The past few weeks have been sort of a perfect storm for those of us interested in the possibilities for interstellar space travel, for habitable earth-like worlds beyond our solar system, and the possibilities to discover other intelligent life forms out there.
Beyond the successes of SpaceX's efforts in making humanity a multi-planet species, successfully recovering a number of booster stages to further their plans to colonize Mars, and the recent Breakthrough Starshot proposal to use laser beaming to shoot a light sail propelled spacecraft to a nearby star at up to 20% of light speed, as well as the verification of propellantless thrust produced by the so called "impossible" EM Drive being tested at NASA Eagleworks lab. There has been a trifecta of discoveries of what awaits us out there that should not just have us excited for the future, but at the same time cautious and making plans and preparations to protect this pale blue dot.
Not environmentalism, no, there are plenty of people screeching about those issues. I am talking about protecting what we have from what may be waiting for us out there. If this sounds fraught, creepy, even paranoid, I hope this has gotten your attention, because it needs to be considered, and humanity needs to grow up and start taking space much more seriously than the afterthought or entertainment that they currently treat it as. Yes, there is near infinite potential for wonder and growth of humanity into the universe. At the same time, there is also a nearly similar level of risk, and not just for the individuals putting their lives on the line in space, testing prototypical vessels and exploring new highly dangerous environments.
Let us review the discoveries:
Proxima Centauri b
We now have confirmed evidence that there is a terrestrial (i.e. earth-like) world orbiting the closest star to our Sun, the small red dwarf of Proxima. At 1.3 to possibly 1.6 Earth masses, its slightly larger than our planet, but resides firmly within the habitable zone of its star, so it is certain that if there is an atmosphere and water present, that it is liquid, and thus holds great potential for the evolution of life there. This also provides us an excellent stepping stone, a place to establish a human colony beyond our solar system at some point in the future, to make us not just a multi-planet species, but a truly interstellar species, to ensure our survival as a species no matter what might befall our home star system. Using current nuclear propulsion technologies, humanity could travel to Proxima in a trip of around 40 to as much as 80 years. So that is currently doable with sufficient dedication. That is an inherently good thing.
We have not observed any radio signals, to date, from Proxima, nor any coherent light sources, so it is likely not to be inhabited by any intelligent life at our present level of development, although it is possible that there is are more primitive intelligent life forms there, even something as close as 19th century technology. There may be post-radio advanced aliens there as well, who do not communicate by photon-base systems as we do. Expecting aliens to use the same technologies that we do at this point in time is a bit naive given what a short period of time we've actually used radio and light for communications, versus how old the universe is, and how many millions of years apart in development we likely are with other intelligent life forms, if they are not extinct. Which brings us to the next discovery.
SETI Signal Candidate
The star HD164595 in the constellation Hercules has been observed by a team of Russian radio astronomers to be emitting signals that are very possibly artificial. This star is about 95 light years away, putting it safely far enough away that we couldn't reach it at our current state of development, and at the same time, if the civilization that may be there is also at a similar level of development, they couldn't reach US in a similarly tolerable time frame. However that may change.
The EM Drive that NASA Eagleworks lab has been testing, along with other propulsion test articles like Dr. Jim Woodward's Mach Effect Thruster technology, have both provided positive results of thrust being produced without any propellant being expended, only electricity. This sort of "impulse" drive, that requires no fuel, signals a revolutionary change in the equations of space flight that we consider using. If we don't have to worry about carrying thousands of tons of fuel with us, that limit how far and how fast we can go in a given time frame, then traveling under constant thrust, as long as there is electricity provided by on board generators, not only makes it far easier to get around our own solar system much more quickly and cheaply, but it makes the possibility of traveling to Proxima in a much shorter time span totally feasible, possibly as little as 6 or 7 years travel time. Not much longer than many of the longer voyages of discovery in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. This makes colonizing Proxima entirely feasible in the next few decades after Mars is colonized.
There is even more to do with these drive technologies: warping space time. There are a couple different theories advanced to explain how these propellant-less thrusters work, but they all agree that not only do they eliminate the need for propellant, they ALSO enable the warping of space-time to even go faster than light. I am more familiar with Woodward's Mach Effect Theory. The equation he developed is simply a derivation of General Relativity and Mach's Principle, while exploiting the ADM model of the electron, and has two terms in the equation, one that describes the impulse effect, and the other, which only becomes significant at higher power densities, which can be used both to enable warp drive propulsion, like in Star Trek, AND potentially wormhole propulsion, like in the movie and tv show Stargate. These possibilities are astounding, and would not just revolutionize the equations of space flight, they would literally open up the entire universe to human exploration. It makes traveling to HD164595 a feasible option, as well as to worlds beyond, including many of those discovered by the Kepler planet hunter telescope, some of which are thousands of light years away.
The problem of course is that if we successfully develop this technology, this ALSO means that other intelligent species can ALSO develop this technology, and thus they become a huge opportunity as well as a threat to our entire species and civilization. Warp and wormhole technology turn the near infinite vastness of space into merely a very big ocean, upon which the space navies of many species may ply, and exert their will upon other species, with force. This sounds fantastical, and you probably wonder, as Fermi did, why they aren't here yet. These are good questions that should be studied in far greater depth than they already are.
Tabby's Star
The biggest discovery, as far as the continued future existence of our species is concerned, is a distant star that is affectionately being called Tabby's Star. KIC 8462852, as it is officially known, has been shown to have undergone many periodic dimmings over the past several years, and when compared against star catalogs going back over a century, the overall brightness has dimmed by 20% in addition to those periodic dips. In the last four years alone, brightness has dropped by 3%, with periodic dips of as much as 20% in addition to that. Astronomers have ruled out any possible known natural phenomenon that could be causing this dimming behavior. The star is a stable, main sequence star with a perfectly normal spectrum. There is no large IR signature around it indicating a large asteroidal or cometary halo. The most likely explanation now is that it is being dimmed by the construction by some alien race of massive mega-structures in orbit around the star, bigger in area than any planets, able to block out large areas of the starlight as they pass between us and their star. Freeman Dyson proposed such structures, now called "Dyson Swarms". The existence of such engineering makes this species what would be called a "Kardashev Type 2 civilization", in that it has developed to harness the entire output of its home star, which it will achieve in the next few centuries if it fully envelops Tabby's Star and blots out its light entirely.
Humanity is considered to be a Kardashev Type 0.05 to 0.5, in that we haven't harnessed all the resources of our home-world yet, and haven't taken any serious steps into developing space within our solar system.
More chilling is the recent paper by a professor at MIT, who has proposed that these mega-structures are rings of giant mirrors, being used by this alien species to shoot massive beams of light out into space, to power interstellar sail craft, to send ships to many nearby star systems as the species starts expanding into other star systems at an appreciable percentage of light speed.
Thus, the facts that this species is so much more advanced and powerful than we are, and they are at least as expansionist, if not more so, than we are, bodes ill for us should we encounter them. Lets call them the Tabbians for now. Think back to our own past, as more advanced, expansionist cultures have met less advanced, less expansionist cultures. The one we Americans should be most familiar with is of course the English and Spanish encounters with the Native peoples of North and South America. Beyond that 90% were wiped out from disease within the first several decades, lacking any immunity to illnesses that never existed on these continents, those that remained wound up in a no-win guerilla conflict of genocide and ethnic cleansing, culminating in the few tribes that survived the onslaught constrained to a few reservations on the worst quality land left. Their cultures destroyed, often suppressed by efforts at forced assimilation into European culture, many of the survivors became fatalistic, even suicidal, depressed, and substance abusive as well as poverty stricken.
This is what awaits our species, at a bare minimum, should we encounter the Tabbians in our future before we have attained a similar level of development. If we refuse to expand, and simply wait here for them to arrive, unprepared and without fallback options, we will most likely be wiped out if not simply be assimilated, our many unique and valuable cultures destroyed. If, instead, we dedicate our species to developing, technologically, to expand aggressively into space, colonizing Mars, Proxima, and other nearby worlds, ourselves becoming a Kardashev Type 2 civilization here at home, we stand a chance of meeting the Tabbians in a more or less comparative level of development, and thus the chance for our survival, and reaching a detente of mutual respect and coexistence, is a possibility.
This sort of strategy cannot be pursued as a frivolity or hobby. The most advanced nations in the world spend less than 0.1% of their annual national government budgets on space exploration. None treat seriously the possibility of aliens as a military threat that we should be prepared for, wingnut theories about Area 51 notwithstanding. President Eisenhower intentionally turned the space program in the US over to a civilian agency out of concern about the military-industrial complex. None even treat manned space exploration seriously, having squandered the leap to the Moon of over 40 years ago, the US languished in Low Earth Orbit with an atrophied shuttle program for decades, doing nothing but going around in circles. Efforts have been made to develop next generation launch vehicles, typically to failure, culminating in our abandonment of the Shuttle and any pretense of being able to put our own people into orbit to the International Space Station, relying on a strategic rival, Russia, to get our people there, like hitchhikers begging for a ride.
It is now left to private industry, like SpaceX, Virgin Galactic, ULA, and other enterprises, to restore Americans to manned space capability. SpaceX is dedicated to colonizing Mars, whether or not the government is involved. Elon Musk at least has a vision for humanity that goes beyond the narrow parochial partisan interests of the Earth-bound schoolyard bullies.
We must do far more. There are groups preparing to mine the asteroids, but they are still on a budget. The level of public support for funding space is anemic and pathetic. "Don't spend that money in space when we have problems here on Earth," they say myopically, not even realizing that that money IS spent here on Earth, developing new technologies and sciences, employing many millions with high paying tech jobs that generate tax revenue, raise standards of living, and are part of the core of our nations greatness. It is spending "in space" that keeps millions from becoming welfare dependents, that makes our nation greater than any other.
Each of the four major factions on the planet should dedicate at least 1% of their GDP to space development and exploration. The US (and its anglosphere allies), Europe, Russia, and China, each should seek to develop industrial infrastructure in space, exploiting resources there, colonization, and funding the construction of large space exploration and defense vessels and facilities out in the solar system, with the goal of at least launching a mission to, if not reaching, Proxima Centauri b, by the 100 year anniversary of the first lunar landing.
We can no longer afford to treat space as a frivolity. Its potential is the key to the survival and thriving of our species in the future, but also the source of the greatest risk to our continued existence. We cannot continue to hide here in the cradle, like infants, any longer. The universe beckons us, it is time to grow up, and face the universe like adults, dedicated to the cause, and firm in our resolve to succeed.