Thoughts for a starry night EARTHFUTURE
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GUY DAUNCEY
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ne of the glorious things about offspring would one day travel to the being away from the city is the moon would also have been mindchance to gaze at the stars, and won- boggling. der. The universe is large, but how Earth will still exist 10 million years large? If Earth were the size of a pea, in the future. I’m willing to stick my Sirius, the closest major star, would neck out and say that humans will exist be 21,000 miles away. That’s an awful too, if we can get through this rather lot of space. tricky phase of our cultural evolution. Since the distances are so vast, Our bodies will be just as they are we measure them in light years, the today, since we are no longer dying off distance light travels in a year. That’s before we breed in large enough numnine trillion kilometres, or 343 bil- bers, on a persistent enough basis, for lion marathons, if you were thinking evolution to occur. But our consciousness, our science and our spiritual of running it. awareness will be so far advanced that Sirius is 2,950 billion marathons away. If the running gets tiring, you we can’t begin to conceive what that future might offer, any more than a might want to hide inside a flashlight fifth century Celt in Ireland could have and travel with the beam as it rushes conceived of surfing the Internet. through space. It would take you 8.6 But first we have to get through years to get there, travelling at just over a billion kilometres an hour, our present planetary crisis. It is only 16,000 times faster than Voyager, 40 years since we first saw our planet from space and felt our consciousness Earth’s fastest spaceship. shift to a global Travelling at identity. We are the speed of light, you’d be subject The staff at the Hubble space the first generato “time dilation,” telescope reckons there are tion in history that has started whereby time slows down as you some 125 billion galaxies in to think and act speed up, so a five- the universe. In each galaxy, globally, rather than locally or hour trip would take just two min- there could be millions of nationally. utes in personal As soon as we civilizations. time. You could work together as travel to Sirius one planet, we will in 20 days, spend a week there, and be able to solve our various problems return in 20 days. Back on Earth, life – global warming, dying oceans, forest would have advanced by 17 years, so destruction and warfare – and open it might be a good way to pass a long the doors to the next stage of our evolution. Our generation’s task is to solve jail sentence. these problems so that future generaThat’s just one star. What about the rest of the Milky Way galaxy? Astron- tions will be able once more to dream omers reckon it contains between 100 of incredible things. billion and 400 billion stars. We really are at a huge civilizaNow for the big question. Is there tional crossroads. If we succeed, the future will be ours in which to dance. anyone out there? After making And how can we best solve our proballowance for all factors, astronomers reckon that the conditions for civili- lems? By focusing our attention on zations to exist in our galaxy are pres- the vision of success, not on the fear ent on millions of planets. of failure. We need to know, deep And that’s just our galaxy. The staff down, that we can do this. at the Hubble space telescope reckons We’ve come a long way; there’s no there are some 125 billion galaxies need to hesitate now. in the universe. In each galaxy, there Guy Dauncey is author of Earthfuture: Stories From a Sustainable could be millions of civilizations. World (New Society Publishers) and So even if you found a way to zip other titles. He lives in Victoria. around using wormholes, as Jodie Foster did in Carl Sagan’s movie Con- (www.earthfuture.com) tact, you might find yourself think- Correction ing, “So many planets, so little time!” We apologize for printing the incorrect version Guy Dauncey’s column Earthfuture in our That there are so many galaxies with of September 2006 edition: the potential for so many civilizations 1) “The projects still have to go through the in so much space is mind-boggling. Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency But now think back to a dark and ...” Correction: “The projects still have to go starry night 10 million years ago through environmental assessment ...” 2) “... they’ll be allowed to produce 92 more times when our ancestors were primates pollution than the gas-fired Sumas 2 project ...” in the forests of Africa gazing at the Correction: “... they will produce far, far more air pollution than the gas-fired Sumas 2 project ...” moon. For them to imagine that their OCTOBER 2006
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