Scientists Believe We Can Relocate Humanity To Proxima B

 

assuming humanity will still be around for another couple of centuries it is extremely likely that we might be looking for a new planet to relocate to the way things are going the earth might end up being uninhabitable for us but if even by a miracle we saved it humanity will still outgrow this planet and we'll need a new neighborhood in order to expand our civilization but the question is where would we go the good news is that we don't have to look very far from our solar system our closest neighboring star Proxima Centauri has a planet that is quite a near perfect copy of earth bad news unfortunately we still don't know how to get there welcome to

 Science Reads and today let's find out how we could relocate humanity to Proxima Centauri b in 2016 astronomers made a phenomenal discovery when they tried to peek at what was happening in the star system on the other side of the cosmic fence they found a potentially earth-like planet orbiting Proxima Centauri this wasn't just yet another super-earth planet Proxima Centauri b is similar to earth and mass and it orbits its star in the habitable zone where temperatures could potentially allow the existence of earth-like bodies of liquid water Proxima Centauri is not just any star either it is the very nearest one after the sun and it is a small red orb whose feeble light makes it relatively

 easy to study the planet close beside it located at a distance of around 4.22 light years from earth the planet Proxima Centauri b is close enough to tantalize scientists from all over the world however 4.22 light years isn't as close as you might think it converts to roughly 25 trillion miles in 2015 nasa's new horizon probe completed its 3 billion mile journey to Pluto after traveling for about 9.5 years the spacecraft traveled at speeds topping 52 000 miles per hour at this speed it would take new horizons about 54 400 years to reach Proxima Centauri NASA's Juno probe was an improvement as it reached speeds of about 165 000 miles per hour on its journey to reach jupiter's orbit that speed would take a probe nearly 17 000 years to reach the Proxima Centauri system the current prototype technology

 requires a trip of around 6 300 years

 so clearly we are nowhere close to being able to send humans in a ship to the neighbor's house and even if we could the traveling humans crew would need to reproduce with each other throughout the journey in a way that guarantees the arrival of a healthy crew at Proxima Centauri if there was an emergency and a journey to Proxima Centauri becomes necessary for the survival of humankind a crew for such a multi-generational space journey would require meticulous selection the starting crew would need to include men and women both and their age life expectancy and infertility rates would be important parameters for selection because of course this crew would bear the cross of the survival of humanity then there would be broader questions such as what could be the maximum capacity of the ship answers to that question leads to more questions such as when procreation would be permitted how closely related parents could be how many children one couple may have and much more once these parameters were determined they were plugged into an algorithm called heritage that simulated a multi-generational mission let's take a look at how it went down first the algorithm created a crew with the selected qualities it then ran through the mission allowing for natural and accidental deaths each year and assessed which crew members would be within the allowed procreational window the algorithm in its second step randomly selected two crew members one male and one female and evaluated the chances of them having a child together based on data such as infertility rates pregnancy chances and inbreeding limitations if the pregnancy was deemed viable the algorithm created a new crew member and then repeated this loop until the crew either died out or reached Proxima Centauri after 6 300 years very much like the simulation games we play these days on our phones and pcs and just like those simulation games the algorithm also took into account the chances of catastrophic events such as plagues collisions limitations of resources human fallacy etc etc the algorithm then repeated each mission 100 times to determine the likelihood of this size of the crew reaching its destination the outcomes predicted by the heritage algorithm are quite intriguing to say the least for example researchers have observed with animals that the genetic diversity of an initial population of 25 pairs can be sustained indefinitely with careful breeding but when the heritage algorithm used this number as the starting crew that is 25 men and 25 women the algorithm predicted a 50 chance of dying out before reaching the

 destination because space is quite dangerous and such a multi-generational voyage comes with a lot of additional risk factors but not all results from the heritage algorithm were so depressing in fact the algorithm promised 100 success with a crew of 49 men and 49 women who conform the same number of breeding pairs the creators of the algorithm Dr Frederick Marin of the astronomical observatory of Strasbourg and Camille Baloffy a particle physicist from the research company cascade believe that we definitely need this many people on a spaceship to successfully sustain life on the voyage to Proxima Centauri b interstellar travel is not the only problem that humanity has to confront before we pack our bags to move next door down the galactic hall Proxima Centauri b may look like the earth with its 1.17 earth mass and its location in the goldilocks zone but it may not be enough for us to move there unlike earth Proxima Centauri b takes only 11.2 days to orbit its star imagine having such a small year people would get bored of new year parties real soon interestingly Proxima Centauri b receives an even amount of solar energy from its star Proxima Centauri as much as earth receives from the sun but due to the close proximity of the planet to the star things can be very different on Proxima

 Centauri b than what we are hoping for

 first of all because of such a short orbit it is believed that the planet could be tidally locked to the star indeed Proxima Centauri being a red dwarf is a much cooler star than the sun but then again a tidally locked planet would mean one hemisphere of Proxima Centauri b be eternally facing the star soaking all the heat and radiation while the other side ever facing the unending night would be extremely cold dark and perhaps hosting volatile weather phenomena which means both hemispheres would be extremely inhospitable to host or support life despite that scientists have estimated that there may be a small pocket of warmth somewhere between the two sides where liquid water could theoretically exist talk about a silver lining this also brings up another question whether there be life already in that silver lining zone of Proxima Centauri b well this might sound philosophical but no one knows how life originated whether it's a freak event or something fairly common we don't even know how life originated here on earth nevertheless a lot of the specifics of Proxima Centauri b are shrouded in mystery based on what scientists already know of the planet it would just take one quick glance to build a profile of the world unfortunately our telescopes aren't strong enough to even map a pixelated version of the planet until that happens scientists can say definitively if the planet has a rocky surface or liquid water there are many factors that we aren't quite certain about regarding actual traveling for example how deep space will affect fertility rates how healthy kids born in deep space would be or being born in interstellar space

 would affect their life cycle adversely

 and then again with children that are born in interstellar space have the same chances of procreation as the original crew spending an entire lifetime in a zero gravity environment would cause the crew members to lose muscle and bone density especially those generations that will be born and die in the spaceship during travel and it will get worse with every generation then there are also dangers of space radiation which they would be constantly exposed to not to mention it would alter their microbiomes immune system and physiology forever you may not believe it but they would not be the same kind of humans as us in addition to being physiologically different thousands of years would also result in a drastic change in their values and culture the crew sent to Proxima b might forget all the farming techniques we had to teach them to sustain themselves in space and on their new planet there is also a possibility that a generation might rebel and change their mind about the mission altogether and just turn their spaceship in a different direction who knows they might even come back to earth and take revenge for all those years they were forced to spend in space so tell us in the comments would you board the ship to Proxima Centauri b thanks for reading we'll see you next time