Are Scientists About to Send Life Beyond the Solar System? | Unveiled

Scientists Might Send Life Beyond the Solar System

Human history is littered with milestone moments for exploration. The invention of boats allowed early travelers to discover new lands and create new places to live. The development of air travel ensured that those once long journeys could suddenly be completed in just a few hours. And now, space travel is coming to the fore, as scientists try to strike a similar balance. We have spaceships, yes, but they’re so slow relative to the distances in space… that they’re only really, currently useful for very close destinations. And that’s all before we’ve factored in the many, many difficulties that a hypothetical crew would face if it ever, somehow, found itself a long way from Earth. Times are changing, though, and researchers are now reconsidering the upper limits of what’s possible.

This is Unveiled, and today we’re answering the extraordinary question; are scientists about to send life beyond the solar system?

Interstellar flight is humanity’s next major hurdle toward discovery and expansion. If we follow our natural instincts, our inherent desire to travel and explore, then it figures that we should look outwards from our planet, and even from our star system. But what’s certain is that we’re going to need much better technology if we’re ever going to bridge the vast distances of space.

So far, we have the Parker Solar Probe as an exciting indicator of what might be possible. Having reached a top speed of 364,621 miles per hour in its transit around the sun in 2021, it ranks as one of the fastest vehicles ever seen. Even with astronomical speeds like that, however, the reality of interstellar travel is sobering… as it would still take us thousands of years (even with the power of Parker) to reach just the closest star to our own, Proxima Centauri, which is more than twenty trillion miles away, or 4.2 light-years.

We already know, then, that even with the incredibly high speeds of a hypothetical future, interstellar journeys are likely to take many years’ worth of continuous flight. And so, it’s perhaps a little concerning that “life in space for extended periods of time” is still a subject that’s significantly understudied. There are various records for time in space, for humans and for other animals, but we still know surprisingly little about what the effects of long-term, potentially interstellar flight could be. Thanks to a recent proposal, however, that may be about to change.

News broke in early 2022 of professors Philip Lubin and Joel Rothman, from the University of California, Santa Barbara, who have hypothesized a way to send certain lifeforms into space, for a genuinely interstellar journey, at previously unachievable speeds. Their research and ideas could provide important information on both how to achieve the faster speeds in space we need, as well as how extended exposure to space affects lifeforms born on Earth.

Currently, there are a couple of hypothetical ways to achieve faster speeds on spacecraft. Both nuclear and chemical propulsion methods are unlikely to be the answer, as most scientists agree that they can’t overcome the problem of “more fuel equals more weight, which then requires more fuel”. Two of the more promising methods, then, are antimatter and photon propulsion. Unfortunately, we’re nowhere near understanding antimatter just yet... but we might stand a chance with photons. Photon propulsion is the use of light to propel a craft through space by either natural or artificial means - using either stars or, as with Lubin and Rothman’s concept, lasers.

Broadly, NASA is looking into this kind of tech with its Starlight program. The idea is that probes with solar sails will catch light like a sailboat does with wind. Lubin and Rothman specifically foresee a probe that’s boosted away from Earth using lasers, though, as part of a model which could be capable of reaching up to thirty percent the speed of light, at least. The technology is described as scalable too, with predictions that it will experience rapid growth once the first few examples are built. With more efficient sails and spacecraft, we could reach even higher speeds, which could - according to the most optimistic projection - allow us to reach Proxima Centauri in just twenty years. That’s still an entire generation’s worth of travel, but it would get us from A to B within one lifetime - something that wasn’t thought possible just a few years ago.

But the Lubin/Rothman thought experiment not only envisions a way to travel much faster through space, but also a feasible way to put living organisms through an interstellar journey. The idea essentially amounts to an ultra-long distance live feed. Using robotics onboard, it’s suggested that scientists will be able to monitor a traveling organism’s health and responses throughout their long-distance journey. At this early stage, however, the proposed spacecraft put forward is probably no larger in size than a human hand. So, we would have to be careful when choosing which organisms are put onboard. Lubin and Rothman variously suggest either tardigrades or C. elegans, a particular type of roundworm. These creatures are microscopic, and small enough that thousands of them could fit on even a tiny ship, providing a large sample size for study. They’re well known for their survivability in extreme conditions, and they can withstand suspended animation. They are, then, the perfect interstellar candidates.

Were the proposed launch and experiment to go ahead, then the results of various tests run on these hardy creatures would be sent back to Earth to be checked for abnormalities. It’s also suggested that the organisms would be woken up from suspended animation only once they had arrived at whatever far-off destination is chosen for them. Then, according to initial reports, they’d be put through various mental and physical studies, to determine what (if any) impact their space travel had had on them. We can see then that, in real time, this study would still have to be a multi-generational thing, with perhaps decades between launch and arrival. The results could prove vital, though, if the prospects for long-distance human travel have improved in the meantime.

But, for all the optimism, the idea does come with its fair share of criticism and ethical concerns, too. For one, the creatures wouldn’t be coming back to Earth, meaning they would be left to eventually die in space. Then there’s the often-cited risk of cross-contamination. Between our world and any other. For every launch, NASA follows careful protocols for what it calls Planetary Protection. The two main goals are to avoid other planets becoming infected with life from our own, and to avoid our own planet becoming contaminated with alien organisms. We’ve explored the potential problems of panspermia in greater depth in previous videos, so be sure to check those out! In this case, however, it has already been argued that the proposed experiment could feasibly take place without any contamination issues.

Ultimately, since there’s no actual destination in mind except for deep space, this experiment would solely be a means to gain information. A data collection drive, without any kind of specific experiment (or event) at its end. It’s a mission that could well serve as a basis for future interstellar voyages, however. An early contributor to the grand and overriding ambition, to one day create a vehicle that’s fast enough to cross interstellar space and capable of safely transporting humans, as well. Again, the proposed probe is said to be perfectly scalable, and could therefore reportedly be expanded to a size big enough to carry people - if the funds and material were available.

Clearly, there’s still so much work to be done between now and a future time when this idea could, possibly, become a reality. By even proposing it - a propulsion technique which could drive ships at 30 percent the speed of light, at least - Lubin, Rothman and their teams are heading into truly uncharted territory. But, while it all sounds pretty good on paper, we’ve yet to build anything even close to the perfect photon propulsion system. If this idea is a shape of things to come, though, then it’s already been promised that we should one day be using it to send humans to Mars with ease, perhaps with journey times of less than one month. Getting to just the moon would be a breeze.

There would still be so many unknowns for anything longer than that, which is why this particular story could one day be remembered as the beginnings of a breakthrough moment. So far, it’s theoretical science and hypothetical engineering only… but with the likes of NASA and others reportedly investigating the methods involved, we could soon see photon spaceships on launchpads all over the world. And that’s how scientists could be about to send life beyond the solar system.