A group of researchers have posed a mind-boggling question: Earth is a living planet, but can it think and feel?
In Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, we're introduced to Kurt Russell's Ego, a living planet. His one goal in life is to implant thousands of extensions of himself across the universe. 'I need to fulfil life's one true purpose, to grow and spread, covering all that exists, until everything is... me!'
What if Earth has its own Ego, so to speak? Or, to a lesser degree, what if our amazing planet is actually a sentient being with its own intelligence? It'd bring a whole new meaning to a 'galaxy brain' idea.
The concept of 'planetary intelligence' is explored in a new paper published in the International Journal of Astrobiology, written by Adam Frank, professor of physics and astronomy at the University of Rochester, and his colleagues David Grinspoon at the Planetary Science Institute and Sara Walker at Arizona State University.
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'Conventionally, intelligence is seen as a property of individuals. However, it is also known to be a property of collectives. Here, we broaden the idea of intelligence as a collective property and extend it to the planetary scale,' the abstract reads.
'We consider the ways in which the appearance of technological intelligence may represent a kind of planetary scale transition, and thus might be seen not as something which happens on a planet but to a planet, much as some models propose the origin of life itself was a planetary phenomenon.'
The researchers cite the likes of the Gaia hypothesis, which essentially suggests that Earth is maintaining itself via the relationship between the biosphere non-living geological systems of air, water and land.
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'Right now, our civilisation is what the researchers call an 'immature technosphere', a conglomeration of human-generated systems and technology that directly affects the planet but is not self-maintaining. For instance, the majority of our energy usage involves consuming fossil fuels that degrade Earth's oceans and atmosphere. The technology and energy we consume to survive are destroying our home planet, which will, in turn, destroy our species,' a press release explains.
'The biosphere figured out how to host life by itself billions of years ago by creating systems for moving around nitrogen and transporting carbon. Now we have to figure out how to have the same kind of self-maintaining characteristics with the technosphere,' Frank continued.
'Planets evolve through immature and mature stages, and planetary intelligence is indicative of when you get to a mature planet. The million-dollar question is figuring out what planetary intelligence looks like and means for us in practice because we don't know how to move to a mature technosphere yet.'
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Topics: Science