Our time is running to its end too fast

Food for thoughts.

  The time allotted to humanity slips through the fingers of people as sand, who, with a perseverance worthy of better use, are trying to wrest material values from each other's hands, which they will soon no longer need!

The planet is heating up uncontrollably, and human fighting is accelerating the approach to an inevitable end.

As I believe, humanity immediately needs an idea that can unite them.

I propose to pay attention to the following ideas, which, if adopted, can unite all earthlings to overcome the problems that threaten to lead to the rapid extinction of both humanity and all other forms of existing earthly life.

The increase in ambient temperature on the Earth has become irreversible.

This is due to the increasing influence of the positive feedback between the increase in temperature at high latitudes and the acceleration of methane emission. This leads to the gradual softening of permafrost and accelerated release of bacterial methane.

It has been established that methane creates a 25 times more potent greenhouse effect than carbon monoxide during its existence in the atmosphere.

An increase in methane concentration in the atmosphere leads to a constantly accelerating increase in ambient temperature. In turn, an increase in ambient temperature leads to a constant rise in methane concentration.

There are no natural causes on Earth that can lead to a break in this feedback.

This is an irreversible process that can quickly enough, in no more than 100 years, lead to an increase in surface temperature above the water boiling point and, consequently, to the disappearance of the conditions necessary for the existence of biological life forms on the planet Earth.

In addition, the higher the concentration of methane in the atmosphere, the faster the ozone layer is destroyed, which protects all life from the harmful effects of cosmic radiation.

As temperatures rise, the intensity of destructive hurricanes, tropical rainstorms, floods, and droughts will increase.

These factors will lead to the destruction of habitually acceptable living conditions of the majority of the inhabitants of the Earth much earlier, approximately within 40 years.

 I see the only acceptable way to stop the increase in ambient temperature and prevent the destruction of the conditions necessary for the existence of life on planet Earth is to create between the Earth and the Sun at the Lagrange point L2 a protective screen, which allows control of the amount of solar energy reaching the Earth's surface.

We have no more than 30 years to build it.

The mass of such a screen can reach up to 100 million tons.

(More complex to implement projects can reduce the estimated mass of such a screen to 7 million tons)

It should be clear that it is impossible to bring from the Earth's surface to the L2 region, located more than 1 million kilometers from the Earth, the structures necessary to build the screen we need. It is also impossible to develop and maintain such a structure using the labor of astronauts.

Therefore, to accomplish this task, it is necessary to create autonomous, automatic means for extracting the required materials, producing the essential equipment and structural elements, and erecting and maintaining the constructed structure.

The implementation of such a project will require the efforts of all earthlings.

However, implementing such a project will give us only a temporary respite.

An increase in the number of people on Earth will inevitably lead to habitat destruction due to the depletion of natural resources and increased garbage and industrial waste accumulation.

The way out of this crisis may be found in resettling people in other celestial bodies.

However, this is not all if we want to increase the resistance of our civilization to the influence of the irresistible forces of nature.

We are already aware of many of them, such as collisions of galaxies, supernova explosions, dying stars, black holes, and, finally, crashes of celestial bodies.

The ability to resist these factors, which action extending over vast areas of the boundless Universe, can only be achieved by settling humanity on as many celestial bodies as possible and at the most significant distances.

Implementing this program will take millennia, but we cannot know when a situation incompatible with the existence of intelligent life in the Universe will arise.

The question is not whether intelligent life will disappear in a given region of the universe but when the conditions under which life can exist in a given place will be destroyed.

Only by straining every effort can we help complete these tasks before the conditions under which life can exist on Earth are destroyed, leading to the extinction of humanity, the only known bearer of intelligent life.

We can no longer think in medieval terms, which led to continuous wars between neighbors.

In the Middle Ages, the general principle of relations between neighbors was simple, kill your neighbor and take everything he has. If you don't, he will.

Through progress, the earth has become too small to continue following these principles.

Our knowledge has expanded so much that it has become possible to recognize the fragility of the existence of intelligent life and its uniqueness and take measures to preserve it until the end of time.

There is another way to solve the problem of maintaining the existence of intelligent life in the universe.

We can create artificial living creatures that can live right in outer space.

This step will save the existence of intelligent life but will not help keep the existence of humankind.

 The decision is on us.

Michael Zeldich