Question: Hi Evelyn, could Humans become an interplanetary species?

Evelyn Greeves answered on 15 Jul 2020:

Hi Phillip. This isn’t at all my area of research, but I’m happy to give your question a go! I enjoy reading the odd sci-fi book about this very topic.

I personally think that humans could one day live on planets other than Earth, but I also think we’re a very long way away from that. We don’t currently have the technology that would allow us to travel to another habitable planet and still be alive when we get there. We either need to find a way to travel super-fast, faster than light, or find a way to put ourselves into a kind of hibernation while we travel. To the best of my knowledge, we’re a long way away from that happening.

We’d also need to choose our planet very carefully, to make sure humans have the right adaptations to survive there. Usually animals adapt to the habitat/surroundings they evolve in. It would be quite unusual and difficult to then move away from those surroundings. In addition, spaceflight is very bad for humans (due to lack of gravity), so we’d have to consider that. An interesting concept I read about in a sci-fi novel a while ago was something called ‘somaforming’ – adapting the human body to its new habitat, rather than trying to adapt/choose the habitat to suit humans. This is a completely made-up idea (for now) but I thought it was really interesting!

The final thing I’d mention is that when we talk about becoming interplanetary, we often use words like ‘colonise’. Unfortunately, colonisation has a very sad history for humans. In the past, countries like the UK colonised other countries and treated their native inhabitants very poorly. If, in future, we try and colonise other planets, and act like we have the right to take them over, are we acting in just the same way? It’s definitely something to think about!

As I said at the start, I’m not an expert. Most of what I just wrote was based on what I read in fictional books rather than a textbook! However, I believe that questions like yours go beyond just science, which is what makes them especially interesting!