Humans will evacuate from Earth within decades, Harvard professor predicts
Will you follow?
A renowned ‘alien hunter’ has said there will soon be a human exodus from Earth in the same way the Israelites set off into the desert thousands of years ago.
Harvard professor Dr Avi Loeb believes the migration could happen within the next few decades, and will be led by a modern-day Moses who has already been born.
He added that those pioneering humans may also find a new god among the stars, likely a form of alien life.
‘Just this week we had the Passover celebration of a few thousand people who left their status of slavery building the pyramids 3,200 years ago,’ said Professor Loeb.
‘This historic event has potential significance for our future because we are currently confined by gravity to the Earth, and at a point we decide to leave and be liberated from its confines, we will explore a new world.’
Speaking in conversation with Mark Christopher Lee of Nub TV, Professor Loeb added that it would only be a select group who journeyed to the stars.
‘It will not be the entirety of humanity obviously, but a small group who will proceed to explore interstellar space the way the Israelites, after 40 years in the desert, were liberated from their mindset of being slaves,’ he said.
‘It will take generations to liberate ourselves from thinking in the context of Earth.’
While he believes a 21st Century Moses will lead the exodus, the bigger question, he said, is who would play God?
‘Who is playing the role of the superhuman entity God that inflicted all the miracles on the Egyptians allowing the people to liberate themselves from Egypt?’ he said. ‘It seems to me like this would be played by an extraterrestrial advanced technological civilization that may be far more advanced.
‘They could potentially give birth to life in their laboratories, they could potentially even create a baby universe – these are qualities assigned to God in religious text. And actually, Moses was convinced of Gods’ existence after witnessing a burning bush that was never consumed.
‘Nowadays you can easily buy that online, but it would have impressed Moses and my point is that a much more advanced technology for us would look like a miracle.’
However, one major issue to overcoming the confines of Earth is conquering the sheer, unimaginable distances.
Voyager 1, the furthest human-made object in space has been travelling for almost 50 years, and even if it was heading towards our nearest star Proxima Centauri – which it isn’t – it would still take more than 73,000 years to reach it.
In order for humans to find a new home planet, a workaround will be needed.
‘In Einstein’s theory of gravity, space time is being curved by masses and it usually takes a long time – even at the speed of light – to cross the Milky Way galaxy,’ said Professor Loeb. ‘Tens of thousands of years.
‘But in principle, one can imagine that there are configurations of space and time that allow a shortcut where you can get from one point to another through another path that is shorter – that is allowed in general relativity.’
This is in essence a worm hole, an interstellar tunnel which many scientists suggest would have black hole at either end.
And if humans can figure out the technology to travel at or just below the speed of light, that could also solve the problem of marathon interstellar journeys.
Today, it takes light 100,000 years to cross our galaxy, the Milky Way. For scale, it takes eight minutes for light to reach us from the Sun.
But a nifty trick of physics would make the journey much more manageable.
‘Once you get very close to the speed of light, time ticks more slowly relative to an observer who is not moving, and so that would potentially allow us to make long journeys,’ said Professor Loeb.
This could mean that for those inside a spacecraft moving at or just under the speed of light, the journey would only seem to take about 20 years.
But as Nasa and China race to get astronauts back on the Moon, a mere 240,000 miles away, jetting off from Earth in search of new planets feels a little way off. However, Professor Loeb is confident other civilisations are already doing so, having found what he argues could be fragments of alien technology.
In January 2014, what appeared to be a meteorite crashed over the Pacific. Last year Professor Loeb and his team set out to recover pieces of the meteorite from the bottom of the sea.
Their analysis suggests the materials are from beyond our solar system, and given their unusual composition, could have been created artificially.
‘We collected 850 droplets that melted off objects and about 10% of them had a chemical composition different from any material that was previously reported from the Earth, the Moon, Mars or asteroids,’ said Professor Loeb.
‘That gives an independent indication that perhaps indeed the materials that this object was made, or came from, outside the solar system.’
However, other scientists are sceptical – including those who argue that sound waves detected near what was thought to be the crash site were actually from a truck driving along the coast.