The Future of Humanity: Terraforming Mars, Interstellar Travel, Immortality, and Our Destiny Beyond Earth

by Michio Kaku

Geneticists have noticed the curious fact that any two humans have almost identical DNA. By contrast, any two chimpanzees can have more genetic variation between them than is found in the entire human population. Mathematically, one theory to explain this phenomenon is to assume that, at the time of the explosion, most humans were wiped out, leaving only a handful of us—about two thousand people.

If we scan all the life-forms that have ever existed on the Earth, from microscopic bacteria to towering forests, lumbering dinosaurs, and enterprising humans, we find that more than 99.9 percent of them eventually became extinct.

Nature will eventually turn on us, as it did to all those extinct life-forms.

“we live in a cosmic shooting gallery,”

REVOLUTIONARY WAVES OF TECHNOLOGY

fourth wave of science, which consists of artificial intelligence, nanotechnology, and biotechnology.

Goddard realized that as the rocket rose into the sky, its fuel tanks were gradually depleted. His next innovation was to introduce multistage rockets that discarded spent fuel tanks and therefore could shed some dead weight along the way, vastly increasing their range and efficiency.

Since science is the engine of prosperity, nations that turn their backs on science and technology eventually enter a downward spiral.

Hebb’s rule, which states that the more you perform a task, the more the neural pathways for that task are reinforced. As the saying in neuroscience goes, neurons that fire together wire together.