What If We Relocated Humanity to Proxima B?

this is a planetary emergency evacuation please remain calm and board your space shuttles you know even though humanity might not have to leave the earth in your lifetime we should start preparing early on not only could it take centuries to set up the relocation program it would take generations to move to a potential new home that right there is Proxima Centauri B or just Proxima B it's the closest potentially habitable planet out there its temperatures are in the bearable range and it could have just the right breathable atmosphere we only have to get there how long would our journey last how many people would we send to populate the new world successfully and what if it turned out that Proxima B wasn't as habitable as we thought this is what if and here's what would happen if we relocated humanity to Proxima be when astronomers started finding planets outside our solar system or exoplanets we realized that there are many worlds out there that meant that Earth doesn't have to be our home forever and that we don't have to die with our planet when the Sun engulfs it some five billion years from now [Music] now that we found over 4100 exoplanets we've learned something rather disappointing not all exoplanets are good for humans to live on most of the worlds we've encountered are either ice giants like Neptune or gas giants like Jupiter and Saturn only 161 of those planets are terrestrial like Earth and when it comes to sustaining human life being terrestrial isn't quite enough Proxima B is very promising it orbits a red dwarf star called Proxima Centauri in a system with three stars in it Proxima Centauri is small it only has between seven-and-a-half and 50% of our sun's mass that's a good thing because the red dwarf Proxima Centauri is so much smaller than our yellow dwarf Sun it burns at a lower temperature it takes stars like Proxima Centauri much longer to burn through all of their hydrogen supply because of that Proxima Centauri has a lifetime of trillions of years while our Sun has a ten billion year expiration term that alone makes Proxima be a good candidate for relocation that and the fact that its orbit lies in Proxima Centauri's habitable zone that means there's the potential for liquid water and comfortable surface temperatures if we're lucky Proxima B would have an atmosphere that we could breathe if it does the surface temperatures would be in the range of 30 degrees I don't know about you but I'd move there right now I just need to warn you then there are a few problems a trip to Proxima B would be long and very dangerous Proxima B might be the closest habitable exoplanet we've got but that doesn't mean it's close the red dwarf star Proxima Centauri is about 4.3 light years away that means that if you could travel at the speed of light it would take you four point three years to get there nothing we've built so far can reach that kind of speed realistically a trip to Proxima Centauri in a space shuttle would take 165 thousand years give or take that's right some of the colonists would be born in transit some of them would never see the earth some of them would never see Proxima be they just live their lives aboard the spaceship and die in space how many humans would we need to send on a mission exactly well according to some calculations 98 people would be just enough their descendants would arrive at Proxima be with enough genetic diversity to populate the entire planet and that's accounting for possible cases of infertility inbreeding and sudden deaths in those calculations the crew would be travelling on something faster than a space shuttle their mission to Proxima B would only take 60 300 years but don't be surprised technology is constantly improving right now a scientific and technological program called breakthrough initiatives is looking at how we can get in the neighborhood of Proxima Centauri within one generation their project star shot is working on an ultra-light unmanned probe that would reach the star system in just 20 years now I definitely need to sign up but again Proxima B is really far away it's so far that we can't even see if it has an atmosphere it might just happen that we would arrive at a frozen planet with surface temperatures of minus 40 degrees and even if it has an atmosphere it might not be the right one we might still enjoy warm temperatures but we'd be doing that in spacesuits with oxygen tanks or Proxima B could be tidally locked to Proxima Centauri meaning that one of the planets sides would always face its star and the other side would be plunged into darkness space flight itself could bring some unpleasant surprises spending an entire lifetime in a zero-gravity environment would lead the crew members to lose muscle and bone density they'd be constantly exposed to space radiation their microbiomes immune systems and physiology would all be different from ours they wouldn't be the same kind of humans as we are they would change their values culture they might forget all the farming techniques we teach them to sustain themselves in space and on their new planet they might change their mind about the mission altogether and just turn their spaceship in a different direction who knows they might even come back to earth and take revenge for all those years they were forced to spend in space if that happens I'll be asking for a refund sending anyone on a mission like this is a huge risk we'd need to design and build a vehicle choose the space travelers very carefully supply them with all the food and water and make sure they could become self-sustaining we'd have to design new propulsion navigation hibernation and life-support systems and we have no way of knowing if Proxima B is actually habitable well now I don't really feel like going there do you maybe a better idea would be to build a mega structure somewhere closer to the solar system but that's a story for another what-if [Music] you

Channel: undefined

Views: 1,496,873

Rating: 4.9160385 out of 5

Keywords: what if, what happens if, scifi, science documentary, what if scenario, mysteries, proxima b, proxima centaury b, habitable planets in space, solar system, space, planet earth, cosmos documentary, universe, astrophysics, life on proxima b, proxima b documentary, nasa, alien life, proxima b habitable, proxima b nasa, habitable planets, what if cosmos, what if humanity

Id: rD_gmEw6ZyI

Length: 8min 21sec (501 seconds)

Published: Sun Mar 29 2020