Darwin’s theory of biological evolution sparked significant debate among both scientists and the general public due to its contradiction with all sacred texts. But can humans truly evolve, not in the Darwinian biological sense, but through machines and artificial intelligence? What are the limits of such evolved humans? Are they really capable of colonizing space?
The question of human evolution is no longer confined to science fiction. The era of the cyborg (half human, half machine) is closer than ever. Could the limits of this cyborg be space, and might we discover in the future that the extraterrestrial beings depicted in science fiction movies are actually evolved cyborg humans? Perhaps some humans will leave Earth in the future, build a civilization in space as dreamt by many like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos, and then return to Earth, where we ordinary humans might then view them as aliens.
Everything is Subservient to Humans:
God has made everything, whether in the heavens or on Earth, subservient to humanity, honoring us with intellect and giving us the capabilities to change the face of life on Earth. Humans did not stop at inhabiting Earth; they also expanded to the space between Earth and the moon. The space is now filled with thousands of space debris and satellites, and humans have even set foot on the moon. The dream now is to build a colony on other planets and exploit the space that God has made available.
However, the problem is that our current physical energy is limited and time is always against us. Traveling to the nearest planet, Mars, currently takes nine months with existing spacecraft. What about traveling to distant space? The nearest black hole is about 1560 light-years away (a light-year equals roughly 300,000 kilometers).
By current logical calculations, it is impossible for humans to colonize space no matter how advanced they become. They would not be able to withstand zero gravity, pressure differences, and the lack of oxygen and water. But by the same logic, it was once impossible to talk from one side of the Earth to the other and see and hear each other at the same time, or to harness wind to travel across the Earth in a few hours, or to protect oneself from diseases by injecting oneself with viruses, or to extract endless energy from atoms not visible to the eye. So who knows? Humans might one day travel into a black hole. Even if they don’t reach it, they might have made significant strides in controlling the space made available to them from the start.
Space Colonization:
Science fiction films, both scientific and otherwise, have addressed the idea of aliens building civilizations greater than human ones and seeking to dominate Earth. Scenarios in these films revolve around human conflict or submission to these aliens, with directors creatively imagining these aliens as either monstrous beings or creatures resembling humans.
The Evolved Cyborg:
Continuing with these fantasies that might indeed become reality one day, humans may be able to upgrade themselves and enhance their physical abilities to be fit for life in space. The efforts to build cyborgs are serious and progressing rapidly, aiming to enhance human abilities through smart implants in the brain and body and developing organs with intelligent systems until humans become cyborgs.
This involves integrating artificial intelligence into the body to become like machines or even more advanced, with steel limbs, replacing worn-out organs with those made of living fibers and silicon through 3D printing, and swapping skin for one resistant to external factors. Gradually, humans transform into cyborgs, striving to maximize their strength and capabilities.
In the near future, such a cyborg might be able to endow the human body with unprecedented abilities, such as feeling light touch as if it were air, sensing silent animal sounds like those of fish, giraffes, and bats through ultrasonic waves, enabling the blind to see through implanted cameras or connections to vision centers in the brain, allowing the deaf to hear and the mute to speak through telepathic technology, or even enduring pressure and gravity differences in outer space.
Space Colonization:
All these superhuman abilities and others may become a reality to varying degrees in times that might be relatively distant from now. However, serious efforts are underway, suggesting that the world is on the brink of an unprecedented new civilization where human bodies merge with artificial intelligence to produce a new cyborg entity. This cyborg might be capable of creating a new civilization, emerging from Earth to conquer and colonize space. Just as we travel from one country to another by plane, this cyborg might travel from galaxy to galaxy through energy transfer.
Three Nobel Prize-winning physicists in 2022—Alan Aspect, John F. Clauser, and Anton Zeilinger—proved that there is a mysterious and hidden link between atomic particles faster than light called “quantum entanglement.” This means that if you entangle two electrons and place one on Earth and the other in space, and then affect the Earth electron to spin upwards, the space electron will spin in the opposite direction. How does this happen? Why? What kind of link exists between these electrons to achieve perfect synchronization regardless of their different environments? There may not be a clear explanation yet, but who knows what scientists might discover in the future and what practical applications might arise for instantaneous travel from one place to another. Millions of years separated the first apple falling to Earth from Isaac Newton’s discovery of the laws of gravity.
Will cyborg humans find a foothold in the vast space, supported by advanced technology, to colonize and develop space, gradually isolating themselves from the backward Earth civilization and weak, physically inferior humans? Will the cyborg civilization continue to evolve and expand, exploring distant space until our knowledge of them is like our current knowledge of extraterrestrial beings?
And at some point, these cyborgs might decide to return to their home planet. They will find the weak humans who remained there, and be amazed at the advanced civilization of the cyborgs, fulfilling the prophecies of science fiction films. The irony would be that these “extraterrestrials” are actually us, the evolved humans who left Earth centuries ago and returned seeking a real paradise among the Amazon rivers and African forests, enslaving and killing the weak humans just as new settlers did with Native Americans in North America.
Will these upgrades lead to the cyborgs controlling and becoming the masters of Earth and space, or will this remain confined to science fiction and novels?
