The scientific and technological landscape is taking shape, for Mankind to expand dramatically the environment the terrestrial biosphere interacts with, inside and beyond the solar system boundaries. Indeed, when NASA Starlight draws a path to propel miniature spacecrafts to interstellar space using directed energy beams, the Breakthrough Starshot project, significantly funded with a first 100MUSD grant, backed by billionaires and promised to be operational within a generation, develops a laser offering a galactic scale communication and signaling capability. The envisioned 1 gram probes, accelerated to 20% of the speed of light, would carry a kinetic energy (1Tj) nearing the order of magnitude of an atomic bomb (Hiroshima bombing:54Tj). Then, such a system may be used for the mitigation of the risks related to threatening asteroids, or be used or envisioned as a weapon. Moreover, as the probes speed greatly exceed the Milky Way ejection speed, their range is potentially intergalactic. Considering this alongside the billion year time capsules already launched to space by the Arch Mission Foundation, the probes could be durable enough to reach faraway destinations. Space resistant organisms, potentially specifically selected or engineered, could be intentionally, incidentally or malevolently, carried aboard, and create new biospheres, or contaminate existing ones.. The paradigm is indeed shifting along the hypothesis that life forms may be preserved through interstellar distances, survive flight time, and seed (or contaminate) worlds. A 10e9 downscale (100W) of Breakthrough Starshot concept, way cheaper, could be sufficient for this purpose. Interstellar directed panspermia projects such as the Genesis project are coming within scope. At our doorstep now, has just been proposed the idea of testing the habitability of Proxima Centauri b, the most nearby planet within an habitable zone, this through the intentional sending of spores. In the meantime, well beyond the theoretical disputes around the intentional signaling to potential extraterrestrial civilisation[I], significant, thoroughly engineered messages are being sent by small groups to possibly habitable planets, located only lightyears away, so close that feedback could be welcomed (or not) within decades This, in the name of Mankind.
Footprint
We may soon – if not yet done- create, disturb, or interact with entire biospheres. Inside and even beyond the solar system. Given the range of existing technologies, and of the ones in development, our moral scope is expanding to scales of space and time, unheard of in History. Along with the size of the playground, comes the magnitude of the possible outcomes, good and bad, and the one of our responsibilities as a species.
“ We do not want to seed, destroy or interact with a biosphere “by mistake”. Nor do we want to “inadvertently” spread Life as we know it, or connect with intelligence “by chance”. Having the capability to understand the odds at stake, and being morally tooled, we have the responsibility to decide the footprint we want to have, onto the local cosmos”
This is a question of global responsibility, towards our biosphere and the potential preexisting or future biospheres out there. Now is the moment to develop a formal global and ethical discussion regarding the footprint we decide to accept or not, as a species, beyond us, beyond Earth and possibly the Solar System, onto the local cosmos. The subject matter we propose to consider is the one our cosmic footprint: the legacy we’ll leave behind, when looking back to our pale blue biosphere, from the largest scales of space and time.