As was discussed earlier, nature must be looked at and celebrated in terms of its beauty and future possibilities. It makes sense to talk about possibility because of the many emergent properties of nature (life, experience, etc.), that some may be compelled to call "miracles". It is seemingly impossible for an inanimate piece of nature to become alive, actively applying forces to nature to survive, and even harder to see it as aware of itself. These properties seem so fundamentally different from nature. What other possibilities are there in the future?
Before we get into these kinds of possibilities, we should talk about more common types that are often debated by scientists. Some examples include (from relatively simple to complex) extraterrestrial life, human colonization of other worlds, immortal life, artificial super-intelligence, time travel, and on a negative perspective, mass extinction of life and/or civilization. Alien life is the easiest to conceive of because of the nature of life and the vast known size of the universe. The chemical building blocks of life have been shown to be easily reproduced in a laboratory under certain conditions. There is no reason why these conditions could not appear on other worlds within the universe. The question then becomes can these life forms ever communicate and/or reach our planet? They have to be so technologically advanced that they must be able to travel at a good fraction of the speed of light. They must also have long life spans to survive a trip of such long duration. Will they be peaceful aliens, or will they be cunning and irrational? If they are peaceful, then maybe we could visit their world or even live there! That would be truly astounding! We could learn about how life evolved on their planet, how civilization advanced, how conflicts were dealt with, and their biodiversity.
Colonization of other planets is not too far into the future. Technology has risen to a level in which we can do this. Although this may not seem something as great as the internet has been for us, this may represent a prodigy greater than the twinkle of the new world in Christopher Columbus's eyes. The immediate benefits to colonization are significant. Aside from giving relief to our own overcrowded planet, we may be able to discover cures for diseases, alternate energy sources, and rare ores which may help us travel farther throughout space then we can see into it today. In time, there will be no more "living world", but a living solar system. Allow even more time and we'll have a living galaxy...maybe a universe!
Immortal life becomes a more complex possibility. Due to the physical nature of living beings, certain processes take place which are irreversible and cause complications later in life. Nobody dies of just old age; there is always a problem that does not allow the life to continue. What if we could clone tissue and organs in the body to replace them when they become out of order? What if we could use stem cells from living embryos to create new organs? Would that person be able to live forever, as in the movie "The Sixth Day"? Is it ethical for people to live eternally? It would seem nice to be able to see what happens in the future, but at what cost? We can't support such a population if people just started not to die. Would the person even feel that they are living forever, or will their past memory be wiped out? What exactly is the information in somebody's brain? Can a person's entire existence be reduced to their memory? In other words, can my memory be placed into another brain and my "sense of self" preserved? Or do I become somebody else? What if my original memory and brain are restored...are there now two "mes"? I do not know who I am. Do you know who you are?
Artificial intelligence, or more appropriately, artificial awareness, is even more difficult to think about. Even though we have computers that could do pages and pages of programming instructions in milliseconds, and can implement life-like sensors and movements in robots, can something built by man have awareness? Can something artificial have a sense of self? What is a sense of self? Is it something unique to the agent's physical being, or is it information that can be transferred or created? What benefits would an autonomous, intelligent, aware being give to the living world? What troubles?
If the worst thing that could possibly happen, a massive global extinction of life, occurs, would civilization be able to persevere? In Psychology, the study of consciousness and mental faculty has not been getting the attention it deserves. It may be possible that conscious mental life can exist independently of the living. Virtual reality may be all we have in the event of such a catastrophe. If we can't have a living world, then we'll have to settle for a Psychological one. This should only be pursued as an alternative to the living reality.
Here is another possibility. Right now the universe is expanding, as Hubble showed us. This leads us to ask what is the ultimate fate of the universe? Cosmologists predict three possibilities. In the first case, the universe will continue to expand until there is virtually no density within it, and from there remain a bitterly cold nothingness. It may also stop expanding and start contracting until everything comes together in a big crunch and is destroyed. There may be a third possibility. The universe may possess a nature that allows it to slow down its expansion and then virtually stop it. Scientists say that for this to happen, the universe must possess a very precise average density, something that doesn't seem possible. So because nature has these forces that cause it to enter certain states, the future of the universe does not look good. Is nature like a living thing...does it have to die sometime? We accept the fact that we are all going to die, but should we look at nature the same way? NO! Life will make nature continue to exist! I believe that one day life would have evolved so greatly that it will be able to stop the expansion of the universe and save nature! The beauty of nature and the experience of billions of beautiful lives will be preserved forever!
Life...the ultimate beauty and wonder of nature...will be, possibly, infinite...
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