Predicting the Fate of Humanity for the Next Century
Much has been said about the Fermi paradox, the paradox on why if there’s supposed to be intelligent civilizations out there, we humans have not observed any sign of life. One depressing but possibly true answer to this paradox is that almost all intelligent civilizations eventually discover weapons of mass destruction and end up destroying themselves before expanding via spaceflight. In Michio Kaku’s book Hyperspace a while ago, the physicist made the statement that the next 150 years will be a pivotal stage of whether humanity will expand into the stars or revert itself to the stone age or become extinct. In this paper, a prediction following the spirit of Drake equation is proposed. This equation is called the Shen equation, i.e. Global Calamity Equation, and it predicts the probability that human civilization will terminate within a given amount of time:
P(civilization termination) = P(Nuclear War)*P(Global Epidemic)*P(Asteroid Impact)*P(Ecological Collapse)
The probability for each calamity is based on best estimates from literary reviews in their respective fields.
Modeling Galactic Civilization Expansion and Encounters
Though alien life has not yet been confirmed, it is interesting to speculate on the state of galactic affairs in the universe. How has galactic civilization evolved over the eons? Does contact between different civilizations necessitate growth or decay? If human civilization provides any indication, contact between human civilizations has seen the imminent collapse of less technologically advanced civilizations when confronting more advanced civilizations. However, this has not always been the case and sometimes both civilizations benefit.
In this model, the galaxy is modeled as a distribution of possibly habitable systems on a three-dimensional grid following the best estimates of recent exo-solar planet discoveries. With the passage of the first time step, i.e. a millennium, each galactic civilization expands by ten light years from its home star system. With the passage of the second time step, i.e. a millennium again, each galactic civilization expands by one hundred light years (to take into account technology advancement). This exponential rise continues indefinitely. Each star system encountered is settled thus unless already settled by another galactic civilization. Upon civilization encounter, a random number is generated which decides whether the star system changes hands between civilizations, remains the same, or is annihilated. The entire simulation is run for 1000 time steps or until the galaxy is thoroughly colonized.
On Piezoelectric Power Generation from Space Debris
With the inevitable rise of space debris in the near future, protection from hypervelocity impacts has become an important issue for any spacecraft launched. Given the high kinetic energy yield of such impacts, an idea is proposed to capture such kinetic energy through piezoelectric materials incorporated into current Whipple Shield designs. Capturing such energy can be used to power components such as onboard batteries. A model and design of such a space power shield is proposed here based on experimental and theoretical models from NASA’s ORDEM2K.
