Have you ever thought of visiting other planets? Well, it seems to be our only hope of staying alive in the future. This concept has been fantasized before in science-fiction in many novels and movies, but now the idea could be more possible than we realize, and maybe even necessary as the Earth’s resources are running out and our extinction is closer than we realize.Back in 2001, Stephen Hawking, a brilliant theoretical physicist, claimed that “We must also continue to go into space for the future of humanity”, and “I don’t think we will survive another 1000 years without escaping beyond our fragile planet”, so why shouldn’t we listen to him and prepare for our future among the distant stars.
Other scientists speculate that there is the possibility of cataclysmic-sized events which will rock the planet and wipe out most, if not all, life on Earth. Our planet has gone through five massive extinctions since the dawn of life, but the sixth is predicted to be dangerously close, possibly in the upcoming centuries. The cause of this ‘biological annihilation’, as stated in a study of the massive loss of wildlife by the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, may be due to the ever-increasing amount of carbon dioxide emissions we produce and humans killing off entire species every year. The only way for us to survive these possible, but very real, extinctions that may happen soon is to evacuate this planet as soon as technology allows us to, which may take a while as getting us to the nearest habitable planet is not an easy task by any means.The way things are going, this planet will run out of resources within the next 50 years. Over the past 3 decades we have eradicated around one-third of our environment, as taken from scientific research all over the globe. Even now in our current day and age, around 1 billion people lack access to clean water, which is surprising, so imagine the amount of people who will not be able to sustain themselves with the shortening amount of clean water in the immediate future.
That number will only continue to grow as time passes. By colonizing other planets, we could extract scarce resources, for example freshwater or metal ores, and could have enough space to accommodate the growing population since the Earth is also running out of easily settled land areas. Some people believe that no matter how severe the damage we are causing to the Earth, it will still be more habitable than any other planets. There is good reason for this, as Earth is the only known planet to sustain life and will be very hospitable compared to planets such as Venus with a boiling, thick, and acidic atmosphere and Mars having very little atmospheric pressure compared to our Earth. However, as stated earlier, our resources will eventually run out, and our need to extract these resources by colonization exceeds the need to stay here and try fixing our dying planet, and by colonization we should also unite as a race and work together to help grow our civilization.
Would it be any fun if humans just stayed on Earth the whole time? Not really. We would like to see what its like living on the other planets, and each celestial body is extraordinarily unique. Mars contains seas of ice under its surface, which was believed to once be oceans of water. Titan, one of Saturn’s 62 moons, is claimed to have entire lakes of liquid methane.
These are very strange phenomena, only occurring in our imaginations but do exist. The point is that there is so much out there to explore, and this will not be possible without space exploration and colonization. Our scientists will be able to observe and perform research on these planets Through this we could understand more about our universe and enables the long-term survival of our human race. Earth is the only home we have lived in, but by traveling to these planets we can fill in the gaps of our knowledge about the universe. Just imagine what a spectacle the day and night sky might beThe world we know, and love, is now dying thanks to us.
At the rate we are damaging the natural environment, it is safe to say life on Earth will eventually perish by our own fault. Extinction-level events will wipe us out soon. Our resources will diminish until none are left. The only road to survival for us is to evacuate the Earth in search of another planet to colonize, and to get a better view of the night sky with all the majestic stars.
