SSV. Mars has no magnetosphere, and its atmosphere was blown away by a solar flare 4 billion years ago. In the case of SSV, on Earth we would at least be protected by the atmosphere, our "bulletproof vest" from radiation; on Mars, we would be naked and vulnerable.
Besides, a trip to Mars would be dangerous anyway. There should be better alternatives, Wilcox said. “If humanity is going to live and work in space, we need to learn how to live and work in space,” he says. One good place to start is literally outside the door. "Before going to Mars, you can practice on the moon." We must test the technology for colonizing Mars before sending astronauts one way, putting their lives at risk.
So, perhaps Mars is hiding from us new knowledge and opportunities to satisfy our cosmic ambitions. But to survive, perhaps we should stick to our roots.