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Should space research be redirected to the preservation of humanity?

The case has been made for accidents and violent crimes being the products of an energy deficit (1), that is a decline in Daniel Atkinson energy charge which is reflected in the tissue pH (2). It might be instructive to consider the problem very broadly in terms of the entropy paradox confounding the second law of thermodynamics. The second law states that systems always progress from states of lower to states of higher entropy or more specifically never progressing from states of higher to states of lower entropy, entropy being a measure of the degree of disorder in a system. Living organisms are said to progress from states of higher to states of lower entropy in violation of the second law thereby creating an entropy paradox. Fred Adams, popular science writer and Professor of Physics at the University of Michigan, claims that the second law is not violated by living organisms for the universe as a whole still progresses to a state of higher entropy. In his book, "The Road to Reality", Sir Roger Penrose states that the entropy paradox is merely the delay in the inevitable progression to a state of higher entropy with ageing and death, the delay being cause by the ability of organisms to generatetheir own energy from from the consumption of nutrients and oxygen. If one accepts Sir Roger's explanation of the entropy paradox does that not mean that the sun, earth and all the other planets must also be living organisms? James Lovelock has proposed just that in his Gaia hypothesis which has been well received certainly in the popular science press. As Sir Roger points out the sun is in thermodynamic equilibrium with the earth transmitting as much energy to earth in the form of high energy bosons or photons in sunlight and receiving an equal amount back in a larger number of lower energy bosons (infrared waves) during the day and night. The inference is that the sun, earth and the planets all generate their own energy, the sun doing so by nuclear fusion of hydrogen. Humanity may be viewed as a giant organism populating an even larger organism, Gaia. In which case is the energy all of humanity generates progressing to a state of higher or lower entropy? That would seem to depend upon whether one considers all of humanity to be a thriving infant or an ageing adult. James Lovelock's accounting of the state of Gaia in his most recent book, "The Revenge of Gaia", leaves little doubt that humanity is an ageing adult. In which case global injury and violence may be a direct consequence of it the brain being most sensitive to a decline in energy charge as clinical experience of the critically ill has established. Perhaps one should take Fred Adams's view of entropy and conclude that humanity is progressing to a higher entropy state as a whole but exhibiting different degrees of entropy paradox in different communities and segments within those communities. In which case human conduct and energy charge are intimately related and all of the factors that might compromise the energy charge of all of humanity. These include the rapid growth in the population, the failure to meet all nutient demands, the failure to provide the gaseous environment conducive to optimizing oxidative phosphorylation, and the environmental toxins inhibiting oxidative phosporylation. Leplace determinism allows causes of past events to be determined and future events to be predictive with reasonable degrees of statistical confidence provided the initial conditions can be defined. The methodology has been refined for determining events at the Big Bang. It might be constructive to construct models with the future of humanity in mind. I doubt that the model will include global warming, nuclear war or any of the other Armageddon scenarios depicted in the popular press and entertainment industry. 1. Every driver needs metabolic testing and the information needs to be stored in a "black box" Richard G Fiddian-Green (22 July 2004) eLetter re: R A Shults, D A Sleet, R W Elder, G W Ryan, and M Sehgal Association between state level drinking and driving countermeasures and self reported alcohol impaired driving Inj Prev 2002; 8: 106-110 2. Richard G Fiddian-Green Irreversible shock, gastric intramucosal pH and energy charge. http://adc.bmjjournals.com/cgi/eletters/78/2/155#1417, 12 Mar 2005 www.cmaj.ca/cgi/eletters/174/5/620

Public Comments

1. Very good question. i agree with you. First time i felt there should some option to select good question as well. If so i would have selected this one.
2. Yes indeed.First we must wise up and learn how to feed ourselves and protect ourselves without damaging this medium in which we live.Once that initial hump is cleared we can then work on improving the rest of the planet...tom science
3. I think that the correct way out of the chaos the human species seems to be going towards, with the rest of the world with it, is not through a door to space but through a change in the human species. most organisms adapt when in response to external change, or are exterminated. the human species will soon have the technology to modify living organisms. what I suggest is to start planning an intensive modification of ourselves, to adapt to the conditions that we created, or to achieve a better balance with nature. Therefore I think that the way out of this situation lies within the fields of biotechnology, ecology and social science and not with space research. by the way' if the human species "decides" to select this option the end result will be that we/our descendants will not be human anymore.
4. Err, no. You should read Penrose' book more carefully before leaping to conclusions. Entropy is the tendency of a system to spread available energy over the maximum number of microstates. Life on earth is possible because energy comes from the sun in a small number of microstates - a small number of high energy photons - and leaves as a large number of low energy (infra red or radio) photons. Entropy does not imply life.
5. No, I'd have to disagree with those statements of entropy to energy vs applied to "life". Living things are dependent on energy, true, but can also find various alternatives. Human life will follow ecological paths. When a species outweighs its available resources, it will find balance...the hard way. Unfortunately certain countries are breeding much faster than can be sustained, and other countries, like the U.S. consume far more than can be sustained. A combination of both is certainly not good. Perhaps they are equating energy entropy to the resources I'm talking about, but even that won't immediately destroy all life, it will just limit the amount of life to the amount of available resources. But to answer the question more directly....space science currently does more for the help of humanity because it helps all the other sciences in ways never before available. Agriculture, Biology, Meteorology, materials research, new medicines, city planning, seismology, oceanography, etc... They all have had huge leaps of benefit directly from space science research. And at least within the USA, Welfare alone receives 3 times the amount of money that NASA receives annually (45 billion to Welfare, and 16 billion to NASA). Finding ecological balance will be the only way we will prevent the human race from outstripping its resources, regardless of the entropy of energy. And the more a space science program defines the parameters that can sustain us, the closer we'll understand the "tipping" point, but also finding ways to produce more energy/resources to prevent it from happening. And should we be able to, perhaps we can start colozing other places (certainly slowly at first) but those places will start with a very careful ecological balance and resource utilization, which might just help us all back on Earth. Great question. Thanks for letting me throw my two cents in.
6. Treat others as you would like to be treated. That may be hard at times, like when they are killing all of your family members and attacking you. But they do have hearts and are obviously able to set their mind so if we could give them something great to set their mind on and to teach their children then the warring will stop. Put money on teaching children. I saw this site. It tells of a way to change the heart and mind. http://www.peacefulsolution.org/