David Grinspoon Quotes
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We need visions of a future in which we have applied our infinite creativity to the task of living on a finite world, where we have embraced our role, become comfortable and proficient as planet-shapers, and learned to use our technological skills to enhance the survival prospects not just of humanity but of all life on Earth.
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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.
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I was a science fiction geek from an early age, enthralled by the questions of life in the universe. As I got older, I learned that space exploration was real. I wanted to get involved in that. I knew I wanted to be a scientist.
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As long as we can imagine a better path, of course we are obligated to seek it. This is why unwarranted pessimism about our future is actually irresponsible.
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Responsible global behaviour is ultimately an act of self-preservation of, by, and for the global beast that modern technological humanity has become.
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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.
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I think the best SF writers are very aware of what we, in the scientific community, are doing, thinking, and discovering.
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When I first went to college, I went into physics, and my goal was to help perfect nuclear fusion so I could solve the energy crisis and global warming. I probably would have done it, too, if I'd stuck to it.
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NASA, and all the other spacefaring nations of the world, have agreed to a set of 'planetary-protection' principles, aimed at preventing the accidental contamination of another habitable world with organisms from Earth.
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Even cynical, selfish people will realize, one way or the other, that it's not in their self-interest to act in self-destructive ways.
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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.
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I think Pluto has to be considered among the places in the solar system that are possible homes for life.
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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.
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It will be a long time, if ever, before we get to study Earth-like planets orbiting around other stars, so really, the study of Venus and Mars is the best opportunity that we have, and can imagine having anytime in the future, to understand the evolution of Earth-like planets.
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As Earth's climate changes, we can expect more destructive hurricanes. As sea level and surface temperatures rise, more solar energy is trapped in the atmosphere, revving up the hydrological cycle of evaporation and precipitation and sometimes manifesting in terrifying storms.
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The basic ability to not wipe oneself out, to endure, to use your technological interaction with the world in such a way that has the possibility of the likelihood of lasting and not being temporary - that seems like a pretty good definition of intelligence.
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We have all this very clever technology and all these abilities to manipulate the world in all these ways, yet we are faced with the very real question of whether we can be sustainable on this planet - whether or not, in fact, we can endure.
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There is a real danger of unintended consequences, of encouraging people to give up. Pessimism, if it becomes a habit, can reinforce a narrative of unstoppable decline. If there is nothing we can do, that releases us from our obligations.
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Time and time again, our species has escaped existential threats by reinventing ourselves, finding new skills not coded in our genes to survive new challenges not previously encountered.
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In my Ph.D. thesis, written in 1989, I discussed the fact that when a civilization develops the technology to prevent catastrophic asteroid impacts, it marks a significant moment in the evolution of the planet.
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One of the weird things about modern physics is that we do find there are apparently these other dimensions that we don't directly experience that explain some aspects of the overall geometry and reality of our universe.
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In order to have a decent chance to be a communicating species, you would have to learn to think and plan and act over time scales of a century or a millennium.
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Humanity has at least a dim, and growing, cognisance of the effects of its presence on this planet. The possibility that we might integrate that awareness into how we interface with the Earth system is one that should give us hope.
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Thinking about the new epoch - often called the Anthropocene, or the age of humanity - challenges us to look at ourselves in the mirror of deep time, measured not in centuries or even in millennia, but over millions and billions of years.