The future of humanity is an issue that requires a serious approach involving many experts. Because it is interesting and extremely important. Resource Scientific American interviewed prominent figures in the field of science and technology, which we also often write and refer to to find out from them: what will be the future of mankind.
- Does humanity have a future beyond Earth?
“I think this is a dangerous delusion - to strive for mass emigration from the Earth. In the Solar System, nowhere and near there is no place as comfortable as the summit of Everest or the South Pole. We need to deal with global issues here. Nevertheless, I think that in the next century there will be groups of privately funded adventurers who will inhabit Mars, and then, perhaps, other places in the Solar System. We should certainly wish these pioneers good luck in using all the methods of cyber and biotechnological adaptation to an alien environment. Over the course of several centuries, they will turn into a new species: the posthuman era will begin. Traveling beyond the Solar System will be the lot of posthumanity — organic or not. ”
- Martin Rees, English cosmologist and astrophysicist.
- When and where will we, in your opinion, find extraterrestrial life?
“If Mars is replete with microbial life, I suspect that we will find it within 20 years - if it is quite similar to our life forms. If an alien form of life is very different from what we have here on Earth, it will be difficult to detect. In addition, it is possible that any remaining microbes on Mars are rare and are in places that the robotic landing module will be difficult to find. The satellite of Jupiter Europe and the satellite of Saturn Titan seem to be more suitable places. And Titan, perhaps the most interesting place in the solar system to search for life. It is rich in organic molecules, but very cold and has no liquid water; if life on Titan exists, it will be very different from life on Earth "
- Carol Cleland, Professor of Philosophy and Co-Investigator at the Center for Astrobiology at the University of Colorado at Boulder.
- Will we ever understand the nature of consciousness?
“Some philosophers, mystics and other talkers with foaming at the mouth prove that it is impossible to ever comprehend the true nature of consciousness. However, there are not many grounds for such defeatist statements, but there are all reasons to believe that one day, relatively soon, science will come to a naturalized, quantitative and predictive understanding of consciousness and its place in the Universe. ”
- Krishtof Koch, President and CSO, Allenovsky Institute of Brain Science.
- Will the world ever get adequate medical care?
“The world community has come a long way on the path to health equity over the past 25 years, but these successes have not reached the corners of the world most distant from civilization. Deep in the rainforest, where people are cut off from transportation and cellular networks, mortality is very high, and access to medical services is limited, plus the quality of health care is disgusting. According to estimates of the World Health Organization, a billion people live their lives without ever seeing a medical worker due to their distance. Health workers, who are recruited directly in communities, could narrow this gap. They could even fight off epidemics like Ebola and maintain access to basic medical care when hospitals are forced to close their doors. My organization, Last Mile Health, today includes more than 300 health workers in 300 locations across Liberia. But we will not cope with this work alone. If the global community is serious about ensuring access to health care for all, it should invest in health workers who can reach the most distant locations. ”
- Raj Punjabi, co-founder and executive director of Last Mile Health and instructor at Harvard Medical School.
- Understanding the brain: will it change the criminal law?
“In all likelihood, the brain is a cause-effect machine in the sense that it changes from one state to another, depending on the preceding conditions. The implications of this for criminal law are absolutely zero. First, all mammals and birds have preconditions for self-control, which are modified in the process of learning with reinforcement (reward for the right choice), especially in a social context. Secondly, criminal law is aimed at the safety and welfare of the population. Even if we could identify the prerequisites that are unique to serial rapists of children, for example, they would simply be forbidden to move around freely, because they are prone to relapse. If we, for example, had concluded that a Boston priest, John Johgen, who tried to seduce about 130 children, “is not to blame for having brains, so let him go home,” the result would be self-justice, undoubtedly. When rough justice takes place in the criminal justice system, which is rooted in the many years of impartial laws, everything becomes terrible very quickly. ”
- Patricia Churchland, professor of philosophy and neuroscience at the University of California, San Diego.
- What is the chance that Homo sapiens will survive the next 500 years?
“I think the chances of our survival are very good. Even the biggest threats — nuclear war or environmental catastrophe that could result from climate change — are not catastrophic in the sense that they will erase us completely. And this our bogeyman, in which our electronic progeny will grow up and decide that he can live without us, you can get rid of it by simply turning it off. ”
- Carlton Davis, Professor Emeritus in Physics and Astronomy at the University of New Mexico.
- How close are we to preventing a nuclear catastrophe?
“Since 9/11 [September 11, 2001, there has been a terrorist attack on the twin towers in New York], the United States has been paying considerable attention to policy issues to reduce the risk of nuclear terrorism, increasing the security of highly enriched uranium and plutonium and removing them from wherever it can. An act of nuclear terrorism can kill 100,000 people. But still, thirty years after the end of the Cold War, where a great danger lurks in a nuclear catastrophe involving thousands of nuclear explosions and from several tens to hundreds of millions of deaths due to a possible nuclear confrontation between the United States and Russia.
Recalling Pearl Harbor, the United States retained its nuclear forces in the event of a possible first strike, which the Soviet Union could try to destroy all available US forces. Today, we do not expect such an attack, but each side still maintains about 1,000 intercontinental nuclear warheads in a state of full combat readiness. Since the flight time of a ballistic missile is only 15-30 minutes, decisions that can lead to hundreds of millions of deaths must be made within a few minutes. The possibility of an accidental nuclear war or even hackers who provoke a launch remains.
The Cold War is over, but “The Doomsday Machine”, which was born from the confrontation between the USA and the USSR, is still with us - and its cock is cocked
- Frank von Hippel, Professor Emeritus, School of Government and International Relations. Woodrow Wilson at Princeton University, one of the founders of the Princeton Science and Global Security Program.
- Will sex get old?
“No, but having sex to conceive children will probably become much less common.” After 20-40 years, we will be able to extract eggs and sperm from stem cells, possibly the skin cells of parents. This will allow a light pre-implantation genetic diagnosis of a large number of embryos - or a slight modification of the genome for those who want to edit the embryos, rather than choose "
- Henry Greeley, director of the Center for Law and Biosciences at Stanford University.
- Will we be able once to replace all the tissues of the human body in the process of engineering?
“In 1995, Joseph Wakanti and I wrote for this magazine about a breakthrough in the creation of an artificial pancreas, plastic-based tissues, such as artificial skin and electronics, that could allow blind people to see. All this came in the form of these products or is undergoing clinical trials. Over the next few centuries, it is possible that each fabric can be replaced in a similar way. Creating or regenerating tissues, such as those in the brain that are extremely complex and poorly understood, will require an enormous amount of research. However, it is hoped that research in this area will proceed quickly enough and will help people with brain diseases, such as Parkinson's and Alzheimer's, quickly enough. ”
- Robert Langer, Professor at the David Koch Institute at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
- Can we avoid the "sixth extinction"?
“It can be slowed down and then stopped if urgent measures are taken. The main reason for the extinction of species is the loss of habitat. That is why I emphasize that it is necessary to collect a global reserve (reserve), which occupies half of the land and half of the sea, if necessary. In addition to this initiative (and the development of the science of species ecosystems to a level that is better than the current one), it is necessary to discover and characterize the 10 million remaining species or so; today we found and named only 2 million. In general, it is necessary to expand the ecology, to include in it what a living world should be, and this, in my opinion, will be the largest initiative in science until the end of the century. ”
- Edward Wilson, Professor Emeritus, Harvard University.
- Is it possible to feed on the planet without destroying it?
"Yes. Here is what you need to do: to reduce the waste of grain crops, household waste and meat consumption; integrate high-quality grain technology and management practices; tell consumers about the problems that farmers face in developed and developing countries; increase government funding for agricultural research and development and focus on promoting the socio-economic and environmental aspects of agriculture that characterize sustainable agricultural development. ”
- Pamela Ronald, Professor Emeritus at the Genomic Center and the Department of Plant Pathology at the University of California, Davis.
- Do we colonize space?
"It depends on the definition of" colonization. " If we mean the landing of robots, then this has already been done. If sending germs from Earth so that they live and grow, then there is no, unfortunately, we haven’t achieved this yet - except inside the rover Curiosity, where the heat source is and which was not completely warmed up, like the Viking.
If we mean sending people anywhere for a long period of time, without reproduction, this will happen in the next 50 years or so. Perhaps there will even be a certain level of reproduction, after all, primates remain primates. But if the idea is to build an independent environment in which people can exist with the most modest help from the Earth — colonies like “European” colonies that were built outside of Europe — then this will happen far in the future, if at all. Currently, we do not quite understand how to create a closed ecosystem that will be protected from interventions caused by the influx of organisms or non-biological events (for example, Biosphere-2), and I suspect that the problem of a closed ecosystem will be much more complicated than it thinks the vast majority of supporters of space colonization. It is necessary to solve a wide range of problems, like air handling. We have not even colonized the underwater space of the Earth. And to colonize a cosmos in which there is no atmosphere at all is even more difficult. ”
- Katharina Conley, a planetary defense specialist at NASA.
- Will we find the second Earth?
“I bet that yes. We have already found out that the planets near other stars are much more common and diverse than scientists imagined only a couple of decades ago. And we also found out that the key ingredient for life on this planet — water — is common in space. I would say that nature rather gathered a wide range of planets, including Earth, and we just have to look for them. ”
- Aki Robert, astrophysicist, exploring exoplanets in the Goddard Space Center NASA.
- Will we find a cure for Alzheimer's disease?
“I’m not sure that it will be a medicine as such, but I really hope that in the next ten years there will be a successful treatment that modifies Alzheimer's disease. We have already begun preliminary trials for the prevention of the disease even before a person has symptoms of the disease. And we do not need to treat Alzheimer's - we just need to delay dementia for 5-10 years. Estimates show that delaying the terrible and costly dementia stage by five years will reduce the cost of maintaining a patient by 50%. In addition, it follows from this that many older people will be able to die while dancing ballet rather than in a nursing home. ”
- Reiza Sperling, professor of neurology at the Harvard School of Medicine.
- Can wearable technology determine our emotions?
“Emotions include biochemical and electrical signals that reach every organ in our bodies — allowing, for example, stress to affect our physical and mental health. Wearable technology will allow us to quantify the patterns in these signals over long periods of time. In the next ten years, wearable technology will become the forecasters of our own health: they will guess your condition next week with 80 percent accuracy, based on your recent actions. But unlike the weather, smart wearable technology will also be able to identify patterns that we can use to reduce unwanted “storms”: sleep, to reduce stress by 60% for the next four days, for example. In the next 20 years, wearable devices and tests obtained with their help will also be able to significantly reduce psychiatric and neurological disorders. ”
- Rosalind Picard, founder and director of the Affective Computing research group at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Media Lab.
- Do we find out what dark matter is?
“Whether we can determine what dark matter is depends on what it turns out to be. Some forms of dark matter can be detected because of the smallest interactions with ordinary matter, but otherwise they will be elusive. Others can be detected by their influence on structures like galaxies. I hope we can learn more through experimentation and observation. But I do not guarantee "
- Lisa Randall, theoretical physicist and cosmologist at Harvard University.
- Will we be able to control intractable brain diseases like schizophrenia or autism?
“Disorders like autism and schizophrenia remain elusive because neurology has not found a structural problem that can be fixed. Some believe that this is because future answers are hidden solely in biochemistry, and not in neural circuits. Others argue that neuroscientists should start thinking in terms of the overall architecture of the brain, rather than specific neural failures. Nevertheless, when it comes to the future, I recall the remark of Nobel laureate Charles Towns that a new idea is beautiful because you do not know about it. ”
- Michael Gazzaniga, director of the SAGE Mind Center at the University of California, Santa Barbara.
- Will technology eliminate the need for animal drug testing?
“If human organs-on-chips prove their reliability and consistently rediscover the complex physiology of human organs and the phenotypes of diseases in unrelated laboratories around the world, as the first studies on the proof of the concept showed, then we will see how they will gradually replace the animal model. This will ultimately lead to a significant reduction in animal testing. It is important to note that these devices will also open up new approaches to the development of drugs that are not available with animal models of today, such as personalized medicine and the development of methods for treating specific genetic subpopulations using chips that use cells of specific patients. ”
Donald Ingber, Founding Director of the Wiss Institute of Biologically Inspired Engineering, Harvard University.
- Will the equality of men and women in science be achieved?
“Equality of men and women can be achieved, but we cannot just sit back and wait for this to happen. We need to “fix the numbers” by attracting more women in the field of science and technology. We need to improve institutions, revise the relationship of career and family, show new leadership opportunities. More importantly, we need to improve people's attitudes by leveraging the creative power of gender analysis for discovery and innovation. ”
— Лонда Шибингер, профессор истории наук в Стэнфордском Университете.
- Как думаете, сможем ли мы однажды прогнозировать природные катаклизмы, вроде землетрясений, за часы или дни?
«Некоторые стихийные бедствия проще предвидеть, чем другие. Ураганы появляются в течение нескольких дней, вулканы зачастую готовятся к извержению несколько часов или дней, торнадо приходят за несколько минут. Землетрясения, пожалуй, это самое сложное. То, что мы знаем о физике землетрясений, говорит о том, что мы не можем прогнозировать их заранее. Мы можем разве что прогнозировать повреждение грунта непосредственно перед землетрясением, обеспечивая таким образом несколько секунд или минут для тревоги. Чтобы покинуть город, этого времени не хватит, но чтобы добраться до безопасного места — вполне»
— Ричард Аллен, директор Сейсмологической лаборатории Беркли в Калифорнийском университете в Беркли.
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