The Oracle

About Me

Baldev Singh Gill
My ideas and opinions on various topics relating to the evolution and future of the human race

Blogs I follow:

1. The Mars Project - Why Go To Mars?

   

   Ever since I was a child I had always wondered what lied beyond the stars, is there extraterrestrial life? Could mankind one day expand our civilization to another planet? Could we someday travel to distant planets and star systems as they do in Star Trek? And you know what? I think we can. I sincerely believe humanity will eventually spread to other planets and form colonies on different worlds. Colonizing other worlds is not an easy task, it will take decades or even hundreds of years but I believe it will begin in our lifetime.

   Looking at the planets in our solar system, Mars seems to be the most suitable to colonize with our current level of technological development. Thus this is the beginning of a series of articles where I shall outline the entire Mars Project beginning with this; why should we go to Mars?

   Mars. The red planet. Every now and then we see an article in the papers or on the web regarding the red planet and scientist arguing of the possibility of travelling to our neighboring world. However the question I have always observed being asked is “why?” Why waste hundreds of billions of dollars on Mars? Let me tell you why:

   Ever since the dawn of our civilization, mankind have been explorers. We traveled from our mother land to explore a world that we barely knew anything about and now humanity can be found on every corner of this world. Exploring is in our nature, you do it all the time, and don’t you get excited travelling to a new place? You may say it’s just tourism, but think logically, why do people bother travelling all over the world just to visit a place they have never been before? It’s because deep within all of us there is a need for exploration. We need to explore, the thrill of discovery cannot be compared to any other feeling in the world. The mission to Mars will bring mankind together the same way the mission to the moon did. It will give mankind a reason to be proud of ourselves. It’ll give children a reason to dream about something other than games and toys. The mission to mars will rekindle hope in humanity.

   Of course there is more to the Mars Project than sentimental reasons. Recently scientist discovered that water is no longer the elixir of all life. They found organisms living in some of the most toxic environment in the world. These organisms were not carbon based like animals or plants; instead their building blocks consist of chemicals such as methane and sulfur. What this means is that while mankind maybe based on carbon and depend on water this may not be the conditions for life on other planets. There is a huge amount of speculation that Mars at some point in its history may have water or a liquid ocean which leads us to speculate that it might have harbored life.  Thus project Mars will allow scientist to confirm whether was there ever life on red planet? Perhaps there still is? Even if life on the red planet had been wiped out, scientist could study fossils and all sorts of other data to understand what lead to its destruction and perhaps armed with that knowledge we could prevent our civilization from following a similar path.

   I know by now you’ll be thinking that all of this is mainly speculation and none of it could possibly be true. But how do you know? How could anyone know? Mars is completely alien to us. True we have sent probes that provided us with a certain amount of knowledge but the entire planet is still untouched there is a whole world to be explored, even today we are still surprised by what we find in our own backyard imagine what we’ll find on Mars. 

   From what we know of Mars atmosphere, it contains large quantities of carbon dioxide and other gases with low concentration of oxygen. This atmosphere is not ideal for humans, so we’ll be confined to space suites. But using hydroponics in a controlled environment I believe just might be possible for us to plant trees and have a Martian garden. In the long term if certain quantity of that oxygen that is released by these plants is slowly released into the atmosphere we might be able to stabilize the Mars atmosphere enough for humans. Water may not be a problem since recent evidence suggests there might still be water under the planet’s surface. Should the Mars mission discover the land on Mars suitable to support plant life, we could have huge areas of land for plants since all plants need are water, sunlight and carbon dioxide. Most of which can be found on the red planet.

   However are scientific and sentimental reasons good enough to justify a mission to Mars? What else can the red planet offer us? Would it surprise you if I told you Mars has the most valuable resource on Earth? Land. The entire landmass of Mars will be at our disposal. Here on earth land has already become a scarce resource, I won’t be surprised if in a few years nations may march to war in order to obtain land. Thus the Mars project provides a solution for mankind.

   Our population is growing out of control, by the year 2020 it’s projected that the human species will reach a population level of 9 billion. There are not enough resources on planet earth to support a population of that size. This is one of the major reasons outer space exploration is of paramount importance. In order to prevent a large global genocide humanity has to expand beyond our own planet. By colonizing Mars we will be able to possibly create large areas of farm land or even pockets of human colonies that will eventually ease the burden of planet earth.

   Believe it or not, short of genocide there is no other way to support the level of human population besides looking to space.

   In the following articles I will outline the entire Mars project from its beginning to the complete colonization of the red planet.

   Baldev Singh

2. Reformatting Earth

   

   It’s hard to believe that’s it’s only been 3 months since the beginning of 2011. I have to say 2011 seems to be a really happening year and I don’t necessarily mean that in a good way. Planet has been busy this couple of months; firstly there is the political situation in Tunisia and Libya. Then there are the earthquakes in New Zealand, Japan, and more recently the quakes in Thailand and Myanmar. All these events have renewed and strengthened people believe that 2012 will indeed be the end of humanity.

   I have to say I strongly disagree, granted the events happening right now are not really taking my side, and I also understand why people are beginning to believe in the end of humanity. However I find it impossible to believe that humanity could ever end, I have a huge amount of faith in our species and believe me even if the end of days were to actually come to pass we humans will survive in some form or another. We are a species built to endure which is proved by our awesome ability to adapt to seemingly impossible conditions or situations, trust me humanity is built to survive.

   So this begs the question, what will actually happen in 2012? What did the Mayan’s predict? But let’s start with why do people even believe the Mayan’s? I actually find this situation rather hilarious, if your best friend were to tell you that the world was going to end in May this year, you would laugh it off and tell him to get his head checked. If the Pope were to make the similar announcement on CNN you would change the channel and watch CSI instead. So why do we believe in a civilization that existed over a thousand years ago with virtually zero level of technology? I have to say, no matter how much I respect humanity; our stupidity is often downright hilarious.

   Am I saying that the Mayan’s are wrong? Not really, i believe that 2012 will be a prodigy year in all of human history. Something will definitely happen in 2012, I am not saying that the world will end in 2012 I am saying that the world as we know it will end in 2012. Allow me to explain; right now humanity is struggling to control a world that is rapidly spinning out of control, our population is increasing exponentially, economy is going nuts and people seem to have lost their minds in certain parts of the world while natural disasters have been hitting every other nation on a weekly basis. The most apt description for our situation will be that “earth is a large ship with too many holes and humanity are the crew struggling to plug the leaks, however each time we plug one 2 more spring up”.

   Thus I believe that 2012 will be the year when order is introduced into this chaos. In computer terms it will be like reformatting the drive to get rid of redundant and corrupted data in order to ensure the system is running smoothly again. So what I’m saying is in 2012 an event or a series of events will take place that will allow humanity to regain control of a world that is slipping out of their hands. The question then arises, what will this event be? How can we find order from chaos?

   Now that’s a difficult question, the answer might be something none of us has ever thought of or worst case scenario would be a catastrophic event that brings humanity to its knees. I can’t really predict what will actually happen but I can say this, the human population will be dealt with a severe dent, this will happen for obvious reasons; lesser numbers are easier control.

   I believe planet earth is also preparing to be reformatted, just look at the rise in the number of natural disasters as we get closer to 2012. Earthquakes are happening too often and very powerfully too. Something is definitely happening to our planet and our civilization, I guess we will just have to wait and see what happens.