What If We Relocated Humanity to Proxima Centauri b?
You know even though humanity might not have to leave the earth in your lifetime, we should start preparing early on (moving to Proxima Centauri).
Not only could it take centuries to set up the relation program, but it would also take generations to move to a potential new home.
That, right there, is Proxima Centauri b, or just Proxima b. it’s the closes potentially habitable planet out there, its temperature is in the bearable range, and it could have just the right breathable atmosphere.
We only have to get there. How long would our journey last? How many people would we send? And what if Proxima b was uninhabitable?
This is ajax and here is what would happen if we relocated humanity to Proxima b?
Why Only Proxima Centauri b
When astronomers started finding planets outside our solar system, or exoplanets, we realized there are many worlds out there.
That meant that the earth doesn’t have to be our home forever. And that we don’t have to die with our planet when the sun engulfs it about some 5 billion years from now.
Now that we have found over 4,100 exoplanets, we have learned something rather disappointing. Not all exoplanets are good for humans to live on.
Most of the world we have encountered are either ice giants like Neptune or gas like Jupiter and Saturn. Only 161 of those planets are terrestrial, like earth.
And when it comes to sustaining human life, being terrestrial isn’t quite enough. Proxima b is very promising. It orbits a red dwarf star called Proxima Centauri in a system with three stars in it.
Proxima Centauri is small. It only has between 7.5% and 50% of our sun’s mass. That’s a good thing. Because the red dwarf Proxima Centauri is so much smaller than our yellow dwarf sun.
It burns at a lower temperature. It takes stars like Proxima Centauri much longer to burn through all of their hydrogen supply.
Because of that, Proxima Centauri has a lifetime of trillions of years, while our sun has a 10 billion years expiration term.
That alone makes Proxima b a good candidate for relocation. That and the fact that its orbit lies in Proxima Centauri’s habitable zone. That means there’s the potential for liquid water and a comfortable temperature.
How Long It Would Take To Get There
If we are lucky, Proxima b would have an atmosphere that we could breathe. If it does, the surface temperatures would be in the range of 30°C.
I don’t know about you, but I would move there right now I just need to warn you that there are a few problems. A trip to Proxima Centauri would be long and very dangerous.
Proxima b might be the closest habitable exoplanet we have got but that doesn’t mean it’s close. The red dwarf star, Proxima Centauri, is bout 4.3 light-years away.
That means that if you could travel at the speed of light, it would take you 4.3 years to get there nothing we have built so far can reach that kind of speed. Realistically, a trip to Proxima Centauri in a space shuttle would take 165,000 years, give or take.
That’s right, some of the colonists would be born in transit. Some of them would never see the earth, and some of them would never see Proxima b.
they would just live their lives aboard the spaceship and die in space.
How Many Humans Would We Need To Send On This Mission Exactly?
According to some calculations, 98 people would be just enough. Their descendants would arrive at Proxima b with enough genetic diversity to populate the entire planet, and that’s accounting for possible cases of infertility, inbreeding, and sudden deaths. In those calculations, the crew would be traveling on something faster than a shuttle. Their mission to Proxima b would only take 6,300 years.
But don’t be surprised. Technology is constantly improving. Right now a scientific and technological program called breakthrough initiatives is looking at how we can get in the neighborhood of Proxima Centauri within one generation. Their project star shot is working on an ultralight unmanned probe, That would reach the star system in just 20 years.
Now I definitely need to sign up, but again, Proxima b is really far away. It’s so far that we can’t even see if it has an atmosphere.
It might just happen that we would arrive at a frozen planet with a surface temperature of -40°C.
And even it has an atmosphere, it might not be the right one.
We might still enjoy erm teacher, but doing that in space suits with oxygen tanks. Or Proxima b could be tidally locked to Proxima Centauri, meaning that one of the planet’s sites would always face its star, and the other side would be plugged onto darkness.
In The Way Of Proxima Centauri
Space flight itself could bring some unpleasant surprises. Spending an entire lifetime in a zero-gravity environment would lead the crew members to lose muscle and bone density.
They would be constantly exposed to space radiation. Their microbiomes, immune system, and physiology would all be different from ours. They would not be the same kind of humans as we are.
They would change their values and culture. That crew sent to Proxima b might forget all the farming techniques we had to teach them to sustain themselves in space and on their new planet.
They might change their mind about the mission altogether and just turn their spaceship in a different direction.
Who knows- they might even come back to earth and take revenge for all those years they were forced to spend in space.
If that happens, I’ll be asking for a refund. Sending anyone on a mission like this is a huge risk. We would need to design and build a vehicle, choose the space travelers very carefully, supply them with all the food and water. And make sure they could become self-sustaining.
We would have to design new propulsion, navigation, hibernation, and life support systems. And we have no way of knowing if Proxima b is actually habitable.
Now I don’t really feel like going there. Do you?
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