The blog of photographer Kim Ayres

Will the human race ever populate another planet?

Just trying out something new. If it works I'll keep with it and recommend it to the Philosophy Class.

There's a site just launched today - Love to Lead - where:
Each week for the next 16 weeks L2L will pose a question designed to stimulate debate between bloggers. Visitors will be able to vote for their favourite article and the blogger whose post receives the greatest number of votes each week will win a Toshiba Portégé R400 laptop
So, the vague hope I can win a Toshiba, and because it might be a bit of fun, I'm submitting to their first debate, which is "Will the human race ever populate another planet?"

Read my response below then head over and either vote for me, or write your own rival entry :)

Will the human race ever populate another planet?
The simple fact is that if the human race doesn’t populate another planet, it will die out. It’s just a matter of time before the planet will become uninhabitable for human beings, so the only question is whether it will be sooner, due to human causes (global warming, pollution etc) or later, due to natural causes (expansion of the sun, impact by meteor etc).

So population of other planets is a necessity, but this is dependent on the desire and the technology. The technology will only be developed if the desire becomes strong enough. As the perception of the threat increases, so the incentive to develop the technology will increase. Therefore, barring unforeseen accidents, it is only a matter of time before they will.


Now head over to Love to Lead and vote for me!
Vote for me on Love To Lead

21 comments

Unknown said...

Just voted!
And as there is no rival writer yet, guess what. I voted for your article!

Good luck! ;-)

Anonymous said...

Good response Kim. Just knowing you from your blog and a few emails between us I think you fully expressed yourself well on this issue. However, I don't agree.

Who are we to destroy a planet that has been around, according to science, billions of years. We are organisms just like any other on this planet. I can just hear the ant colony under my doorstep having a town meeting discussing how they are destroying the planet by eating to much of my garden.

When ever someone bitches about global warming I roll my eyes. Yes, there are always going to be climate shifts and they happen gradually, but who are we to say that we are the cause of it. These shifts were here way before we were.

If there is such a thing as global warming I'm all for it and will do anything in my power to see to its progress. Give me an aerosol can or two so I can depleat the ozone, if infact that will do it.

Nothing like having a warm 75F or 80F in January on the U.S northeast:)

Now the real question about populating a new planet. It's kind of hard to say, maybe. If so, would it be in this galaxy? We haven't found a planet in our system that is even close to ours. Ever's a long time, but based on what I see now my answer would have to be no.

Anonymous said...

Done it!

Anonymous said...

I got that e-mail too Kim. I was going to do it but I have this problem: I'm a lazy bastard. Good job though. I'll vote for you.

Anonymous said...

OK, I'll try again, my last comment disappeared into cyber-space.

I have voted for you, good luck! I may have a go myself.

I did say more, but I can't be bothered to type it out again.

Kim Ayres said...

Cabronsito - thanks - you too :)

Bstrong - of course the world will survive, but will humans? And will life quality be good enough to make it worth surviving? What kind of global disasters do you want your children to grow up to?

Chris - thanks :)

Kav - thanks. I've just looked and I'm trailing in 3rd place with only a 1/3 of the votes of the 1st place person.

Kate - thank you. Blogger's been playing up today - I've been trying to reply for several hours but getting nowhere

Anonymous said...

Hey there KIM...you got my vote!

Anonymous said...

Hey there KIM...you got my vote!

Anonymous said...

I accept your challenge Kim. May the best man win (though you do have an advantage, which I hope will be used to offset the results)

Anonymous said...

Seems reasonable to me.

Stella said...

Voted

Anonymous said...

My first impulse is to say, I hope they don't populate another planet, they have made a big enough mess of it this time around. I think the human race will probably self destruct in a few thousand years. I don't feel it would be any great loss, and maybe a better race would be born somehow. BTW I have voted for you.

Pat said...

Been a good girl and voted and thank Heaven it was fairly straight forward so good luck! Not sure what a Toshiba is tho',

Anonymous said...

I voted for your piece, Kim. I hope you win.

I also believe we will inhabit other planets eventually, but I don't think we will be finished with this one ever. Pockets of humanity will survive any cataclysm (barring we are not evaporated). We are a tenacious, resourceful race and I have faith in our collective intelligence to overcome our collective ignorance.

Today, Jokemail has some topics for discussion in your philosophy class. I'd like to be in it for this one, "Why do banks charge a fee on "insufficient funds" when they know there is not enough money?" Figure that one out for me. And then my bank charges a $10 fee on top of an NSF for going under $1. I get so insulted when they do that.

Anonymous said...

Sure, humans will survive, we as a species may just have to adapt to different conditions just like we would have to if we “colonized another planet”. The quality of life changes everyday as do we. I adapt to change, don’t you?

We haven’t utilized a ¼ of the resources on this planet that will help our race live in the future. We aren’t populating the planet at a fast enough pace to make it worth searching for another planet to live on. There is so much land that mother earth has to offer but at the moment is uninhabitable (extremely large parts of Australia, Africa, Canada, Cleveland….) but we can more easily adapt to than let’s say Jupiter. Let’s also not forget that the earth’s oceans cover 71 percent of the earth’s surface and has an average depth of several thousand feet (1,000 meters). Again, I believe that we would be able to utilize our oceans if room should ever be a problem. Volcanic activity is also forming new islands that we will be able to eventually occupy.

We are not going to leave earth even if there is a strong possibility of another planet or space junk leaving their orbit and getting ready to slam into earth. There may come a time when the human race just gets wiped out.

Anonymous said...

Voted!

I think it's a solid argument.

Anonymous said...

I just voted for you!

Anonymous said...

That was me, Christina, don't know hoew I ended up as anonomous?

Kim Ayres said...

Quinn - thank you

Dr McCrumble - Given that you now have twice the votes I have and we're only a couple of days in, I'm beginning to regret mentioning it

Sven - thanks

Stella - thank you

Emma - thanks for your vote. I actually think it's one of those things where if we do self destruct then the question becomes irrelevant. If we don't, then sooner or later we'll have to find some way of doing it.

Pat - Thank you very much. A Toshiba is just the make, like Sony, or Panasonic.

JG - many thanks. Pockets might survive, but it would be a sad time if billions of people were wiped out.

I saw JokeMail's jokes. I remember when I was a kid wondering "Why doesn't glue stick to the bottle"

BStrong - I'm not saying we coudn't do much more, but sooner or later we leave the planet or cease to exist - this planet will not last forever - either because we make it uninhabitable ourselves, or the sun goes supernova, or we get hit by space junk. I like to be slightly more optomistic about the outcome.

FLG - thank you

Christina - thank you. It was probably a wordpress/blogger thing

Attila the Mom said...

What name are you posting under?????

I found Kate, but couldn't figure out which was you!

Kim Ayres said...

Atilla - I was the very first post on the site, which means if you click on the Full List of Contributors and scroll down to the very bottom of the page, you'll find my entry. I currently have 56 votes which is just outside the top 5 and the name I'm using is kimayres

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