Living on other planets could be possible if technology advances: Or not? To know more about this. Metro spoke with its authors about an important scientific study.
Morgan Irons, a doctoral student at Cornell University’s School of Agriculture and Life Sciences, and his father Lee Irons, executive director of the Norfolk Institute, delved into the needs of humans outside of the Land. A group of scientists who intends to solve problems of human resistance on Earth and in space.
Why did you decide to investigate whether human beings could support a long life in deep space?
– We have been researching food security challenges at the intersection of Earth and space habitability since 2016. Those years of research led us to publish a perspective paper in December 2021 in which we identified that a quantitative method was lacking in the industry space to measure the sustainability of bioregenerative life support systems, technology for human life support that integrates biological components, such as plants or bacteria. In this 2021 document, we base our proposed method for measuring sustainability on the concepts that livelihoods are endless, that humans sustain themselves, that a natural environment is involved, and that the natural environment functions on a critical resource basis. natural.
Studying the existing scientific literature to prepare that paper allowed us to further the idea that sustaining human life in space might require a minimal amount of natural ecosystem. Our study led us to the philosophical proposition of the need for human life to be conative (that is, linked to behavior) with the natural environment and for the natural environment to be responsive to human life so that the outcome is human survival on Earth. The implication was clear: if the proposition is valid on Earth, it should also be true off Earth.
Tell us about your theory of the Pancosmorio.
– We coined the term “Pancosmorio” from the Greek, whose roots together mean “limit of the whole world”. The Pancosmorio theory affirms that there are conditions from which human life has evolved. Such conditions are necessary to sustain human life at its current level of growth, and the availability of such conditions to humans defines the boundary of their world. We studied the science of the conditions that sustain humans on Earth, and then used abductive logical reasoning to hypothesize that humans would need the same conditions anywhere else in space they tried to settle in order to sustain themselves. . Sustainment would literally mean that human civilization could be established at the site of settlement in space in such a way that generations of humans could be born in space and live full lives without any support from Earth.
What do humans need to sustain themselves and all of their technology, infrastructure, and society in space?
– As we see on Earth, for human infrastructure, technology and society to function, a naturally functioning ecosystem must actively produce resources and energy with some capacity to maintain those levels of functioning. At its fundamental root, human infrastructure, technology and society require human participation at all levels to function indefinitely into the distant future, and humans will always require an essential level of the natural conditions that exist on Earth in order for them to function. human beings can continue to exist.
This conclusion is based on the science of ecological thermodynamics that has developed over the last century and on the second law of thermodynamics, which states that the production of the resources needed by humans and human civilization requires the expenditure of energy. and that a certain amount of that energy can never be useful again. It is what is known as entropy. Physics reveals that nature uses conservative forces to produce natural resources in ecosystems; We call these forces conservative because they do not have an energy cost. They also cause natural production to self-regulate. However, human technology does have an energy cost and does not self-restore. For this reason, we cannot use technology to completely replace the natural functions of ecosystems that we need to survive, since we would reach a point where technology would require more energy cost and effort than the resources have the capacity to generate. It is at that point that plagues, species loss, and cascading failures in the natural ecosystem would occur, and signs of the collapse of civilization would begin to appear.
What are the keys to recreating the evolutionary and ecological networks that make Earth successful?
– Science tells us that terrestrial life evolved in the context of the conditions of our planet and that, therefore, terrestrial life is evolutionarily and adaptively adapted to those conditions. Geophysics and ecological thermodynamics reveal what those conditions are. We need to live on a surface where 1 g of gravity (the level of gravity on Earth’s surface) pushes us against that surface to produce a pressure differential across the human body that the nervous system is tuned to. This 1-g of gravity also produces geophysical and biogeochemical cycles in our environment that distribute resources and energy throughout our environment in a self-repairing and endless way. We also need an amount of energy moving through our ecosystem equivalent to that provided by our Sun at the Earth’s surface, and an amount of surface area currently equivalent to one 255 meter square per person. Finally, we need a network of ecosystems made up of terrestrial life that operates in what is called a window of vitality through which 40% of the energy passes, and a reserve part of the ecosystem made up of a great biodiversity of life that moves 60% of energy through the ecosystem. This reserve is what makes us especially resilient and would be what technology could never fully replace. Keep in mind that this is a theory. We have based this proposition on existing science, and have provided hypotheses that still need to be tested to prove or disprove the theory.
How to ensure that space settlement missions do not fail?
– This is a difficult question to answer at present because there is no place within our solar system that naturally provides these conditions. Note that the Pancosmorio theory is a theory of human sustainability. This means that it defines a probability of success or failure, not a guarantee of success or failure. In our paper, we prefer to use the terminology of robust and brittle to describe a settlement. If a settlement is robust, there is less chance that a disturbance, such as a meteorite strike or a pandemic, will cause it to fail. If a settlement is fragile, it might seem to work fine for a while, but suddenly such a disturbance would push it to complete failure. To enhance the robustness of an ecosystem, the theory states that the conditions identified by the theory should be established by as natural means as possible, and by technological means if natural means are not possible.
For example, humans cannot produce natural gravitational force fields, because we don’t really understand how gravity works yet. So humans could create a rotating space station that artificially generates a force the same magnitude as gravity. But, as we’ve said before, there is a point where we can only use a certain amount of technology before its use is no longer sustainable by the part of the ecosystem that works naturally by conservative forces.
What can we expect from the future?
– Currently, nations and private companies are working to establish a permanent presence on the Moon. The human presence on the Moon will offer the opportunity to obtain data to determine whether the Pancosmorio theory is correct, actively testing the hypotheses we make in our theory and allowing further development of research questions. As with any system, the longer a permanent human presence is maintained on the Moon, the more likely it is that there will be a disruptive event to that human base, such as a delay or failure in the supply chain from Earth. In the case of the International Space Station, supply chain problems have occurred, once when the US space shuttle program was shut down and once during the COVID-19 pandemic. These cases demonstrate that the Pancosmorio theory is correct for systems with a minimum of sustainability.
When such a disturbing event occurs for a lunar base, the response of the crew and of the system or systems will provide us with the necessary data to quantify the sustainability of such a human base configuration in space, providing evidence that supports or not the hypotheses of the lunar base. Pancosmorio theory. The ultimate test, however, will be Mars, where humans seem intent on trying to live regardless if it isn’t sustainable.