How long can our technological civilization last? (STA BREAKING NEWS and ARCHIVES)

by Theresa , Tuesday, January 06, 2015, 12:58

By combining the Earth-based science of sustainability with the space-oriented field of astrobiology, two astrophysicists are attempting to answer questions about humanity's future in the broadest astronomical context.

In their paper, which appears in the journal Anthropocene, Adam Frank and Woodruff Sullivan (both from the University of Rochester) propose that climate change, ocean acidification, and species extinctions may be a natural and generic consequence of certain evolutionary pathways.

"We have no idea how long a technological civilization like our own can last," says Frank. "Is it 200 years, 500 years or 50,000 years? Answering this question is at the root of all our concerns about the sustainability of human society. Are we the first and only technologically-intensive civilization in the entire history of the universe? If not, shouldn't we stand to learn something from the past successes and failures of these other species?"

To frame these questions, Frank and Sullivan begin with the famous Drake equation, a formula used to estimate the number of intelligent societies in the universe. In their treatment of the equation, the authors concentrate on the average lifetime of a Species with Energy-Intensive Technology (SWEIT). Frank and Sullivan calculate that even if the chances of forming such a "high tech" species are 1 in a 1,000 trillion, there will still have been 1,000 occurrences of a history like own on planets across the local region of the cosmos.

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