Elon Musk: People Don’t Realize What’s Coming
Earth won’t exist in 12 years
Let’s talk about the future.
I like the idea of decentralization amongst nations and want all countries to be as autonomous as possible; however, let’s say we enter interstellar space and discover hundreds of alien civilizations.
Well, I don’t know about you, but *someone* on Earth needs to be in charge and it sure as hell won’t be a planet bent on individualism!
In order to present a respectable image in the galactic playing field, we would need to represent our planet and our species, not our particular island.
And this is where Tesla CEO Elon Musk sees humanity’s biggest problem. Musk believes that it'll be too late by the time we realize we should pool our resources and unite:
“I wonder how many dead ‘one planet’ civilizations there are out there in the cosmos? Species that never made it to another planet and ultimately extinguished themselves or were destroyed by external factors. Probably a few.”
— Elon Musk
We’re most likely to make first contact with an alien species before we realize the requirement for a united planet.
Ultimately this will be an existential crisis. Here’s why.
The Existential Horror of Space
The scariest thing I ever heard about the cosmos was in a Joe Rogan podcast with Neil Degrasse Tyson. Tyson explained that there are these things called “rogue planets,” which are planets that are trapped between gravitational fields of multiple suns.
Because two or more suns are pulling on a planet they eventually throw it out into the cosmos and these planets then become rogue, freezing-cold rocks traveling amongst the stars.
The universe is a fucking nightmare.
The Earth is a speck on a speck on a speck. And yet thousands of stories, religions, experiences, and every human being (poor, famous, brave, or cowardly) has existed on this speck.
Elon Musk, then, see’s two possibilities for humanity:
We stay on Earth until an eventual internal or external doomsday event wipes us all out. Maybe that’s a billion years from now. Maybe that’s tomorrow. Who’s to say?
We become a multi-planetary species so that we have a smaller chance of going extinct. Moreover, if Earth ever were hit by a meteor or suffered a nuclear attack then a civilization on Mars could help build it back.
Some researchers claim we are overdue for a large asteroid impact — although the chances of an asteroid the size of the one that wiped out the dinosaurs are relatively low.
However, NASA has openly admitted that asteroids are extraordinarily difficult to spot. In fact, in 2019 an asteroid the size of a football field, called ‘2019 OK’, was spotted just one day before flying between Earth and the Moon. It caught researchers completely off guard.
According to internal NASA documents obtained by Buzzfeed News, a NASA scientist said: “this one did sneak up on us.”
Why Elon Musk is Dead Wrong About Aliens
Aliens exist because we exist. At least that’s the basic argument.
In an infinite universe, we have to assume that no matter how small the chance for life is the fact that we’re here means there must be others — somewhere.
This argument is dead wrong.
…Or at least it's open to many contradictions.
First of all the universe may not be infinite. We can predict possible edges.
Additionally, the chances of humans themselves existing are so infinitesimally small that it's a miracle we’re even here! If we take the number of ways that life could have evolved divided by every other combination of molecules that could have happened, the chances of life are very slim.
This is all to say: aliens aren’t real.
There’s no evidence for them, just schizo stories from Bob Lazar without any genuine sources.
Did you know that you’re more likely to believe in aliens if you aren’t religious?
Interesting connection!
I hope aliens are real and I see them before I die, but it's just as much a “belief” as there is in hoping Jesus Christ returns (maybe less so since Jesus was a historical figure). Either way, whether Elon, Neil Degrasse Tyson, and Steven Hawking are right or wrong about aliens, it doesn’t matter — Musk’s claim for a multi-planetary species is still pertinent and necessary.
Finding Ways off This Earth
Let’s imagine colonizing Mars since it's Elon’s wet dream to do so.
Terraforming Mars is essentially a big landscaping job and the first tangible step is reestablishing Mar’s magnetic field.
When Mars was only 500 million years old, its magnetic field withered away. Before that, it was predicted that Mars had an atmosphere tantamount to Earth with ubiquitous liquid water. Without this magnetic shield, the sun strips away a planet’s atmosphere, killing any life that may have emerged.
You can’t terraform Mars without bringing back the magnetic field, or else all the atmosphere would just get blown away again.
(Unless they have some plan to produce an atmosphere at a rate faster than it can be knocked away).
The only way to reawaken Mars’s magnetic field is to jump-start its inner dynamo, in other words, heat Mars the hell up! Dynamo is the process in which a planet heats itself, almost like an oven. It involves kinetic energy (provided by the planetary rotation) and conductive fluid (i.e. molten iron).
This is why Elon Musk proposed to nuke Mar’s atmosphere; we need to warm the damn thing up before it can ever be inhabitable again.
He doesn’t want to nuke Mars because he’s a crazy narcissist sociopath… well, he might also be that. But in the wise words of Kanye West: “Name one genius who ain’t crazy.”
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Final thought
When interviewed about the moon landing in 1969, Black residents living in Harlem echoed the sentiment: “It’s a brilliant achievement, but why isn’t any of that money spent to fight hunger in America or get people out of poverty?”
With all the problems on Earth, I realize that space travel and problems that sound directly out of a Star Trek episode might frustrate people.
But these problems will be front-page issues, eventually.
Especially with terms like “WW3” and “nuclear war” floating around in the mainstream media lately, building up a ‘back-up’ plan is a salient idea.
Becoming a multi-planetary species might seem like a waste now, but it will pay off.
Show this post some 💖 and share it with your friends. That way, you won't have to be the only one who knows its dark secrets!🙏
I like this bit “The universe is a fucking nightmare.” 😉
Interesting thought piece. I agree with most of it. But, not this: "Well, I don’t know about you, but *someone* on Earth needs to be in charge and it sure as hell won’t be a planet bent on individualism!"
We're much better off with no one in charge, with maximum decentralization, with individuals and groups that spontaneously form being able to take up whatever experiments and projects that they find interesting and/or profitable.
Putting someone in charge, allowing one person or one committee to direct everyone's efforts, invariably leads to failure. It's why the wisdom of the crowds has always exceeded the wisdom of the tyrant. Just my two cents.