space colonization

Reprinted with permission from Quanta Magazine’s Abstractions blog. As far as anyone knows, we have always been alone. It’s just us on this pale blue dot, “home to everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of,” as Carl Sagan so memorably put it. No one has called or dropped by. And yet […]

There are lots of reasons why colonizing space seems compelling. The popular astronomer Neil deGrasse Tyson argues that it would stimulate the economy and inspire the next generation of scientists. Elon Musk, who founded SpaceX, argues that “there is a strong humanitarian argument for making life multiplanetary…to safeguard the existence of humanity in the event […]

My conclusion is that in a colonized universe the probability of the annihilation of the human race could actually rise rather than fall.Illustration by David Revoy / Blender Foundation / Wikicommons There are lots of reasons why colonizing space seems compelling. The popular astronomer Neil deGrasse Tyson argues that it would stimulate the economy and […]

When we work to reduce the risk of global catastrophe, we are doing good at a literally astronomic scale.Illustration by CSA Images / Printstock Collection Ten years ago, I dropped out of my graduate program in electrical engineering. I was in computational electromagnetics, modeling how radio waves propagate through the ground. I liked it, but […]