[Discussion] Interstellar

[Anduril]

I was just wondering this, but it took us around 200,000 years to understand earth in its entirety. We were only able to map the world and reach its deepest secrets after such a long time. And even today we are not aware of certain places on earth. So I was wondering if the time comes that we will have to say goodbye to this planet and we find a larger planet that can sustain life. Then how long will it take for us to be able to understand that new environment? And what number of people needs to move to this planet to make sure that we succeed over there?

Also what do you think should be the criteria of selecting the people who will go to this new planet? Will it be IQ? or health? or race? or relegion? or money?

I thought a discussion on such a topic would be rather interesting.

Also the probability of us successfully being able to live and grow on a new planet is close to zero. Just like the probability of intelligent life developing was pure dumb luck. What do you think?

 

[Transcendence]

For the first point, it would likely take less time. Majority of our understanding of the Earth has come in the last 100 years or so given that the industrial revolution took off and basically never stopped. So you can't really use how long it took in the first place as a basis for how long it would take to understand another planet. We're more intelligent now than we have ever been. Millions upon millions of years of small scale micro evolution from our common ape ancestor has lead to us as a species. We're still evolving (example; some people's immunities to certain diseases like malaria is evolution for that person), but the intelligence portion of our evolution has been solidified.

To continue on the point of understanding said planet, you have to take into account that any habitable planet that we would likely colonize would have to support carbon based life forms such as ourselves. So breathable oxygen, and the amounts of the other elements can't be too dense or it will kill us. How this ties into that point? Well if we're using such criteria to determine where we would colonize, then the planet would likely be similar to Earth and therefore would likely have developed along similar lines as earth in terms of structure and naturally. The only thing that we'd need to understand is what kind of life is there, if any developed at all and being able to catalogue it.

I'd suspect money overall would be the main contributor to who gets to go there. It also depends on what time period we're in and when this happens. The earlier (let's say 60-100 years being generous), most likely only the rich who can afford it and their money goes to funding this project to begin with. But further generations down the line, and it will likely become commonplace for people to HAVE TO move to these habitable planets, depending on what state the Earth is in.

 

[DJKS]

I don't think it'll take that long to understand said planet.

Once we have the ability to travel to other planets, we will expand regardless of needing to leave this planet or not. But at some point, the resources in this planet will run out.

 

[Anduril]

For the first point, it would likely take less time. Majority of our understanding of the Earth has come in the last 100 years or so given that the industrial revolution took off and basically never stopped. So you can't really use how long it took in the first place as a basis for how long it would take to understand another planet. We're more intelligent now than we have ever been. Millions upon millions of years of small scale micro evolution from our common ape ancestor has lead to us as a species. We're still evolving (example; some people's immunities to certain diseases like malaria is evolution for that person), but the intelligence portion of our evolution has been solidified.

To continue on the point of understanding said planet, you have to take into account that any habitable planet that we would likely colonize would have to support carbon based life forms such as ourselves. So breathable oxygen, and the amounts of the other elements can't be too dense or it will kill us. How this ties into that point? Well if we're using such criteria to determine where we would colonize, then the planet would likely be similar to Earth and therefore would likely have developed along similar lines as earth in terms of structure and naturally. The only thing that we'd need to understand is what kind of life is there, if any developed at all and being able to catalogue it.

I'd suspect money overall would be the main contributor to who gets to go there. It also depends on what time period we're in and when this happens. The earlier (let's say 60-100 years being generous), most likely only the rich who can afford it and their money goes to funding this project to begin with. But further generations down the line, and it will likely become commonplace for people to HAVE TO move to these habitable planets, depending on what state the Earth is in.

But it depends extensively on whether we will be able to take away that much number of equipment with us to this new planet. Also even on earth there are many diseases we have not been able to find a cure to and if on the said planet we encounter such a disease we will perish.
Also you should know that we are an extremely dependant civilization. Leave a human on a deserted island and with no gizmos and the maximum he will be able to survive is maybe a week or two depending on various factors.
So unless we make it so that we are able to take all our gadgets and gizmos with us (and that is no small number) we will be starting from scratch!