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Certainly for me, as an astrobiologist, science fiction has played an important role. One of the quandaries of our field is that we are trying to study and search for something - life - that we can't define in a rigorous way. We only have one example of a biosphere, so we can't really give a good definition.
David Grinspoon -
Now, humans have become a dominant force of planetary change and, thus, we may have entered an eon of post-biological evolution in which cognitive systems have gained a powerful influence on the planet.
David Grinspoon
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A lot of the science fiction that I grew up reading was written when we still thought that Venus might be an oceanic planet.
David Grinspoon -
I do a lot of work with NASA and am involved in research projects studying planetary evolution, Earth-like planets, and potential conditions for life elsewhere.
David Grinspoon -
There's eco-pragmatism, where you recognize, 'Yeah, we live on a planet that's permanently altered by humanity, and rather than seek to return to or preserve pure wilderness, we recognize that's an illusion, and we proceed under the new knowledge that we live, in fact, in a human-dominated planet.'
David Grinspoon -
The future peopling of Mars is much more than a scientific endeavor. It is a step of historic and spiritual importance for the human race.
David Grinspoon -
Astrobiology is the science of life in the universe. It's an attempt to scientifically deal with the question of whether or not we're alone in the universe, looking at the past of life, the present of life, and the future of life. It's an interdisciplinary study incorporating astronomy, biology, and the Earth sciences.
David Grinspoon -
What I'm interested in is the conversations going on about the Anthropocene and what it means to view ourselves as a part of Earth's geological history.
David Grinspoon
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Once we become a multiplanet species, our chances to live long and prosper will take a huge leap skyward.
David Grinspoon -
We've almost been wiped out as a species many times, going back millions of years, and we've survived by reinventing ourselves and enlarging our circles of awareness, inventing new technologies and social structures.
David Grinspoon -
There's no question to my mind that saving our civilization and many other species is more important than our ability to do ground-based astronomy for a few decades.
David Grinspoon -
There was a long history of people believing there was life on Venus. It was about the same size as Earth. It had clouds. It was commonly believed it was tropical - wet, hot and steamy.
David Grinspoon -
As a young planet, Venus was losing hydrogen rapidly to space. The oceans boiled off, and after some period of time, perhaps 600 million years, there was no surface water.
David Grinspoon -
Responsible global behaviour is ultimately an act of self-preservation of, by, and for the global beast that modern technological humanity has become.
David Grinspoon
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I think chemists always think they know more than they know, because nature has a lot of possible pathways it can try.
David Grinspoon -
We definitely don't want to go through another Ice Age or another natural cycle of global warming. Both happen over a long period of time. It would be disastrous for our civilization, and not just for us but many other species.
David Grinspoon -
Why should we consider defining intelligence as something global and as something that hasn't actually yet appeared on Earth? It may be useful for envisioning the future of our own civilization and any others that may be out there among the stars. It might give us something to strive for.
David Grinspoon -
We need to have a vision of the world we want to create so that we can see ourselves as collaborators with future generations in the project of shaping it.
David Grinspoon -
When you think about alien intelligences making art, you then have to think about what art is and how bound up it is in the nature of consciousness. Why do we make art? And what can we expect to have in common with other creatures in universe?
David Grinspoon -
Mars does not have an atmosphere and does not have a magnetic field today, so the planet doesn't have the protection from radiation that our atmosphere and magnetic fields provide us on Earth.
David Grinspoon
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Whenever I see a nighttime picture of Earth from space, with its glowing lights, I am stirred by its beauty.
David Grinspoon -
I'm an astrobiologist, and I come from a planetary science background, so in a very broad sense, I study the evolution of planetary environments.
David Grinspoon -
Literally, my earliest memory, my earliest vivid memory, is the Apollo 11 landing on the Moon. Yeah, I was in fourth grade, and I was just so captivated. And I think you'll find a lot of space scientists of my generation will say the same thing. Apollo was a big event for them.
David Grinspoon -
Earth is going to lose its oceans in the future, just as Venus did in the past. How long planets retain their oceans is a function of distance from the sun, all other things being equal.
David Grinspoon