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What’s humanity? Do our minds set us other than the remainder of nature and from the remainder of Earth? Or does Earth have a collective thoughts of its personal, and we’re merely a part of that thoughts? On the literal face of it, that final query may sound ridiculous.
However a brand new thought experiment explores it extra deeply, and whereas there’s no agency conclusion about humanity and a planetary thoughts, simply fascinated with it invitations minds to rethink their relationship with nature.
Overcoming our challenges requires a greater understanding of ourselves and nature, and the identical is true for every other civilizations that make it previous the Nice Filter.
Humanity is fairly pleased with itself typically. We’ve constructed a more-or-less world civilization, we’ve worn out lethal ailments, and we’ve traveled to the Moon. We’re so good we’re taking steps to guard Earth from the kind of calamitous affect that worn out Earth’s earlier tenants, the dinosaurs. However that’s only one perspective.
One other perspective says that we’re nonetheless primitive. That billions of us are within the grip of historic superstitions. That nuclear conflict haunts us like a specter. That tribalism nonetheless drives us to do horrible animalistic issues to 1 one other. That we’re not smart sufficient to handle our personal technological development.
Each views are equally legitimate. All that may actually be mentioned is that we’re not as primitive as we was, however we’re nowhere close to as mature as we should be if we hope to persist past the Nice Filter.
Can we provide you with a approach to clarify what stage we’re at in our improvement? The authors of a brand new article assume they will. They usually assume we are able to solely try this if we keep in mind Earth’s planetary historical past, the collective thoughts, and the state of our know-how.
This trio of scientists wrote the brand new article within the Worldwide Journal of Astrobiology. It’s titled “Intelligence as a planetary scale course of.” The authors are Adam Frank from the College of Rochester, David Grinspoon from the Planetary Science Institute, and Sara Walker from Arizona State College. The article is a thought experiment based mostly on our scientific understanding of Earth alongside questions on how life has altered and continues to change the planet.
People have a tendency to think about intelligence as a property belonging to people. Nevertheless it’s additionally a property belonging to collectives. Social bugs use their collective intelligence to make selections. The authors take the thought of intelligence even additional: from particular person intelligence to collective intelligence, to planetary intelligence. “Right here, we broaden the thought of intelligence as a collective property and lengthen it to the planetary scale,” the authors write. “We contemplate the methods during which the looks of technological intelligence could signify a sort of planetary-scale transition, and thus is perhaps seen not as one thing which occurs on a planet however to a planet, a lot as some fashions suggest the origin of life itself was a planetary phenomenon.”
We’ve divided Earth’s life types into species. We acknowledge that evolution drove the event of all these species. However are we lacking one thing in our urge to categorise? Is it extra right to view life as planetary slightly than as particular person species? In any case, species didn’t all of a sudden seem; every one appeared in an ongoing chain of evolution. (Apart from the unique species, whose origins stay clouded in thriller.) And all species are linked collectively within the biosphere. It’s typically identified that Earth is a bacterial world and the remainder of us are solely right here due to micro organism.
It’s worthwhile to recall the work of Vladimir Vernadsky. Vernadsky was an vital founding father of biogeochemistry. Wikipedia defines biogeochemistry as “… the scientific self-discipline that includes the examine of the chemical, bodily, geological, and organic processes and reactions that govern the composition of the pure atmosphere (together with the biosphere, the cryosphere, the hydrosphere, the pedosphere, the environment, and the lithosphere).
Vernadsky noticed that the biosphere system is strongly linked to the Earth’s non-living techniques. It’s obscure the biosphere with out taking a look at the way it’s linked with different techniques just like the environment. The linkage permits the biosphere to form Earth’s different “spheres.”
Vernadsky wrote: “Activated by radiation, the matter of the biosphere collects and redistributes photo voltaic power and converts it finally into free power able to doing work on Earth. A brand new character is imparted to the planet by this highly effective cosmic pressure. The radiations that pour upon the Earth trigger the biosphere to tackle properties unknown to lifeless planetary surfaces, and thus rework the face of the Earth.”
Of their article, the authors level out how organisms modified Earth’s biosphere. When the power to photosynthesize appeared in lifeforms, particular person lifeforms used it to nice profit. However collectively, they oxygenated Earth’s environment within the Nice Oxygenation Occasion (GOE.) The photosynthesizers opened a pathway for their very own continuation and for extra complicated life to develop. It not solely modified the course of evolution, but it surely additionally modified the very geology and geochemistry of the planet. The authors liken the collective exercise of photosynthetic organisms to collective intelligence.
“Making sense of how a planet’s intelligence is perhaps outlined and understood helps shine a bit mild on humanity’s future on this planet—or lack thereof,” they write. “If we ever hope to outlive as a species, we should use our intelligence for the larger good of the planet,” mentioned Adam Frank.
That received’t come as a shock to Universe At this time readers.
The authors level out how collective exercise adjustments the planet. They base their experiment partly on the Gaia speculation, which says that the Earth’s non-biological techniques—geochemistry, plate tectonics, the environment, the oceans—work together with dwelling techniques to keep up all the planet in a liveable state. With out the “collective intelligence” of the organic world, the Earth wouldn’t be liveable.
The authors use an instance from forests as an instance the purpose.
Earth’s nice forests couldn’t exist with out the community of mycorrhizal fungi that stay under floor. Tree roots work together with the community and the community strikes vitamins round within the forest. The fungi get carbon in return. With out this community, the timber couldn’t survive, and no nice forests would emerge.
As schoolchildren, we be taught that crops produce the oxygen we have to breathe. With out photosynthetic organisms, we couldn’t survive. So the collective exercise of the plant world (and algae, and many others.) adjustments the planet to a spot hospitable for humanity and different complicated life. However now in our quick time on Earth, we’ve developed know-how, which is essentially the most highly effective expression of our collective planetary intelligence. What does that imply for Earth?
The authors speak about 4 levels of Earth’s improvement and the way we are able to perceive the thought of collective planetary intelligence as these levels evolve.
“Planets evolve via immature and mature levels, and planetary intelligence is indicative of once you get to a mature planet.”
— Adam Frank, co-author, “Intelligence as a planetary scale course of.”
The primary stage is an immature biosphere. Billions of years in the past the Earth was an immature biosphere. The one lifeform was micro organism, which couldn’t exert a lot pressure on Earth’s planetary techniques. Due to this, there was no vital world suggestions between life and the planet. There was no collective intelligence.
The second stage was a mature biosphere. This was about 2.5 billion to 540 million years in the past. Photosynthesis appeared after which crops. Photosynthesis oxygenated Earth’s environment and an ozone layer developed. Life was making the Earth extra steady and hospitable for itself. That is the collective planetary intelligence the authors are speaking about.
The third stage is the place we’re at now, in response to the authors. We stay in an immature technosphere of our personal creation. Our communication, transportation, electrical, and governmental networks are more and more linked right into a technosphere. A fast scan of headlines in shopper tech media reveals how we are able to get a bit enthusiastic about what we’ve created as a species (Meta, anybody?) Nevertheless it’s smart to not get too excited. Why?
As a result of our technosphere shouldn’t be linked with pure techniques. Our immature technosphere largely ignores its affect on the Earth’s environment, oceans, and the biosphere basically. We extract fossil fuels and push carbon into the environment in an unregulated manner. The hazard is that this technological immaturity will pressure the Earth’s techniques right into a state that imperils the technosphere itself. The immature technosphere is working in opposition to itself and the biosphere that helps it.
The fourth stage represents a workable future. It’s the mature technosphere, and in a mature technosphere, our technological intelligence advantages the Earth. For instance, renewable power sources like photo voltaic power will displace fossil fuels and assist the local weather regulate itself and keep its habitability. Technological agriculture will strengthen the Earth’s soil techniques slightly than degrade them. We’ll use our know-how to construct cities that co-exist with pure techniques slightly than dominating them. However there are a whole lot of unknowns.
“Planets evolve via immature and mature levels, and planetary intelligence is indicative of once you get to a mature planet,” Frank says in a press launch. “The million-dollar query is determining what planetary intelligence appears like and means for us in follow as a result of we don’t know easy methods to transfer to a mature technosphere but.”
In a mature technosphere, techniques would work together in mutually useful methods, just like the timber and the mycorrhizal community in forests. A community of suggestions loops each technological and pure would work intelligently to keep up habitability. This is able to be a completely new association, and the complexity would enable new capabilities to emerge. The rising capabilities are one hallmark of a mature technosphere. One other is self-maintenance.
“The biosphere discovered easy methods to host life by itself billions of years in the past by creating techniques for shifting round nitrogen and transporting carbon,” Frank says. “Now we now have to determine easy methods to have the identical sort of self-maintaining traits with the technosphere.”
There are some indicators that we’re groping in direction of a mature technosphere, however they’re largely crisis-driven. In 1987, we banned the ozone-harming class of chemical compounds referred to as chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) after scientists discovered a gap within the ozone layer. Acid rain is attributable to sulfur dioxide and nitrogen dioxide and we’ve developed worldwide agreements to restrict them after scientists discovered that acid rain damages soil, trees, fish, and other aquatic animals. DDT was used to kill pests and malarial mosquitoes but many countries banned their use when scientists found that it persisted in the environment and led to population declines in birds of prey, among other biosphere-harming effects.
So there’s been some progress towards planetary intelligence. But those successes are mostly corrections to previous bad behavior. Can we be more proactive?
We might be starting to. We’re developing systems to detect, catalog, and deflect dangerous asteroids that pose a collision hazard with Earth. If we can do that, we can protect the entire biosphere from calamity, along with our own civilization. NASA and the ESA are working on planetary defense, and NASA launched a technology demonstration mission in 2021. If we can use technology to protect the entire planet, that must constitute a step toward a mature technosphere.
Some of these efforts are heartening, but we have a long ways to go, and this thought experiment can help us think more clearly about it. “We don’t have planetary intelligence or a mature technosphere yet,” Frank said. “But the whole purpose of this research is to point out where we should be headed.”
Are the development of planetary intelligence and a mature technosphere hallmarks of civilizations that make it past a “Great Filter?” Maybe. That idea dovetails with Frank’s other work in the search for alien technosignatures on distant exoplanets.
“We’re saying the only technological civilizations we may ever see—the ones we should expect to see—are the ones that didn’t kill themselves, meaning they must have reached the stage of a true planetary intelligence,” he says. “That’s the power of this line of inquiry: it unites what we need to know to survive the climate crisis with what might happen on any planet where life and intelligence evolve.”
For we lifeforms on Earth at this time, Anthropogenic Global Warming is the biggest threat to a sustainable biosphere. While we can debate what it is about our species that drives us to want more stuff, consume more stuff and create more pollution, the debate about AGW itself is over. It’s happening and we’re causing it.
There are some glimmers of planetary intelligence flickering on the horizon. But we’ve got a long way to go yet. Will we become intelligent enough to make it past the climatic Great Filter?
Originally published on Universe Today.
For more on this topic, read Planetary Intelligence: Can a Planet Have a Mind of Its Own?
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