Space Travel: Science Fiction's Biggest Underachiever

In 1968, futurist Arthur C. Clarke wrote 2001: A Space Odyssey, which quickly became one of the most popular science fiction novels of the 20^th century. In Clarke’s vision of tomorrow, mankind in 2001 would have ring-shaped space stations that rotate to provide gravity, permanent lunar colonies which people routinely visit for business meetings, and fully-functional (if evil) artificial intelligence. The zeitgeist of the late 1960s, at the height of the space race, was one of unbridled optimism in the future of space travel. Just two years before Clarke’s novel was published, Star Trek had first premiered. It seemed inevitable that we were destined for the stars.

Looking at the world around us, it is easy to be disappointed at how space travel has progressed. The world today looks nothing like Star Trek, or even 2001: A Space Odyssey. After the Apollo missions ended in 1972, something strange happened that few futurists anticipated: mankind stopped exploring space, and turned inward to focus on problems at home. NASA’s budget was slashed. To the extent that space exploration progressed, it was done almost exclusively by robots rather than manned missions. If we were able to go back in time to the late 1960s and tell people that we would indeed have a permanent space settlement today, they would almost certainly envision something far grander than the International Space Station.

Why were the space enthusiasts wrong? The biggest obstacle has been political, not technological. In my opinion, political trends are much more difficult to predict than technological trends. From a 1968 perspective, the US and USSR were locked in a Cold War that would soon extend far above the earth’s surface. It was much easier to forecast the trends in space technology than to predict that the USSR would throw in the towel on the space race by the mid-1970s, and cease to exist at all soon thereafter. With the collapse of the USSR, the impetus for a space race has disappeared. No nation is willing to spend large sums of money exploring space without the threat of a rival beating them to it.

In light of this political reality, the exploration of other worlds seems to be permanently on hold. I do not envision this changing any time in the next couple decades. Although President George W. Bush called for the United States to return to the moon by 2020 and NASA stated that a permanent manned lunar base would be operational by 2024, it is highly unlikely that these goals will be fulfilled. The US is simply not motivated to do so.

Additionally, the economics of space travel have changed significantly since the Apollo missions. Due to advances in computer technology, it is now much cheaper to send robots to explore other worlds than it is to send human astronauts. Robots don’t need food, water, and air to keep them alive, and don’t need a return trip to earth. They can do almost everything a human astronaut can do, and can wirelessly transmit the data back home. Indeed, NASA has had some great achievements exploring our solar system, but the pioneers have all been robots.

It is possible that the private sector will be able to pick up part of the slack left by governments. SpaceShipOne, the first privately-owned spacecraft, claimed the Ansari X Prize in 2004. However, private space travel will never progress beyond orbital missions for super-rich adventure-seekers until there are some fundamental breakthroughs in rocketry. It currently costs $10,000 to send one pound into orbit, because rocket fuel itself is responsible for 90% of the weight of a rocket. As long as fossil fuels are the standard propulsion technology, human space travel will continue to be unaffordable for most people. Futurist and theoretical physicist Michio Kaku suggests that rockets could be powered by lasers instead of by fuel. Lasers on earth could fire at a water tank, vaporizing the water and propelling a rocket upward. Since the thrust would come from the ground instead of the rocket itself, it would eliminate the need for fuel and make rocketry 10 times more efficient.

Although this technique has been demonstrated to work in prototypes, it will be a long time before it can be applied to something as large as a rocket. Although many emerging technologies few people have imagined will suddenly take us by surprise, I think that space travel is something that will continue to disappoint us for many years.

PREDICTIONS:

As of 2025 – No human being has set foot on the moon since the Apollo missions.

As of 2035 – No human being has ever set foot on Mars.

The Democratic Threshold

In the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union, futurist and political economist Francis Fukuyama wrote a book in 1992 entitled The End of History and the Last Man, in which he theorized that nearly all nations would soon become liberal democracies. Since all competing global ideologies had been defeated, Fukuyama felt that it was only logical that the people of all nations would soon demand freedom from their leaders and live in peace happily ever after – the end of history. Since 9/11, Fukuyama’s predictions have frequently been derided and ridiculed for such a spectacularly inaccurate and overly-optimistic view of the future.

In light of the democratic revolts currently spreading across the Arab world, Fukuyama’s theory merits reexamination. Was he wrong, or just a few decades premature? Is liberal democracy the inevitable final stage of development, and if so, what kind of conditions are necessary for it to thrive? It’s easy to get swept up in the excitement of the moment – the collapse of communism must have been just as exhilarating to democrats as the (possible) collapse of Arab autocracy is today – but we must bear in mind that the crystal ball is always murky. It is unclear how far the current wave of revolutions will spread, or what the ultimate outcome will be. Charting “the end of history” based on recent current events is never a good idea.

Fortunately, we need not make wide-eyed predictions based upon what we wish were true. There is plenty of statistical data to analyze. The relationship between the economic success of a nation and its level of democracy is very strong. Nearly all countries with a GDP per capita (adjusted for purchasing power parity) of at least $10,000 are at least partially democratic, with the vast majority being full-fledged democracies, as measured by The Economist’s Democracy Index. However, the statistics don’t show us which is the cause and which the effect. Does an affluent society make people more willing to demand their democratic freedoms, or does democracy bring about affluence? There have been many autocracies which have grown their economies very quickly – South Korea in the 1970s, Chile in the 1980s, and China today – but they always seem to democratize around the same time they become wealthy. This suggests to me that an economically empowered people are more likely to demand democratic empowerment; and just as importantly, governments are likely to accede to their demands. In my view, a GDP per capita of $10,000 is a Democratic Threshold. No nation can economically develop past this level without transitioning to at least partial democracy.

But there is one group of countries that is a large exception to this rule. Nate Silver at FiveThirtyEight and Thomas Friedman at Foreign Policy Magazine have both pointed out the toxic effect that oil has on democracy. Indeed, the statistics bear this out. With the exception of Norway and the Netherlands, every oil-rich country (where oil exports account for at least 5% of GDP) is much less democratic than other countries at the same level of development without oil. Qatar may have a higher GDP per capita than the United States, but it is far less democratic. Oil breeds corruption and autocracy.

Taking oil-rich countries out of the mix, I have charted the relationship between democracy and economic development:

A few autocracies are nearing the $10,000 GDP per capita Democratic Threshold. A few others including China are not there yet, but are growing so fast that they will most likely reach it within a decade. Some countries have not reached the Democratic Threshold, but score far lower on The Economist’s Democracy Index than one would expect, given their GDP per capita. Nations falling into these categories are the ones best primed for some serious progress toward democracy. What countries would those be?

Country	GDP per capita (PPP)	Democracy Index	Expected DI	Democracy Deficit
Tunisia	$9,500	2.79	6.15	-3.36
North Korea	$1,800	1.08	4.43	-3.35
Uzbekistan	$3,100	1.74	4.99	-3.25
China	$7,400	3.14	5.89	-2.75
Djibouti	$2,800	2.20	4.89	-2.69
Cuba	$9,900	3.52	6.19	-2.67
Egypt	$6,200	3.07	5.71	-2.64
Laos	$2,400	2.10	4.73	-2.63
Swaziland	$4,500	2.90	5.38	-2.48
Burma	$1,100	1.77	3.92	-2.15
Vietnam	$3,100	2.94	4.99	-2.05
Tajikistan	$2,000	2.51	4.54	-2.03
Guinea-Bissau	$1,100	1.99	3.92	-1.93
Jordan	$5,300	3.74	5.55	-1.81
Fiji	$4,300	3.62	5.33	-1.71

(Disclaimer: Obviously I’m not saying that these countries are all poised to become liberal democracies overnight, merely that there is the potential for substantial progress. North Korea, for example, has set the democratic bar so low that even modest efforts toward democracy would be a major step forward.)

The three Arab states on this list – Tunisia, Egypt, and Jordan – are in the midst of serious challenges to their authority. It’s no coincidence that these three countries, and not other Arab states, are the epicenter of the protests. As I write this, Tunisians have successfully deposed their dictator in the Jasmine Revolution. Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak has declared he will not seek reelection this fall, although his prospects of remaining in power even that long look pretty bleak. Jordan’s enlightened King Abdullah has just dismissed his government and has wisely pledged to institute immediate democratic reforms.

The other countries on this list are an assortment of communist holdouts, rogue nations, and states dominated by a larger power. If China becomes democratic, for example, it could send shockwaves throughout the region and lead to the collapse of North Korea, Burma, and authoritarian regimes throughout Africa, which depend on China for their survival.

Fukuyama’s theory seems to be supported by the statistical evidence - liberal democracy is indeed the end of history. Once countries surpass the Democratic Threshold – approximately $10,000 GDP per capita – they almost invariably develop some form of democracy. Those that make a conscious decision to keep their people impoverished may be less likely to transition to democracy, but economic stagnation can lead to other forms of revolt due to public dissatisfaction. This leads to a paradox for authoritarian governments: They will quickly fall out of favor with the public if they can’t produce a strong economy, but prosperity will ultimately lead to their downfall in the longer term.

I can’t say that I agree with some of Fukuyama’s idealistic, neoconservative foreign policy recommendations for spreading democracy, but I do agree with his idea of “democratic determinism.” Countries without oil are ultimately destined to become democracies as they become wealthy. And even the petro-states have hope. As soon as the world transitions to alternative sources of energy, their economies will no longer be strangled by oil and it will no longer serve as a drag on their freedom. Democracy is coming to a country near you. It’s only a matter of time until we reach the end of history.

PREDICTIONS:

By 2013 – Cuba has made substantial progress toward democracy relative to where it stood at the beginning of 2011.

By 2016 – Tunisia, Egypt, and Jordan have made substantial progress toward democracy relative to where they stood at the beginning of 2011.

By 2018 – China has made substantial progress toward democracy relative to where it stood at the beginning of 2011.

State of the Union Analysis

President Obama’s 2011 State of the Union address was one of the most future-oriented addresses to Congress in recent memory, despite proposing relatively few new ideas. Although the speech consisted mostly of the same policy recommendations that could have been given by any Democratic politician of the last two decades, the things the president chose to emphasize offer some hints to the direction the United States is heading.

I felt that the first half of the speech dealing with domestic policy was far stronger than the foreign policy section. President Obama hit most of the key policy ideas that will dominate American politics in the coming decades, referring several times to “investing in the future.” As America’s infrastructure crumbles and its education system falls behind that of other nations, viewing this type of spending as an investment rather than an expense is absolutely essential for our future wellbeing. President Obama mentioned his National Broadband Plan for the second year in a row. Although it is a welcome step in the right direction, it is woefully inadequate at meeting the needs of a 21^st century economy. If the goals are met, broadband coverage in the United States in 2020 will be about the same as South Korea has today. Additionally, President Obama failed to take a firm stand on net neutrality or wireless carrier oligopolies, which have made the United States one of the least efficient countries in the developed world in telecommunications.

The President touched on our need for a new energy policy, referring to it as our “Sputnik moment” which is absolutely essential for the long-term success of the United States. I was pleased to hear him voice support for nuclear power, and continued subsidies of solar and wind power. The biggest flub from this section was his continued advocacy of biofuels, which have largely been discredited as an economical, environmentally-friendly form of energy. Biofuels sound to me more like an excuse for agricultural subsidies than a serious energy proposal.

President Obama hit a positive note on education, where he signaled a willingness to break with the teachers' unions, which have begun to fall out of favor with many Democrats. He touted the success of his Race to the Top Initiative, which has been the most progressive piece of education legislation in decades, and urged Congress to replace No Child Left Behind with an initiative that encouraged educational innovation. There were a couple areas of education policy that I would have liked to hear the president mention: online schools and charter schools. Although both are in their infancy and have problems which will need to be solved, mentioning them would have fit quite nicely with his theme of investing in the future, which will certainly not be dominated by traditional brick-and-mortar schools giving students standardized curricula.

President Obama’s calls for bipartisan deficit reduction were a bit difficult to take seriously, since neither political party has shown any real interest in the subject. The US structural deficit is only a problem inasmuch as it is larger than our rate of economic growth. President Obama proposed an ill-advised five-year discretionary spending freeze (which doesn’t square very well with his “investing in the future” theme, or the fact that we still have extremely high unemployment) but did not offer any substantial cuts to entitlements. He called for modest income tax increases after 2012, which will certainly be opposed by Republican members of Congress. President Obama’s deficit reduction commission offered a series of centrist proposals and compromises to reduce the size of the deficit, but the president mentioned almost none of them. I think that Obama's deficit reduction pledge was one of those promises that presidents make during State of the Union addresses that are forgotten a few weeks later...and perhaps that is for the best.

The foreign policy section of the speech was mostly boilerplate rhetoric, and provided a very odd contrast to the high-flying futuristic vision of the domestic policy section. The president could have continued the theme of investing in the future (for example, by offering more humanitarian assistance to African and South Asian nations) but instead chose to focus primarily on the same trouble spots that have dominated US foreign policy for a decade: Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Iran, and North Korea. Although he offered nothing substantively different from his previous policies, he did have the foresight to point out that the real danger of terrorist groups comes not from a repeat of 9/11 or isolated bombings, but from weapons of mass destruction. Nuclear proliferation poses the greatest short-term threat from terrorists, by far.

It was disappointing to hear the president utter not a single word about the chronic crisis in Israel and Palestine, indicating that he has given up on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as a potential peacemaker. To make matters worse, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has no legitimacy in the eyes of his people, and lacks the political ability to agree to a compromise. It is time for some creative thinking on the subject. Efforts are afoot at the United Nations to establish a unilateral peace agreement which could be imposed on all parties in the conflict. Although this certainly would not bring about peace in the Middle East immediately, it would change the dialog from prodding both nations to compromise (which they have been unable to do for nearly 50 years), to instead urging them to adhere to the UN-imposed peace plan. Unfortunately, such an effort has no chance of success without at least the tacit approval of the United States. If the next 50 years in the Middle East are to be brighter than the past 50 years, President Obama will need to think outside the box about how to help the region establish peace.

Perhaps the most outside-the-box foreign policy idea the president mentioned was his statement that the United States “supports the democratic aspirations of all people,” in reference to the Jasmine Revolution in Tunisia. Although this notion has been well-established for some time in theory, it has not always been the case in practice, and under the circumstances I was surprised to hear it in the State of the Union address. But supporting democracy in an inconsequential global backwater is one thing. As the Tunisian unrest spreads to key US-aligned countries like Egypt and Yemen, it remains to be seen if the president will support the democrats, although the early signs are encouraging.

Overall, the policy prescriptions in the State of the Union were mostly good ideas that can potentially garner the bipartisan support they will need to become law. The speech itself, while very progressive and futuristic, was somewhat uninspiring. The biggest disappointments came not in what Obama said, but in what he didn’t say. Perhaps the State of the Union address is not the ideal forum for floating trial balloons of creative new ideas, but if Obama is serious about investing in the future at home and abroad, he will need to develop more innovative solutions of his own than what he offered on Tuesday night.

Predictions For 2011

After revisiting my list of predictions, I realized that I didn’t have very many for 2011, due to my focus on things at least five years out. In honor of the new year, here are some of my predictions for 2011, in no particular order:

Electronic wallet? There’s an app for that. On December 16, 2010, Google and Samsung released the Nexus S, the first smartphone equipped with near-field communication. Near-field communication is an emerging technology that enables the transfer of data between devices at a range of 4 inches or less. This will eventually replace boarding passes, credit cards, and ATM cards among other things and will allow the easy transfer of money over the phone. 2011 is the year when the technology will first be useful, if not exactly mainstream yet. The places where it will take off the most quickly are developing countrieswhere credit card companies have never posed a lot of competition. Those of us in the US and Europe will probably have to wait a couple more years.

Is that a television or a computer? 2011 will be the year when the television and computer converge, just as the cell phone and computer have done in the last three years. An assortment of devices that hit the market in the last half of 2010 will serve up video content from the internet onto the television. The immediate effects will be relatively unimportant – people will be able to enjoy their favorite videos from YouTube, Netflix, Vevo, and Hulu on a much larger screen. In the longer term, this will change the way people view television and make them question if paying for channels they never use is really a good investment, especially if the same content is available online.

Human development will be widespread. Last year, all but seven countries in the world improved their score on the UN's Human Development Index (5 of those were stagnant while 2 actually lost ground). Emerging markets developed much more rapidly than wealthy nations. The long-term global trend has always been toward higher standards of living, and barring another severe economic downturn, we can expect the same from 2011. The vast majority of countries will share in economic gains, and developing countries will continue to outpace the US, Europe, and Japan.

At least one company offers genome sequencing for $1,000 or less. This one may be a bit of a reach, but I’m going to predict that 2011 will be the year that the holy grail of genomics – the $1,000 genome – is finally reached. For the last several years, the cost of genome sequencing has been following a Moore’s Law like trajectory, dropping nearly tenfold per year. A year ago, the cost of a simple genome sequencing was $6,000 and $10,000 from the two leading companies, Life Technologies and Illumina, respectively. It is therefore possible that by the end of 2011 a company will be able to do it for $1,000 which will throw open the doors to many more customers. Shortly after this milestone is reached, health insurance companies may begin covering the service, and the era of personalized medicine will dawn.

Shake-ups in the Axis of Evil. In his 2002 State of the Union address, President George Bush famously labeled Iraq, Iran, and North Korea the “Axis of Evil” and called for regime change in the three nations. During his presidency, Bush only deposed one of those regimes, but in 2011 he may get his wish in at least one more. Kim Jong-il, the supreme leader of North Korea, is believed to have suffered a stroke and has appeared very frail in his recent public appearances. He has been hastily creating a succession plan to transfer power to his 26-year-old son, Kim Jong-un, but the younger Kim has very little influence with key military officers who are necessary to sustain the regime. Wikileaks recently reported that Ayatollah Ali Khamenei of Iran has terminal leukemia. Khamenei is the glue holding the regime together; for example, he recently intervened personally to dissuade the Iranian Parliament from impeaching President Ahmadinejad. It is unclear if the Iranian regime can survive in any form without Khamenei. If either Kim or Khamenei dies, there will be a power struggle as various factions within the governments jockey for position in the power vacuum left in the deceased leader’s wake. Iran stands a real chance of serious democratic reform. North Korea does not (barring a total collapse and reunification with South Korea), but a shakeup could at least generate some Chinese-style economic reforms and perhaps an end to the bellicosity on the Korean Peninsula.

PREDICTIONS:
By 2011 – Near-field communication comes equipped in many new smartphones. Mobile payments become even more popular in the developing world, and makes inroads in Europe and the United States.
By 2011 – Internet-equipped televisions or add-ons will become popular.
By 2011 – At least 75% of countries improve their score on the Human Development Index compared to 2010, with the biggest improvements in developing countries.
By 2011 – At least one company offers genome sequencing for $1,000 or less.
By 2011 – There will be a major shakeup (or a total implosion) in the top leadership of North Korea and/or Iran.
By 2011 – Tablet computers continue to sell well. The market will become competitive with several new tablets seriously challenging Apple’s iPad.
By 2011 – Gaming (led by Microsoft’s Xbox Kinect) will begin to become gesture-based, rather than controller-based.
By 2011 – Voice Over IP services, such as Skype, become popular on smartphones, thus portending the eventual demise of traditional voice-telephone services.

Nanotechnology

Industrial manufacturing has, for the past two hundred years, mostly been concerned with macro-scale objects. The specifications for our cars, bridges, homes, and widgets are almost always in familiar dimensions that we can see or feel. Partially this is out of necessity: until recently, we simply lacked the ability for more precise specifications. Millimeters are the smallest units of length we deal with in our everyday lives, so making our products accurate to this level was typically good enough. This is quickly changing.

Nanotechnology is the science of manipulating objects on nanometer (one-billionth of a meter) scales. At this level, it is possible to position individual atoms and molecules where we want them. One of the best-known early demonstrations of this concept came in 1989, when IBM scientists essentially used molecule-sized tongs to carefully pick up and position 35 xenon atoms to spell IBM. Since then, our ability to work with tiny objects has improved every year, and shows no sign of slowing down. One of the most useful applications to date is in computing: Nearly all modern computer chips now use transistors that are only a few nanometers across.

Other applications of nanotechnology are starting to reach the market. Stain-proof and water-proof clothes have been available for a few years now. The cotton fibers in the clothes are attached to tiny nanomachines which actively repel foreign substances like water. Nanoparticles have found their way into commercial sunscreens as well, making them much more effective by forming a thin screen at the molecular level.

But today’s applications are just the tip of the iceberg of nanotechnology’s potential. As our ability to manipulate tiny structures improves, so will the range of possibilities available to us. Mature nanotechnology will grant us access to a veritable cornucopia of goods. Graphene – an arrangement of carbon atoms first created in 2004 – is 100 times stronger than steel, harder than diamond, but as flexible as plastic. It is one of the thinnest, lightest, strongest substances ever discovered, and may find its way into many common products in the coming decades, making computers faster, batteries better, food fresher, solar cells more efficient, and vehicles and bridges lighter. Two scientists took home the 2010 Nobel Physics Prize for their work with graphene.

Another recently-discovered nanoparticle, the gold nanosphere, may one day prove to be an effective cancer treatment. Its talent lies in its tiny size and its ability to conduct immense amounts of heat. By attaching a piece of protein to a gold nanosphere, it is capable of seeking out cancer cells and attaching itself. Once it has attached itself, a doctor can flash a burst of infrared light. This causes the gold nanosphere to heat up to extreme temperatures, killing the cell to which it is attached. If it withstands FDA trials, it could become a standard treatment for cancer, since it results in far less collateral damage than chemotherapy.

But new substances and chemicals are not the only benefit of nanotechnology. In the more distant future, there is no physical barrier preventing the development of microscopic robots at the nano-scale. These nanobots could radically transform our world – patrolling the environment to clean up pollution one molecule at a time, keeping intruding pathogens or harmful mutations out of our bodies, assembling anything we want from a hamburger to a piece of jewelry in front of our eyes, or (if proper precautions aren’t taken) consuming the entire world and reducing it to gray goo. In 1995, the late nanotechnology grandfather Richard Smalley wrote, “The list of things you could do with nanotechnology reads like much of the Christmas Wish List of our civilization.” As we master the ability to manipulate the world at the atomic level, we must also master the ability to prevent the technology from destroying us.

PREDICTIONS:
By 2026 – At least one treatment employing nanoparticles is routinely used in the United States to treat cancer.
By 2035 – Graphene is routinely used in structures (e.g. bridges and buildings) that need to be strong and light.
By 2050 – Nanobots can patrol the cells of our bodies, looking for any unwelcome intruders or mutations.
By 2055 – Molecular assemblers are able to produce nearly any macro-scale product we need, provided that they have the raw materials.

The Future of Health Care: Regenerative Medicine and Stem Cells

When an octopus is injured and loses one of its limbs, it will grow back after several months. When a starfish loses an appendage, not only will the starfish grow a new arm, but the severed arm will grow a new starfish! Even among vertebrates, regeneration is not unknown – salamanders can regrow lost body parts. Yet when a human loses an appendage, it is forever lost. What do these animals do that we don’t? Many scientists believe that the capacity for regeneration is lying dormant within our biology, and we may soon be able to activate it.

Most complex organisms including humans contain a huge number of different types of cells that each perform a specific function within the body. For the most part, these cells cannot do anything else; a brain cell can never become a white blood cell, or vice versa. But in addition to these specialized types of cells, we have stem cells – “wild card” cells that have no specific function of their own, but are able to become whatever type of cell the body needs. Stem cells show great promise in treating a wide range of diseases, rejuvenating our organs and tissues, and replacing entire body parts.

For several decades, the organ transplant process has been horrendously inefficient. The standard procedure has been for patients to beg their friends and family to donate an organ…if they can even find a compatible donor. If not, they enter their name onto a hopelessly long organ wait list, where they may die before finding a suitable replacement. If they are lucky enough to receive a transplant, patients will spend the rest of their lives taking a strict regimen of drugs to prevent their body from “rejecting” the organ (i.e. viewing it as a hostile invader to be eliminated).

Regenerative medicine will soon transform this process. People will be able to grow their own replacement organs in a lab, and since the new organ is their own, there will be no worries about their body rejecting it. Substantial progress has already been made in many areas. In 2006, doctors first created a human bladder from scratch. They extracted a few bladder cells from patients, and pasted them onto a three-dimensional mold shaped like a bladder. To their delight, the cells quickly grew into a new, fully-functional bladder, which they then transplanted into the patient. In 2010, doctors first performed a similar procedure using stem cells instead of bladder cells. Regenerative medicine is quickly becoming the standard for treating serious bladder diseases. Clinical trials are underway for similar procedures for other organs including the heart, although these procedures are at least a decade from being used in hospitals. In June 2010, scientists successfully grew a liver in the laboratory for the first time.

But replacing entire organs is not the only promising use for regenerative medicine. There is no fundamental reason why tissues and organs that have been badly damaged – by disease, injury, or natural wear and tear – cannot gradually be rejuvenated by replacing the damaged cells with healthy stem cells, allowing our body parts to remain in excellent condition throughout our lives. This has ramifications for slowing the human aging process, and possibly even reversing it. When people are able to replace their organs with newer versions of themselves, “old age” will need not be regarded as a time of enfeeblement and illness.

Our stem cells are essentially a blank slate, which can become whatever type of cell we want them to become. Their potential applications to regenerative medicine are practically limitless, as practically every major non-infectious, non-genetic disease results in some form of cellular damage. Regenerative medicine treatment will be a relatively slow and non-disruptive transformation – we will gradually see more and more of these therapies over the next few decades – and is not a cure-all by any means. However, it is one of the most promising new treatments (along with genomics) which will eventually radically extend the human lifespan.

Arsenic-Based Life

This week, NASA geobiologist Felisa Wolfe-Simon announced the discovery of arsenic-based microbes in Mono Lake in Yosemite National Park. This is a major scientific bombshell that is causing biologists to re-examine much of the conventional wisdom about what life is. All life, from the smallest bacteria to the largest redwood tree, was thought to be based on five elements: Carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, and phosphorus. These elements are crucial ingredients in life’s software – DNA and RNA molecules – as well as life’s fuel – ATP molecules. But now scientists have discovered organisms that use arsenic instead of phosphorus in their biochemistry, which was thought to be impossible. Most organisms are poisoned by arsenic because it is highly reactive, destroying the DNA and ATP found in living cells. But this new species of extremophile not only thrives in a lake with an arsenic concentration 700 times what the EPA deems safe, but actually manages to incorporate it into its DNA and ATP. This is more than just a strange new species with an interesting quirk; many of those are discovered every year. This is a radical redefinition of what “life” is.

Although these microbes appear to have evolved from more traditional forms of life, their mere existence opens up the possibility of a "shadow biosphere" on earth. All known living things have descended from a common ancestor, but what if organisms with other biochemistries are living right under our noses undetected? Might they provide evidence of a second genesis on earth? If life has developed twice, with two different biochemistries, it would prove that the evolution of life on earth was not just a one-in-a-trillion fluke, and would greatly increase the likelihood of life developing on any suitable world.

The discovery of arsenic-based life has important applications in the search for extraterrestrial life, which is where NASA comes in. For ages, scientists have pondered about the possibility of completely new types of life. A handful of astrobiologists (and a slew of science fiction writers) have speculated that extraterrestrial life might be too alien for us to even recognize as life. In fact, this is one possible explanation for Fermi's Paradox, which questions why we haven't already found life if it is commonplace in the universe. In light of this week's discovery, this explanation has become a lot more plausible. Perhaps DNA, reliance on water, and cells are just unique traits of life on earth, and we are barking up the wrong tree if we focus solely on finding them elsewhere.

Others have believed that “life as we know it” was the only type of life possible. This has been the dominant mindset of NASA for several decades, and is the basis of NASA’s search for life. NASA has concentrated its efforts on locating worlds similar to our own, where the conditions exist to permit the development of life as we know it. This generally means finding worlds with water on them, located in the “Goldilocks Zone” of their solar systems where they are neither too hot nor too cold to sustain life. This, of course, has been premised on the assumption that any extraterrestrial life is probably not too different from the life we know.

The discovery of arsenic-based life has cast doubt on this approach. If a new form of life can be found in Yosemite National Park, we can scarcely imagine how different extraterrestrial life must be. NASA’s obsessive search for earth-like planets may be overlooking a huge number of worlds where life may exist, in forms unknown to us earthlings. If it is possible for life to exist with a completely different biochemistry from our own, then it’s equally possible that it could thrive on worlds far different from our own, under conditions that have traditionally been regarded as hostile to life.

NASA will need to do a lot of soul-searching in light of this week’s discovery, and reevaluate how it determines if a world is potentially suitable for life. For the first time in history, a long-standing astrobiological question has been answered: Is “life as we know it” the only type of life possible? We now have our answer: It is not.