I made a perhaps unusual interpretation of your question, by assuming you’re meaning to ask How would Earth look if we were living on a different planet of our solar system? (I changed my answer by assuming you meant “how would Earth look” rather than “how would we look”.) I will consider the question without the interpreted change at the end.
When you look up at the sky sometimes you can see Venus, our closest neighbor, and a planet almost the same size as Earth. To the naked eye it’s a very bright point of light in either the early morning or early evening sky.
If you were living on Mars and looked in the right direction at the right time of night and year, you would see Earth looking similar to what Venus looks to us now.
Through a large non-terrestrial telescope you could see Earth from anywhere in the solar system as long as it wasn’t behind the sun. It’s brightness would depend on what percentage of Earth was lit with sunlight relative to the observer in space, and how close to you Earth is as both you and Earth go around the sun at different speeds.
Now, let’s revisit the original question, “How would we look if we were living on a different planet of our solar system? “ and take the “how would we look” as is, without interpretation.
That brings up a whole other topic, like would we change over time if we were living on other planets so that we didn’t look exactly like humans on Earth look like now.
But I don’t want to get into that, as interesting a topic it could be, because I don’t think that’s what you were asking
Many others could answer this question better than what I can say. I’d only point out the person asking the question has it backwards in his/her question.
Agreed, in the mind of the public we’re all getting ready to go to Mars. But that’s not what’s really happening. NASA is gearing up to go back to the Moon, not Mars, just the opposite of what the person is asking.
Now I know we hear Elon Musk talking about starting some kind of permanent encampment on Mars, and I know he has plans to go there himself. Elon Musk’s company SpaceX is a NASA contractor, but that doesn’t mean NASA isn’t focused more on the Moon than Mars.
NASA’s idea is to establish a working settlement on the Moon, kind of like having astronauts living on the International Space Station now.
Air pressure works like water pressure. The deeper you go in water, the more the pressure because of the weight of the water above. Similarly, the lower you go in the atmosphere the more the pressure. At sea level, air pressure is normally about 14.7 pounds per square inch. This can be measured with an altimeter, which is used on aircraft.
Mount Everest is so high that climbers usually need to carry oxygen to go the summit. Commercial airlines go even higher.
When you get about 62 miles up (100 km) you’re at air pressure that is basically zero and you are above most of the atmosphere altogether.
The International Space Station orbits around 250 miles up, but there is still some, very thin atmosphere up there that eventually slows down the ISS, requiring it to be boosted once in awhile.
Eventually you come to deep space, and there are some molecules floating around out there, just not very many. So space isn’t completely empty, just mostly empty. Sometimes there are molecular clouds in space in regions where stars are forming, and the molecules floating around are a little denser.
If you went outside on a spacewalk on your way to Mars, took an empty bottle with you and opened it and then sealed it, once inside the spaceship you’d find your bottle had nothing but a vacuum in it. The free floating molecules out there are so sparse you’d not find any inside your little bottle.
The human race will be much changed. The reason the golden record was included on the Voyager spacecrafts was twofold. The main reason was a mechanism to inspire public interest (and therefore funding) for the project, which was to explore the outer planets in our solar system and interstellar space. The other reason was that Voyager I was going to pass within 1.6 light years of the star called Gliese 445 in about 40,000 years. In case any intelligent space traveling beings over there might notice Voyager I drift by their star 1.6 light years away, they might go out, retrieve it, and discover the Golden Record.
To compare that to us, if an alien spacecraft the size of Voyager I passed by within 1.6 years of our own sun we would not be able to detect it. It’s too small, and out many times farther than the Voyagers are now from Earth. It would be many times outside the solar system entirely.
Gliese 445
Now, let’s assume that 40,000 years from now Voyager I is drifting by within 1.6 light years of Gliese 445 which is 17.1 light years away from us and alien astronomers on a planet over there did somehow notice it. Let’s say their alien scientists then launched a probe to investigate and find the Golden Record. What would happen? That’s the essence of your question, right? Well, let’s look at it.
To send a probe from an alien world to Voyager I as it passes by the star Gliese 445 their probe would have to travel 1.6 light years, which would take thousands of years. But once reaching Voyager I, the probe could communicate back to their alien world in only 1.6 years, with a 3.2 year return signal. So let’s say they did it.
The Golden Record is designed to indicate to an advanced alien civilization that other intelligent beings are “out there.” This would be extremely exciting for them to realize someone else (Earth) is out there. They might try to send a radio signal in our direction to let us know the message was received. The message would take 17.1 years to reach Earth, so basically, 45,000 years from now the message from the aliens might reach Earth, but would anyone still be around to listen? My estimate of time is the 40,000 years for Voyager I to reach that far, another 4,000 years or so for their space probe to reach Voyager, and a few years communicating with the probe to figure out what it found. Nothing here is true math. It’s just very round, hypothetical numbers.
Once the aliens realized there was another planet with intelligent beings on it, they might try to communicate with us even though we are more than 17 light years from them.
So a form of communication could eventually be established. Considering the speed of light with a return message taking 34 or 35 years (the time in light years and back) it would be a slow, gradual communication. Interstellar travel between the two civilizations would not be feasible, however. It would take the spacecraft about the same time as it took Voyager, or maybe they could half the time with some kind of alien propulsion system. UFO conspiracies aside, travel over those distances isn’t realistic.
The best could be communication.
Then again, the human race will probably be much changed 45,000 years from now and who knows if anyone will be listening by then, or conversely, if there is an alien civilization orbiting on a planet around Gliese 445 now, will they still be around by the time Voyager I reaches there?
Some people on Earth would not believe it or even care. Scientists, if there are any scientists left 45,000 years from now would be excited. I’d imagine it would be about the same for the aliens, but who knows what kind of organization they might have over there.
Basically, it would be largely ignored by the public.
Actually, this is an interesting question and I think I can provide an interesting answer.
To know what the people of the world want aliens to know about us, look no further than the Voyager spacecrafts. When we launched them in 1977 they were on a mission to explore the planets in our solar system, but afterward it was known they would be flung out of our solar system to drift in interstellar space for tens of thousands of years, and interstellar space is where they are both now.
So physicist Carl Sagan had an idea to place a golden record on each spacecraft with a message from Earth to any aliens who might come across them in the eons to come. According to Wikipedia, “The records contain sounds and images selected to portray the diversity of life and culture on Earth, and are intended for any intelligent extraterrestrial life form who may find them. The records are a sort of time capsule.”
So what’s exactly on this record, and what did mankind in 1977 want future aliens in space to know about us? The contents of the record were decided by a committee from Cornell University and headed by Carl Sagan. It took more than a year to decide on the contents, and contains 115 images of Earth and natural sounds of the planet like wind, surf, thunder and whales.
There’s images of DNA and music by Mozart and Beethoven and a whole bunch of other stuff to indicate we are an intellectually and culturally developed civilization of beings.
Yes, I believe in space aliens, and unlike others, no, I don’t believe they are “here” nor do I ever think they will ever be able to come here, nor us go there.
Space is so big, that given we’ve been emitting radio waves for over a hundred years, the radio “sphere” in space coming from us hardly encompasses very many stars at all. We live in a huge galaxy, one of billions of galaxies, and in our little corner of our galaxy our radio waves, traveling at the speed of light, haven’t even reached a significant portion of our own galaxy.
In the image below, you can see just how tiny an area that is, represented by the small blue circle, or dot.
That being the case, unless there are aliens that want to visit us and “hide among us” (for whatever reason), they’d really have to come from somewhere pretty close.
I don’t see it.
Regarding “UFOs,” aka unidentified objects in the sky, there are many natural phenomena that we don’t yet understand, but to take it there is something we have yet to identify and then extrapolate that it is some kind of alien spacecraft visiting across thousands of light years just to come here, is more than a stretch. It’s not science.
In theory, space is nothing, so the bottle will have a vacuum – an empty bottle. In reality, space is not empty, just mostly empty, so the bottle might have a molecule or two, but most likely it will have nothing.
by Wayne Boyd – Philosopher, blogger, published author
Well, first of all, know that, as you pointed out in your question, we’ve been broadcasting radio signals for about a hundred years or so, which creates a radio bubble around SOL, our sun, with a radius of about 100 light years. So first lets look at how many stars are within that bubble.
there are about 76 stars of type “A” within that distance, which is not very many compared to the estimated 100 to 400 billion stars thought to be in our own Milky Way Galaxy.
Of those stars, there just aren’t that many candidates for habitable planets in orbit around them.
At present speed and existing technology we could reach the nearest star system proxima centauri in about 10,000 years, which is 4 light years away. We can assume the aliens would have similar problems. If we could go as fast as 4.5% the speed of light, about 140 times faster than any spacecraft we have yet to create, then we could reach our nearest neighbor in about 100 years.
I really don’t think you need to worry. We don’t even know if microscopic alien life exists anywhere other than Earth, and we don’t have any evidence that anything more advanced is anywhere near us in the Milky Way Galaxy. Anyone who wanted to travel hundreds of years to try to invade us would be nuts.
by Wayne Boyd – Philosopher, blogger, published author
I don’t know why I’d want to move over to that planet. I’d rather keep working to make things better on this planet. Also, I imagine it might be pretty expensive to move, then I have to buy some land and a house over there, make new friends, and so on. Too much trouble for me.
So to answer your question “How would life be for us if we were to colonize a super-Earth” I would think some people would migrate over there and some people or most people would stay here. I mean, people already have their lives set up here, why move over there?
In fact, had a giant asteroid not killed off the dinosaurs, homo sapiens might never have evolved. If it weren’t for that chance cataclysmic encounter from space, Earth might even now be ruled by dinosaurs.
By Wayne Boyd
In the early days of Hollywood and television, we used to think that life on other planets was common. Science fiction movies about invasions from the planet Mars or Venus were normal. HG Wells wrote War of the Worlds which later became a radio show and still later several big screen adaptations and it was about Martians invading Earth.
Even as our imagination thrived our knowledge of the cosmos grew. We sent probes and rovers throughout the solar system and beyond. We gazed into the stars with our space telescopes. We took images from non-visible light and radio waves. Great minds like Einstein and Hawking churned it over. Finally, after all that, we came to a startling if not disappointing realization: Planets other than Earth that support life, if they exist at all, appear to be the exception rather than the rule. There is no warmongering Martian civilization waiting to invade Earth. There are no lovely ladies lounging around on Venus. It’s true not only for our own solar system, but for all the exoplanets we’ve detected so far.
Our understanding of distances in space developed, especially between stars. Distances, it turned out, were vast. The more we knew the less likely it seemed anyone would go star hopping. That not only applies to us, but the aliens as well, if any extraterrestrial sentient beings exist at all! There will be no warp drives, no faster than light travel, and no light speed travel. It just isn’t possible. We can’t go there and they can’t come here.
Recently, there’s been some reports of UFOs in the news, and that’s always been there from the 1950s on. There is no evidence that unidentified flying objects are extraterrestrial in origin. It is unlikely for the simple reason that to travel from one star to the next would take tens of thousands of years. Sadly, and perhaps fortunately, no one is traveling from star to star. The best we can hope for is that we can visit other planets in our own solar system. Maybe one of them might at least have some microbes.
Once we figured out that there wasn’t much chance of advanced, intelligent life elsewhere within our own solar system, then we hoped we would find it on planets around other stars. Remember the movie Avatar? Supposedly that took place around Alpha Centauri, one of our closest group of stars. So if we can’t find life here then for sure it’s going to be on the closest star!
Yet, as we peered into the solar systems of other stars we came to a new understanding: most planets that we’re able to detect outside of our own solar system are hostile environments. There’s something weird about almost all of them, and so the prospect of finding life orbiting on a planet near our closest star is kind of unlikely. There’s no “Avatar” on Alpha Centauri.
Intelligent alien life is not impossible. The universe is a big place. The point is that we now know it to be rare. So rare, in fact, that it might exist nowhere other than here. At least as far as we can see so far.
In fact, had a giant asteroid not killed off the dinosaurs, homo sapiens might never have evolved. If it weren’t for that chance cataclysmic encounter from space, Earth might even now be ruled by dinosaurs.
Therefore, even if a planet were in an ideal goldilocks region around it’s star, and even if on the off chance single cell organisms had developed there, we have no reason to suspect that a homo-erectus kind of being might have developed there.
