Does the development of science threaten human civilization?

Books that predict the death of humanity appear quite often.

In 2003, one of these books was published in Great Britain - the book of the English scientist Martin Rees "Our Last Hour". In it, a 60-year-old scientist warns of the greatest threats to humanity in the 21st century. These include nuclear terrorism, artificially created deadly viruses and genetic engineering that can change human character.

The author is a professor at the University of Cambridge, a leading expert in such fields as the physics of black holes and the problem of the origin and evolution of the Universe. In addition, Martin Rees is known in the scientific community as a specialist who never had a penchant for loud public statements that could sow fear.

And it is he who voices the idea that if humanity wants to prevent monstrous man-made disasters that can take millions and even billions of lives in this century, then he, humanity, needs to consider the possibility of limiting scientific research in a number of specific areas.

Biotechnology, computer technology and nanotechnology are becoming more complex and widespread. Insufficiently deliberate actions or even malicious intent of scientists or one scientist can lead to the death of our civilization. Do we have a chance to survive? “I think that the chances of the current civilization on Earth to survive until the end of this century are no better than fifty-fifty,” Martin Rees is sure.

What can accelerate the approach of catastrophe? For example, humans will soon be able to create ultra-miniature self-replicating robots. They will break out of control and destroy everything on our planet in search of the materials they need to reproduce. Or another example. Physicists in one of the experiments will create, by accident or on purpose, a black hole or "gaps" in the space-time continuum, which again will lead to the death of the planet.

According to the scientist, now in science, not a single decision to conduct an experiment capable of causing catastrophic consequences should be made until the population of the planet or a representative part of it comes to the conclusion that the level of risk lies below a threshold that satisfies all.

But how close to zero must the risk be for such experiments to be approved? Is it really that serious?

Let us recall the project, which caused numerous controversies. At Brookhaven National Laboratory on Long Island (USA), using an elementary particle accelerator, physicists are trying to obtain quark-gluon plasma - a very hot and dense "soup" of subatomic particles that emerged 13.7 billion years ago - immediately after the Big Bang. which gave rise to our universe. This experiment creates a very high concentration of energy. Here is one of the options for the further development of the event: a small black hole is formed, which pulls in everything around and destroys the planet. Of course, the proponents of the experiment provided calculations to prove that nothing like this would happen. In addition, there are independent estimates showing that such levels of energy concentration arise in outer space in a natural way during the interaction of particles of cosmic rays - and cataclysms of a universal scale do not occur. Martin Rees agrees that a disaster is very, very unlikely. But, nevertheless, he warns that one cannot be one hundred percent sure of what might actually happen when such an experiment is carried out. Is it worth putting the planet and the people living on it at risk, even if the chances of such a cosmic catastrophe occurring are extremely small? According to some estimates, they are one in 50 million.

In 2008, the construction of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) was completed - an accelerator of charged particles in colliding beams, designed to accelerate protons and heavy ions (lead ions) and study the products of their collisions. The collider was built at the European Council for Nuclear Research Research Center, on the Swiss-French border, near Geneva. As of 2008, the LHC is the largest experimental facility in the world.

At the beginning of the 20th century, two fundamental theories appeared in physics - Albert Einstein's general theory of relativity (GR), which describes the Universe at the macrolevel, and quantum field theory, which describes the Universe at the microlevel. The problem is that these theories are incompatible with each other. For example, for an adequate description of what is happening in black holes (a region in space-time, the gravitational attraction of which is so great that even objects moving at the speed of light cannot leave it), both theories are needed, and they come into conflict. The LHC will allow experiments that were previously impossible to conduct and will likely confirm or refute some of these theories. At the LHC, physicists want to capture the Higgs boson, also called the "particle of God." All modern theories of the origin of the universe are based on the theoretical substantiation of its existence. If the "particle of God" is not found, all the laws carefully deduced by physicists will turn out to be just incorrect hypotheses.

The LHC will be the most energetic particle accelerator in the world, outperforming its closest competitors by an order of magnitude.

The collider was officially launched on September 10, 2008. After an accident in the cryogenic system on September 19, it was decided that the LHC would resume operation in July 2009.

Some experts and members of the public have expressed concerns that there is a nonzero probability that the experiments carried out in the collider will get out of control and the development of a chain reaction, which, under certain conditions, could theoretically destroy the entire planet. Because of this sentiment, the LHC is sometimes deciphered as Last Hadron Collider. In this regard, the most often mentioned is the theoretical possibility of the appearance of microscopic black holes in the collider, as well as the theoretical possibility of the formation of clumps of antimatter and magnetic monopoles, followed by a chain reaction of capture of the surrounding matter.

Rice.

General relativity in the form proposed by Einstein does not allow the appearance of microscopic black holes in the collider. However, they will arise if theories with extra spatial dimensions are correct. According to supporters of the catastrophic scenario, although such theories are speculative, the probability that they are correct is tens of percent. Hawking radiation, which leads to the evaporation of black holes, is also hypothetical - it has never been experimentally confirmed. Therefore, there is a fairly high probability that it does not work.

The scientist cites a list of other threats to humanity - these are, in his opinion, nuclear terrorism, deadly viruses, out of control machines and genetic engineering that can change a human personality. All of them can be the result of both an innocent mistake and the malicious actions of one person. For example, by 2020, bioterror or an error in biological research could cause the death of 1 million people, says Rice. In a number of dangerous technologies, the scientist also put DNA research, nanotechnology and cloning, as well as experiments with particle accelerators.

According to Martin Rees, the sword of Damocles of universal destruction has always hung over humanity, and the further, the more risky and risky to live. It is unlikely that we will survive the next century. If the probability of a worldwide catastrophe before 1900 could be estimated at 20% (Rhys speaks, for example, about the threat always hanging over us of collision with giant asteroids, pandemics and the sudden activation of a "supervolcano" that can eclipse the products of its activity on the whole Earth), then in our time, with the preservation of old threats, new ones have appeared - nuclear conflicts, environmental disasters (including the threat of global warming), artificial intelligence, cyborgs, bioterror and "bioerror" ("bioerror" - a catastrophic mistake in breeding new organisms using biotechnology , the spread of deadly viruses created in scientific laboratories).

Biotechnology can solve many of humanity's problems, but it can also bring its hour of death closer. “For the first time, human nature itself is under the threat of unpredictable change,” says Rees. Biotechnology products and genetic engineering make the path to the abyss easier than ever, because everything can depend on a wrong decision or malicious intent of a single person or a small group of supporters of a sinister cult (like the Japanese Aum Senrikyo or the now well-known al-Qaida). As an example, Rees cites the story of panic that gripped the entire United States after September 11, 2001, when anthrax began to spread on top of that. Thousands of people are now capable of designing viruses and bacteria that can bring death to millions. Even if one such "perverted personality" cannot kill many people, this type of biological terrorism will seriously change our daily life, the scientist warns.

The information technology revolution can also do a disservice in spreading such dangers. Details of scientific research are now spreading around the world at almost the speed of light. While there are obvious benefits to this state of affairs (for example, amateur astronomers can make important discoveries and interact in real time with professionals), it is certainly a double-edged sword. If scientists unravel the genetic code of a specific virus (a group of scientists from the University of British Columbia recently did this with the SARS virus), then this information can also be made public almost instantly. "It is safe for amateur astronomers to interact," Rees says, "but imagine a collaboration like this for the international community of amateur biotechnologists!"

Martin Rees also included the rapidly developing nanotechnology in the list of relatively recent man-made threats. Is there any hope for the unfortunate doomed humanity? - Martin Rees asks himself. In this matter, he turns out to be a cautious optimist. To try and cheat fate, the British scientist calls for better organization of scientific research and public scrutiny of critical scientific data and experiments. “We have to keep those with potentially dangerous knowledge under control,” Rice recalls. He also proposes to urgently undertake efforts "to reduce the number of people who consider themselves to be something exceptional, realizing their otherness, who may have a desire to harm people."

Now there are other threats as well. Not only will technological change in this century be faster than before, it will affect other areas as well. Until now, one of the invariable properties throughout human history has been human nature and its physical characteristics; people by themselves did not change, only our environment and technology changed. In this century, it seems that humans will change through genetic engineering, the development of drugs, perhaps even by implanting something in the brain to increase its capabilities. Much of what now appears to be science fiction may become science fact in a hundred years. Fundamental changes like these, as well as the rapid development of biotechnology, perhaps nanotechnology, perhaps artificial intelligence, offer exciting opportunities, but also many options for social destruction or even total annihilation.

We have to be very careful if we want to survive this rapid development without major problems. In the very near future, the greatest threat will be posed by the development of biotechnology and genetic engineering. A 2006 US National Academy of Sciences official report notes that large enough numbers of people may be able to modify viruses so that existing vaccines are ineffective against them, leading to epidemics.

In March 2006, at a press conference at the central office of Interfax in Moscow, the director of the V.I. Ivanovsky RAMS Dmitry Lvov, who said that there was only one step left before the bird flu pandemic. “One amino acid substitution in the genome is not enough for the virus to be transmitted from person to person. And then the fire will start. " At the same time, Lvov believes that there is no money from the bird flu pandemic. “All those who say that it is possible to fight the spread of this virus can probably prevent an earthquake, tsunami, hurricane. This is a natural cataclysm and no one can fight it, ”the academician said. According to him, a pandemic of "bird flu" can affect up to one third of the world's population in a short time, and human losses in the event of a pandemic will amount to tens of millions of lives.

The frightening thing is that a huge terrorist or criminal organization is not at all necessary for this, only one person with an unkind mindset is enough. Such people could modify viruses in the same way that hackers modify computer programs.

Civilization itself takes on a different quality due to its newfound vulnerability. The present civilization is becoming horrid (horrid - creepy, terrible). Horror is a state of a civilization that is afraid of itself, because any of its achievements - mail, medicine, computers, aviation, high-rise buildings, reservoirs, all means of transport and communication - can be used to destroy it.

If emission, a threat to nature emanating from civilization, colored the second half of the 20th century, then the 21st century may pass under the sign of horror - threats to civilization itself. Ecology as the primary concern is replaced by horrology - the science of the horrors of civilization as a system of traps and of humanity as a hostage of the civilization it created.

As one American scientist noted, if the past century was the era of "weapons of mass destruction", then the current one will be the century of "knowledge of mass destruction." Whether society will be able to create means of external and internal control adequate to new technologies is a big question.

Accelerating the pace of scientific and technological progress

Predicted futures include both an ecological catastrophe and a utopian future in which the poorest people live in conditions that can be considered rich and comfortable today, and even the transformation of humanity into a posthuman form of life, as well as the destruction of all life on Earth in a nanotechnological catastrophe.

In July 2006, the leading American strategic center RAND Corporation officially presented the report "Global Technology Revolution 2020" (Global Technology Revolution 2020).

The general conclusion of the study is as follows: “Today we are at the very center of the global technological revolution. Over the past thirty years, a major breakthrough has been made in a number of technological industries, thanks to which radical changes can occur in all spheres of human life in the very near future. Moreover, according to our estimates, the pace of development of these breakthrough industries in the next fifteen years will not only not slow down, but, on the contrary, may turn out to be even more impressive. "

There are no signs that the pace of scientific and technological progress will slow in the next decade and a half. Each country will find its own, sometimes unique, method to benefit from this process. However, for this, many states of the world need to make significant efforts. At the same time, a number of technologies and discoveries can potentially pose a threat to human civilization.

The countries of North America, Western Europe and East Asia will continue to play the first violin in the world scientific and technological progress. In the next decade and a half, steady progress is expected in China, India and the countries of Eastern Europe. Russia's positions in this area will be slightly weakened. The gap between the leaders and the technologically backward countries of the world will deepen.

The report includes an overview rating of modern scientific and technological capabilities of the countries of the world, within the framework of which such factors as the number of scientists and engineers per 1 million population, the number of published scientific articles, spending on science, the number of patents received, etc. were analyzed. used data for the period from 1992 to 2004.

According to this rating, the United States has the greatest potential in the creation of new materials and technologies, as well as their application in practice (they received 5.03 points). The United States is far ahead of its closest pursuers. Japan ranked second only 3.08 points, Germany (third) - 2.12. The top ten also includes Canada (2.08), Taiwan (2.00), Sweden (1.97), Great Britain (1.73), France and Switzerland (1.60 each), Israel (1.53).

Russia turned out to be the first among all post-Soviet states and took 19th place in the final rating (0.89). It was outstripped by South Korea, Finland, Australia, Iceland, Denmark, Norway, the Netherlands and Italy.

According to the authors of the report, Russia will be relatively successful in the application of new technologies in practice in the field of healthcare, environmental protection, and security. Its results in the development of agricultural areas, strengthening the armed forces, and improving the work of government bodies will be less impressive. In all these areas, it will be outstripped not only by industrially developed countries, but also by China, India and Poland.

In the modern era, the increasingly accelerating development of Civilization has become especially noticeable. Moreover, lately everything is changing literally before our eyes, during the lifetime of even one generation.

For a visual comparison, it is appropriate here to cite an excerpt from the notes of the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius, made by him in the 70s of the 2nd century AD. NS.:

“... Yes, you live at least three thousand years, at least thirty thousand, just remember that a person does not lose any other life, except for the one he lives; and lives only for the one that he loses. So it goes one to one longest and shortest. After all, the present is equal for everyone, although it is not equal to what is lost; so it turns out for a moment that we are losing, and the past and the future cannot be lost, because it is impossible to take away from anyone that which he does not have. So remember two things. The first is that everything has been uniform from time to time and revolves in a circle, and it makes no difference whether you observe the same thing for a hundred years, two hundred or infinitely long. And the other is that both the most durable and the one who is too early to die loses exactly the same amount. For the present is the only thing that they can lose, since they have this and only this, and what you don’t have, you cannot lose. ”

Previously, people did not even notice any progressive development. Now, it's hard not to notice him. A modern person of "middle age", during only his life could observe how personal computers, the Internet, cell phones appeared, and now everyone can become the owner of a personal car, etc.

Distances don't matter that much now. In the early 90s of the last century, a sharp increase in the processes of globalization and the interpenetration of the economies of different countries began. The developed countries are already, in fact, increasingly turning into a kind of giant management office. This could happen, however, only under the condition of the simultaneous industrialization of the developing countries, where the main production is moving. This leads to a deepening of the international division of labor.

The growth of the most important indicators - population, energy consumption, the accumulation of industrial products, the growth of scientific information - is happening exponentially. Since this development is associated with the expenditure of energy and other resources, it is clear that over time they must be depleted. The question is, when will this happen?

Sociologist M. Sukharev, in his popular work Explosion of Complexity, paints the following picture:

“One more pattern is visible in the development of society - the acceleration of the growth of complexity over time. For tens of thousands of years, tribes have lived on Earth, armed with spears and bows. For several hundred years we have passed the industrial and technical civilization. It is not known how many years are given to the computer stage, but the current rate of evolution of society is unprecedented.

If we extrapolate these tendencies into the future, it turns out that the rate of development of society should increase so much that social formations will begin to change every fifty, ten or less years, and mankind will unite into a superstate during the 21st century ”.

Calculations show that with the current (exponential) growth rates of energy consumption and industrial processing of terrestrial matter, the limits of development are quite quickly reached, beyond which further growth becomes impossible.

If the current trends in the development of our Civilization continue, scientists and ecologists say, then already in the first decades of the 21st century, a critical situation will come, caused by the depletion of resources, a drop in industrial production, a sharp reduction in the amount of food per capita with simultaneous severe environmental pollution.

“... If today we do not take special measures, do not change the nature of our civilization (that is, the value systems that determine the activities of people), then the losing stability of the biosphere, even without the shock effects of a person, will pass into a state that is unsuitable for his life ...

The loss of stability of the biosphere can hardly be equated with an ecological crisis: you can survive the crisis, find a way out of it, but there can be no return of the biosphere to a state suitable for human life! "

This means that modern technical civilization may cease to exist ...

We owe all the achievements of technical civilization to scientific and technological progress and natural energy sources. But the reserves of the main sources of energy (oil, gas, coal) are finite, the term of their exhaustion is several decades. The transition to the ubiquitous use of nuclear and thermonuclear energy, if possible, still it will not be quick and painless (and other alternative energy sources - solar, wind and hydropower are unlikely to be able to cover the exponentially growing needs of Civilization).

As astrophysicist L.M. Gindilis:

“The severity of the situation is that the collapse should come very soon, in the first decades of the XXI century. Therefore, even if humanity knew how to "turn" (or at least suspend) this process, would have the means and the will to make the turn today, it simply would not have enough time, since all negative processes possess a certain inertia, due to which they cannot be stopped immediately ...

The economy of the Earth is like a heavily laden transport that rushes at high speed off-road straight to the abyss. Apparently we have already passed the point where it was necessary to turn in order to fit into the "trajectory of the turn." And we don't have time to slow down either. The situation is aggravated by the fact that no one knows where the steering wheel and brake are. Nevertheless, both the crew and the passengers are very complacent, naively believing that, "when needed," they will figure out the transport arrangement and be able to make the necessary maneuver. I do not think that the picture drawn means the inevitable death of mankind, although difficult trials for us are apparently inevitable. If humanity can go through these tests, then the nature of development should radically change. "

At the VISION-21 symposium, which was held in 1993 by the NASA Space Research Center. Lewis and the Ohio Aerospace Institute, there was a sensational speech by the mathematician and writer Vernor Winge. In it, considering the prospects for the development of computers, Vinge proposed a new term "technological singularity".

In his opinion, the acceleration of technological progress is the main feature of the 20th century. We are on the verge of changes comparable to the appearance of man on Earth. The aggravating reason for these changes is that the development of technology inevitably leads to the creation of entities with an intellect exceeding human. Science can achieve such a breakthrough in a number of ways (and this is another reason why a breakthrough will occur).

Computers will become "conscious" and superhuman intelligence will arise. At present, there is no consensus on whether we will be able to create a machine equal to man, however, if this works out, it will soon be possible to design even more intelligent creatures.

Large computer networks (and their combined users) can "perceive themselves" as superhumanly intelligent entities.

The machine-human interface will become so cramped that the intelligence of the users can reasonably be considered superhuman.

Biology can provide us with the means to improve natural human intelligence.

The first three possibilities are directly related to improving computer hardware. Hardware advances have been remarkably stable over the past several decades. If we proceed from this trend, then the intelligence, superior to human, will appear within the next thirty years.

What will be the consequences of this event? When progress is guided by an intelligence that surpasses human intelligence, it will become much faster.

Such an event would annul the entire body of human laws as unnecessary, perhaps in the blink of an eye. An uncontrollable chain reaction will begin to develop exponentially with no hope of regaining control over the situation. The changes that were thought to take “thousands of centuries” (if they happen at all) are likely to materialize in the next 100 years.

It would be quite justified to call this event a singularity.

Perhaps Vinge's views were influenced by the strict adherence to the ever-accelerating development of computer technology, the so-called "Moore's Law"? After all, the computing power of computers is growing at an astonishingly high and surprisingly constant rate.

In April 1965, about three and a half years before the creation of Intel, Gordon Moore, then director of the development department of Fairchild Semiconductors, in an article for Electronics magazine gave a forecast of the development of microelectronics, which soon became known as "Moore's Law." Having presented in the form of a graph (Fig. 4) the increase in the performance of memory microcircuits, he discovered an interesting pattern: new models of microcircuits were developed after more or less the same periods - 18-24 months - after the appearance of their predecessors, and their capacity increased each times about twice. If this trend continues, Moore concluded, the power of computing devices will grow exponentially over a relatively short period of time.

Moore's observation, not yet elevated to the rank of law at that time, was brilliantly confirmed later, and the pattern he discovered is still observed today, and with amazing accuracy, being the basis for numerous forecasts of productivity growth. For example, in the 30 years that have elapsed since the introduction of the 4004 microprocessor in 1971 until the release of the Pentium 4 processor, the number of transistors has grown more than 18,000 times: from 2,300 to 42 million.

The statement made in 1965, over the years has acquired the status of almost a law of nature and has been confirmed in many areas, both in microelectronics itself and in adjacent areas: according to Moore's law, both RAM chips and microprocessors become more complex, the clock frequency multiplies electronic computer hearts, many other parameters and indicators are developing. Even the sizes of telescopes (mirror / lens area, sensitivity) obey this law.

Over the past more than forty years, skeptics have predicted an imminent demise of Moore's law hundreds of times, but it continues to operate.

Moore's law is far from mathematical accuracy: he describes even the complexity of microcircuits very approximately, and Moore himself, conducting an edition in 1975, was forced to rely on the numbers obtained by means of approximation. At its core, Moore's Law is not a law of nature, but rather a rule of thumb.

Rice.

nanotechnology microprocessor anthropic risk

But sooner or later, the complication of microelectronic products will lead to the exhaustion of the capabilities of existing technologies (a transistor cannot be smaller than an atom).

Leading processor corporation (Intel) has announced plans for the near future. In 2007, the transition to the 45-nanometer process was planned, in 2009 - the introduction of the 32-nanometer process, and in 2011 the turn of the 22 nm technological process will come.

The smallest possible value is 4 nanometers. And if Moore's Law continues to be implemented, this figure will be achieved by 2023.

By that time or somewhat later, the dimensions of all elements of the transistor will have reached atomic dimensions and it will be simply impossible to reduce them further, therefore new approaches are already being sought. Time will tell which way the further development will go. But one conclusion can be drawn - 2023 is one of the critical points. And if we proceed from the fact that development proceeds according to the principle that the increase in magnitude is proportional to the magnitude itself (self-similar development), then after each critical point, the time remaining until the critical date (singularity point) will be half the duration of the cycle. That is, the duration of the microprocessor cycle: 2023-1971 = 52. The Singularity will come, respectively, 2023 + 52/2 = 2049, which is somewhat later than Vernor Vinge predicted.

The main consequence of Moore's Law: somewhere between 2015 and 2035, the computing power of personal computers will equal the "raw" computing power of the human brain (the order of the latter is estimated at 1016 operations per second - although signals in the human brain are transmitted extremely slowly, due to parallel processing its overall performance is still higher), and then surpasses it. This does not mean at all the mandatory appearance of AI, but such an opportunity will appear.

Over the past 10 years, we have witnessed a revolution in neurophysiology. Brain scanning technology and molecular biology have provided a general understanding of how memory, perception, and consciousness work. In parallel with this, an inevitable increase in the productivity of both personal computers and supercomputers continues. And the latter are already today almost equal to the performance of the human brain.

For a project to simulate the human brain, a special version of the supercomputer, codenamed Blue Brain, was built in 2005. With its help, researchers hope to shed light on the main mysteries of the human brain - cognition, memory, and, if successful, then consciousness itself. The machine has a peak speed of about 22.8 teraflops.

According to preliminary calculations, it will take at least ten years to build a fully functional human brain model.

The famous supercomputer Deep Blue, which in 1997 beat the world chess champion Garry Kasparov for the first time in history, had a performance of 1 teraflops. And already in 2006, IBM announced that it was starting to create a new supercomputer for the US Department of Energy in charge of nuclear safety. The Roadrunner supercomputer with a peak performance of 1.6 petaflops (which is equal to 1600 teraflops or 1x1015 operations per second) was commissioned in 2008. This is more than a thousand-fold increase in performance compared to the supercomputer that beat Kasparov, and in just about ten years.

In 1956, when IBM invented the hard drive, storing 1 MB, adjusted for inflation, cost $ 65,000. Today, a USB stick with 2GB of data is equivalent to a device that would have cost $ 130 million in 1956.

Now let's extrapolate this trend for the near future. In 2025, 6.3 petabytes of data will be available at any store for just $ 100. To better understand what 6.3 petabytes are, imagine that everything that happens around you would be filmed on a digital camera with this amount of memory since the beginning of the industrial revolution - that is, from 1700 - to the present day. Even so, the camera would have some free disk space for several years of use. And all this gigantic amount of information in 18-20 years can be purchased for only $ 100!

Or such an example. According to IBM estimates, by 2010 the volume of digital information in the world will double every 11 hours. We create so much data that it becomes more difficult to find useful and necessary information.

The prospects are even more interesting. Molecular computers, which will become reality in 10-20 years, will have a performance that is billions of times greater than the current ones based on silicon microprocessor technologies. Their processors will be tens of thousands of times smaller than modern ones. Great hopes are pinned on quantum computers in the future as well.

The dynamics of the development of microelectronics in the previous 30 years and the forecast for the next decade using the example of the growth of parameters of large integrated circuits of random access memory for personal computers are shown in Fig. 5.

Rice. The dynamics of the development of microelectronics in the previous 30 years and the forecast for the next decade on the example of the growth of parameters of large integrated circuits of random access memory for personal computers

Accelerating the pace of biological and social evolution

Along with the acceleration of scientific and technological progress, there is an acceleration in the rates of both biological and human evolution.

A very interesting study of this issue was carried out by the Russian scientist A.D. Panov in his work "The Crisis of the Planetary Cycle of Universal History and the Possible Role of the SETI Program in Post-Crisis Development." To comprehend the ongoing processes, he uses the concept of an attractor, which is usually defined as a trajectory in the state space of the system, to which all real trajectories are attracted. The attractor of history is an ideal self-similar sequence around which the points of real revolutions fluctuate.

“We can say that, despite the crisis nature, the entire previous history of mankind follows a single smooth attractor, characterized by a self-similar acceleration of historical time ...

An ideal self-similar sequence of points tn is described by the equation

tn = t * - T / an

In the formula a> 1 - the coefficient of acceleration of historical time, showing how many times each subsequent epoch is shorter than the previous one. T sets the duration of the entire described time interval, n is the revolution number, and t * is a certain moment in time, which can be called the moment of singularity ...

It is easy to see that as n tends to infinity, the sequence tn approaches the singular point t * without bound, never passing it. The intervals between crises or revolutions near the singularity tend to zero, and their density is infinite. Beyond the singularity, evolution in the self-similar regime does not continue, and in reality it cannot even approach it, since the situation when successive revolutions separate days or hours does not make sense.

Since the singularity was predicted already in 2027, it is safe to say that the time of the self-similar story has expired or will expire in the near future. Therefore, the approaching evolutionary crisis is not an ordinary evolutionary crisis, of which there were many, it is a crisis of the entire attractor of the history of civilization. We can say that this is a crisis of the very preceding multi-million-year crisis nature of the development of reason on Earth, a crisis of crises. It is difficult to make long-term forecasts of the development of civilization, but one prediction can be made with complete certainty: the effect of accelerating historical time will no longer be, since we are already near the point at which this speed is formally infinite. Now the nature of the evolution of mankind must inevitably change in the most profound way, history must pass through the point of singularity and follow a completely new channel. It is important to note that passing through the point of singularity does not mean an imminent catastrophe for humanity. "

Turning to the consideration of biological history for the entire time of the existence of the Earth, the author shows that a similar self-similarity is characteristic of the entire period of its development (about 4 billion years). "The best approximation is given by the coefficient of self-similarity a = 2.66 (which is surprisingly close to the number e = 2.718 ...)." Using exactly e and t * = 0 - assuming that the singularity falls approximately at our time (this simplifies the formula, but does not make it less accurate). We will take the time T equal to 4 billion - the approximate time of biological evolution on Earth. Substituting natural numbers starting from zero into the development formula (t = T / e ”), we get the time of the key event, which can be compared with real“ revolutionary ”events that took place in the process of evolution on Earth. The formula reflects the same development principle - the increase in value is proportional to the value itself.

As you can see, the coincidence is very good.

“It can be seen that self-similarity took place with surprising accuracy throughout the entire 3.8 billion years of biosphere history, including the history of mankind (with two minor violations, which are not surprising, since we are not talking about an exact self-similarity, but about a self-similar attractor). .. For the singular point, the value t * = 2004 is obtained, which is very close to 2027, obtained from the analysis of only human history. The difference between these two dates is determined by the scale of the error of the applied mathematical procedure ... It can be assumed that the result obtained is not accidental: the entire evolution of the biosphere and then, the noosphere, is indeed a single process obeying a single deep evolutionary law, the main manifestation of which is the self-similar acceleration of evolution ...

And just now this single self-similar process has come to an end. Not only the history of mankind, but the entire planetary evolution must turn in some completely new direction. Therefore, the modern systemic crisis of civilization is a crisis of the global planetary attractor of the Universal History, and not just the attractor of the history of mankind. "

St. Petersburg historian I. M. Dyakonov in his review of the history of mankind "Ways of history" pointed to an exponential reduction in the duration of historical periods - phases of development of society - as we approach our time: “There is no doubt that the historical process shows signs of a natural exponential acceleration. At least 30 thousand years passed from the appearance of Homo Sapiens to the end of phase I, phase II lasted about 7 thousand years, phase III - about 2 thousand, phase IV

about 1.5 thousand, V phase - about a thousand years, VI - about 300, VII phase - a little over 100 years; the duration of the VIII phase is still impossible to determine. "

When plotted on the graph, these phases add up to exponential development, which ultimately presupposes a transition to a vertical line or, rather, to a point - the so-called singularity. On the exponential schedule, the scientific and technological achievements of mankind, as well as the population of the Earth, are developing.

Thanks to the survival instinct, humanity and our civilization have existed for thousands of years. Although over the past few decades, the scientific community has become increasingly worried about possible global catastrophes - events with a high risk coefficient that can not only harm the planet, but also destroy life on it.

The era of black holes is described in the book by Professor Fred Adams "The Five Ages of the Universe", as an age in which organized matter will remain only in the form of black holes. Gradually, thanks to the quantum processes of radiation activity, they will get rid of the matter absorbed by them. By the end of this era, only low-energy protons, electrons and neutrons will remain. In other words, you can say goodbye to our beautiful blue planet.

According to many religious movements that put forward various hypotheses, the end of the world is approaching (the day of judgment, the second coming of Jesus Christ, the coming of the Antichrist). All agree on one thing: the end of the world is inevitable. Scientists refute most of the hypotheses, but also agree that this can happen.

When you think about the periods of the rule of such dictators as Hitler, Stalin, Saddam, Kim Jong-un and other classical political dictatorial regimes, it is easy to assume that such a scenario can also be considered the beginning of the end of civilization.

As a result of yet another doomsday scenario, man-made nanorobots will get out of control and destroy humanity.

Many scientists are concerned that the extremely powerful gamma radiation from neighboring galaxies, as a result of a very strong explosion, could cause the death of our planet. This hypothesis helps to explain the so-called Fermi paradox, which indicates that, besides us, there are no other technologically advanced civilizations in the Universe, since gamma rays may have destroyed everything.

This is a controversial issue, but many believe that as a result of human activity, the resulting global warming will become the factor that can be considered as the cause of climate change and the death of life on our planet.

The sun periodically throws hot radioactive gas clouds into space, which threaten the earth's magnetic field, as they are extremely powerful and reach the earth in just a few hours. According to some scientists, as a result of the harm that humans do to their planet, the uncontrolled coronary emissions from the Sun will one day destroy the planet.

The Big Bang theory is another dubious cosmological hypothesis, according to which the matter of the Universe, ranging from stars, galaxies to atoms and other particles that appeared as a result of this explosion, will disappear in the same way in the future.

The Great Shrinkage is another scientific hypothesis for the end of our existence. As a result, the universe will shrink and explode. The Big Bang spawned it, and the Big Compression will destroy it.

"Genetic pollution" is a dubious term used to explain the uncontrolled use of genetic engineering that interferes with the natural world. It is undesirable to interfere with genes, since once creating new organisms, you can irrevocably harm existing ones. Undesirable dominant species can emerge as a result of spontaneous mutations.

Another risk to the life of humanity can be considered global epidemics, which can spread very quickly by airborne droplets and kill people just a few hours before humanity finds an effective medicine.

What would the planet look like if humanity suddenly disappeared from the face of the earth, like dinosaurs? Several reasons can lead to the sudden extinction of humanity. For example, all men will become gay and the reproduction of humanity will stop.

There are two scenarios for the development of the future of the Universe, and both lead to its destruction. Some scientists say the universe will explode, while others will freeze. One way or another, but both scenarios are absolutely non-optimistic.

The threat of overpopulation of the planet is heard more and more often. Many experts argue that this will be our biggest challenge by 2050. The fact is that humanity will be so numerous that there will be a lack of various life-supporting resources, for example, water and oil. As a result, we get hunger, droughts, disease and endless wars between countries.

Excessive consumption is already considered one of the risks in 2015. Since humans consume much more than nature can regenerate. Signs of overconsumption are huge fish catches and overconsumption of meat. The same applies to vegetables and fruits.

Albert Einstein was one of the first to predict the end of the world as a result of the Third World War. He said that he did not know what kind of weapon mankind would use during the Third, but in the Fourth World War, mankind would fight with stones and clubs.

The death of civilization is the most realistic scenario among those that predict the death of humanity. An example is the fate of the Mayan civilization or the Byzantine Empire. All the same can happen to all of humanity in the future.

The nuclear holocaust and the apocalypse are among the most real risks that can lead to the death of humanity. This can happen, as the world has accumulated a huge amount of nuclear weapons.

A new world order can be established by one of the secret organizations that exist today (Illuminati, Freemasons, Zionists, etc.). Today they are under the control of society, but in the future they can become more powerful and, with their dogmas and actions, lead humanity to slavery and service to evil.

The essence of the Malthusian catastrophe, according to Thomas Malta, author of The Experience of the Population Law (1798), is that in the future the population will overtake the growth and opportunities of the agricultural sector of the economy and stability. After which there will be a decline and decrease in the population, and disasters will begin.

This theory has existed since antiquity and most (if not all) have seen countless films in which one sunny day some alien civilization will conquer the planet and try to destroy life on it. This will not happen in the near future, but it may happen someday.

Transhumanism is an international cultural and intellectual over the past few years, the purpose of which is to understand the great role of technology in transformations and improving the quality of the material, physical and mental spheres of human life. While it sounds great, humanity could suffer as a result of the information and technological revolution.

Experts use the concept of "technological singularity", describing a hypothetical scenario, as a result of which rapid technological progress will play a cruel joke on humanity, which will create artificial intelligence and die, losing control over clones and robots.

Mutually assured destruction refers to the global use of weapons for the mass destruction of people and the planet. This is a realistic scenario if we assess the current political and military situation in the world.

Those who have watched Die Another Day know that kinetic bombardment can destroy life on the planet. If you haven't seen the movie, then imagine developing a space weapon that can destroy everything on Earth in a couple of seconds. Fearfully? Fearfully. But scientists even calculated the probability up to thousandths of a percent.

Dear comrades! Russia needs a President who will lead it not to death, like Gorbachev of the USSR, but to prosperity. We need a wise, educated President capable of choosing the correct scientific theory for the development of the Russian state. And what does correct mean? He must choose such a scientific theory so that our state is strengthened and is a reliable support for the people in all spheres of their life. For Russia to be able to withstand the challenges and threats of the new information era and take a worthy place, and not dissolve in the new world order. For this, the President of Russia must have a modern holistic worldview, know the vector of development of world science and the law of the correct choice of life, formulated by the great Greek sage Aristotle.

I consider and undertake to prove that out of four presidential candidates only G.A. Zyuganov. meets these requirements. Zyuganov's scientific works, published in eight world languages, confirm that he has an integral so-called cosmic worldview corresponding to the modern information age and applies the maximum scientific method of Academician Vernadsky for understanding the world. The essence of this method lies in the fact that true knowledge about the subject and about the world can only be obtained by adding scientific and philosophical, religious and mythological, artistic and everyday perception of the world. Only such a comprehensive awareness can be the basis for a truly scientific approach to solving global problems facing humanity. That is why Zyuganov, along with the exact sciences and philosophical knowledge (he is a mathematician and Doctor of Philosophy), deeply learned Orthodoxy, Islam and Buddhism as the main religions of Russia and enriched himself with the work of Russian and foreign writers and poets. It is no coincidence that Zyuganov's team includes leading scientists of the Russian Academy of Sciences, headed by its vice-president, Nobel Prize laureate Zhores Alferov, and Russian writers, led by the conscience of the Russian people, Valentin Rasputin.

Why do real Russian scientists and Russian writers support Zyuganov and not other candidates? Because these smartest people in Russia see how Putin and his team are destroying Russian science. They know for sure that the other presidential candidates Medvedev, Zhirinovsky, Bogdanov do not have such a holistic outlook on the world as Zyuganov. Therefore, they are not able to make the right choice of a scientific theory of the development of Russia. All of them are hostages of the outdated and outgoing Western purely materialistic worldview. They are all liberals, democrats and free-market people. Such presidents will lead Russia not to prosperity, but to a historical impasse. And perhaps to death. After all, Gorbachev, infected with the Western worldview, destroyed the USSR.

Let's see from a scientific point of view, do Medvedev, Zhirinovsky and Bogdanov care about the welfare of the Russian people? Judge for yourself. All historical and scientific experience confirms that politicians are not free to choose a scientific theory of state development. If they want the welfare of their people, then they must necessarily take into account the type of society characteristic of a given country and the world outlook of its indigenous people.

In the West, thanks to good climatic and geographical conditions, historically, an individualistic way of obtaining energy and the same type of society has developed. And in Russia, due to its harsh conditions, a collectivist type of society has developed. The centuries-old experience of social scientific knowledge confirms that each of these two types of society should have its own scientific system and its own social theory of the development of the state and society.

Western science is aimed at the boundless satisfaction of the needs of the egoistic individual, regardless of the future of the planet and humanity. Therefore, she puts man above nature and society. It is for the individual a tool for conquering nature and domination over humanity.

Russian science is based on a cosmic worldview, i.e. on the unity of the world - man, society and nature. It is designed not to destroy the balance between them, but to maintain it through reasonable sufficiency and knowledge of the objective laws of the development of a single Cosmos and the development of a single national economic complex.

Putin, Medvedev, Zhirinovsky and Bogdanov hide from the people that the main thing, as stated by the law of the correctness of life, is that it is categorically impossible to impose the theory of individualistic development on the collectivist type of society and vice versa. Otherwise, they will degenerate. It's like incompatibility with blood transfusion: if you pour the wrong blood into a person, he will die. It also happens with society. Look at the fate of the Soviet Union and Russia.

The transfer of the standards of material progress of an individualistic society to a collectivist society and attempts to create a "consumer society" in the Soviet Union and in Russia have shown their failure. The processes of democratization, liberalization, privatization, which proved their worth in the individualistic society of the West and were forcibly imposed on Russia in the early 90s of the twentieth century as a role model, led to disastrous results. Including the crisis of Russian science and the "brain drain" abroad.

Contemporary Russian theorists and politicians Putin, Medvedev, Zhirinovsky, who are developing plans to build a civil society in Russia in a Western manner, have made the wrong choice. This led to the extinction of the population, increased suffering for the majority and the extinction of Russia. The imposition of a market economy and a system of statehood in Russia that is alien to the country's historical social orientation, has led to the fact that at present in Russia there is the formation of two societies hostile to each other. One of them personifies a rebellious people, rejecting an alien ideology, and the other the ruling elite, destroying the foundations of a collectivist society.

Famous scientist, author of the theory of ethnogenesis (national development) Gumilev L.N. in the book "From Russia to Russia" he wrote: "The mechanical transfer of Western European traditions of behavior to the conditions of Russia gave little good ... You cannot reject someone else's on the threshold, but when studying someone else's experience, you need to remember that this is someone else's experience and apply it in your the country needs to be careful. You can try to enter the circle of "civilized" peoples, but nothing is given for free. The price of Russia's integration with Western Europe will be a complete rejection of domestic traditions and subsequent assimilation ”, i.e. the death of Russian civilization.

The use of the maximum scientific approach in choosing the theory of the development of the Russian state, which Zyuganov owns, convincingly proves that the West and Russia have different types of society and different types of life, different methods of producing social life and different principles of creation.

The forceful imposition of them on each other brings innumerable calamities to our peoples. Conversely, following your own path leads to prosperity. This is practically proved by Belarus and China. This is where the root of our troubles and victories lies. The scientist and politician Zyuganov understands this well, and Medvedev, Zhirinovsky and Bogdanov do not want to understand. They stubbornly fail to notice that in the world scientific and public sphere the conclusion is ripening about the need to change the Western European world outlook, which is now dominant in most of the world, to a cosmic world outlook.

The crisis of the scientific provisions of Western civilization is becoming more and more evident. The artificial division of the World into the natural world and the human world, adopted by their science, is becoming obsolete. Looking at the world only as a material for transformations in order to satisfy needs, characteristic of the Western worldview, is dangerous for the life of mankind.

The UN Conference on Environment and Development, held 16 years ago in Rio de Janeiro, determined that Western civilization imposes a system of management on the whole world, leading to the death of all mankind. Based on the achievement of profit in any way, the capitalist system destroys the environment and depletes resources. Has already led to an environmental and social crisis. Now in the countries of the "golden billion", where about 20% of the world's population lives and where a "consumer society" has been formed, 86% of all world resources are spent and 75% of all waste from economic activity is generated. The spread of the consumption rate of the countries of the "golden billion" throughout the world requires such volumes of production that our planet simply cannot withstand and will perish.

Western science and worldview were good when the world seemed inexhaustible. And now the Planet has entered an era of extreme overload. And you need to change the project of science. In 2000, American and Russian scientists, by means of mathematical and computer modeling, explored the modern world and determined the anthropogenic and socio-economic limits of the world, and also established the laws of its self-destruction. The result is disappointing. After 2025, there will be a systemic disharmony in all spheres of life on the planet and humanity. The "explosion of history" is possible. In this self-destructive world, the war for world domination is becoming senseless, which is now being waged by Western civilization, seizing more and more storehouses of vital resources from other peoples and destroying millions of people with hunger and drugs. This offensive of the “golden billion” will not save it from destruction, because in the new conditions of an extremely overloaded world, the Western worldview itself, consumer ways of life and life will lead the spaceship “Earth” with humanity on board to inevitable death. More than 1,000 leading UN experts have recognized that the future of humanity is not linked to a market economy. An increasing number of scientists around the world, including in the West, realize that it is necessary to accept a new scientific picture of the world and a new worldview. It should be based on the awareness of the fact that the Earth is extremely overloaded and the impending global catastrophe. Proceeding from this, the highest absolute goal of mankind becomes - the preservation of earthly civilization, the transformation of a spontaneous self-destructive world into a controlled, scientifically and spiritually organized world. The world outlook of Russian civilization comes closest to this.

At the beginning of the third millennium, it is Russian (spiritual-material) socialism, and not Western materialist capitalism, that should become the modern form of our national idea. The planet Earth and humanity can be saved through the transition to the cosmic worldview of most peoples and civilizations.

The economy of profit should be replaced by an economy of reasonable prosperity. Then materialistic management through property will be replaced by intelligent energy management. It will ensure the equality of the rights of people to receive vital energy and information, as well as providing the bulk of the people with the opportunity to control the distribution of energy, which guarantees a healthy life on the planet and freedom of development of Reason, human movement towards perfection, i.e. to harmony with society and nature. Scientists call this ecological socialism. But in order to carry out such a worldview revolution without a civil war, the rulers of countries, politicians and the entire social vanguard of society need to master the method of intersystem analysis and the maximum scientific approach, i.e. cosmic worldview.

Zyuganov understands this perfectly well, but Putin, Medvedev, Zhirinovsky and Bogdanov do not. What is this misunderstanding, or malicious intent? After all, everyone can see how the earth is now taking revenge on humanity for an unreasonable attitude towards nature. She takes revenge on earthquakes, floods, sudden changes in temperature, global climate change. In Pskov in winter there is almost no snow. The planet warns us: stop the spirit of profit, come to your senses, save me and yourself from destruction.

The best minds of Russia came to the conclusion that it is necessary to mobilize all political parties, all governments of states to achieve the highest goal of mankind - the preservation of earthly civilization, which the current world elite is leading to destruction. Such a definition of the highest goal was formulated in the "Appeal of Russian scientists to the international scientific community", to which they attributed all thinking and worried about the fate of the earthly civilization of people. This appeal was signed by leading academicians of the Russian Academy of Sciences and with the draft "Open letter of the President of Russia to the international community and the UN" in early 2004 was sent to the Administration of Russian President Putin, where it has not yet received proper support.

Unfortunately, the current politicians and parties at the helm of Russia choose Capital when choosing between Reason and Capital. They pursue not popular, not universal, but their narrow-group interests. They blindly follow the course charted by the world elite, i.e. a course of preserving life only for the "golden billion" by forcibly seizing all the planet's vital resources and exterminating unnecessary eaters. With the help of the Russian authorities in the person of Putin, Medvedev, Zhirinovsky, Russia has become the main testing ground for the development of modern technologies for seizing resources and methods for desecrating society and fooling a person.

The initiators of the Appeal of Russian Scientists were forced to turn to Zyuganov and the Communist Party of the Russian Federation for support. Their choice was not accidental. Unlike other Russian parties, the Communist Party of the Russian Federation has advanced the most in understanding the features of the new era. In the Program of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, adopted back in 1992, the idea was initially laid down that the Russian authorities' adherence to the Western course would lead to the death of Russian civilization. The Communist Party of the Russian Federation strongly opposes globalization in the American way, because global control of civilization with the help of only the materialistic mechanism of the market economy is impossible. The reason for the approaching environmental and energy catastrophe lies in the uncontrollability of the market mechanism of the economy by logical common sense. World bourgeois thought, to which presidential candidates Medvedev, Zhirinovsky and Bogdanov are committed, is aimed at unrestrained enrichment and is not capable of solving common human problems. The bourgeoisie always and everywhere proceeds only from its own selfish interests - the achievement of material success. She is immoral. In her mind, any material objects have a price, but she has no idea about the price of a person's life, people, civilization, planet Earth. And this can destroy all of humanity.

A striking confirmation of this is the attitude of world capital towards the Russian people and Russian civilization. A fierce informational and psychological war is being waged against them. The consequence of the forcible imposition on the Russian people of Western spiritless materialistic thinking, alien to them, has become a deep psycho-biological crisis, consisting in the loss of vital energy by the people, the breakdown of families, the birth of sick children, a decrease in life expectancy and population decline. And the West is doing all this for the sake of seizing property in the form of material values ​​and energy resources.

How to resist aggressors? Can Reason win in a battle with Capital? Zyuganov is sure he can. But this requires the unification of all reasonable people into a single movement of resistance. That is why at the 1st joint Plenum of the Central Committee and the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, a fateful decision was made to combine the political and organizational capabilities of the Communist Party with the intellectual potential of Russian science and the spiritual potential of Russian culture. This association will allow to reach a qualitatively new level of struggle against the Western yoke by understanding the features of the new information era, the nature of information and psychological warfare, mastering modern methods and technologies of countering the weapons of aggressors.

At the same time, the Communist Party of the Russian Federation proceeds from the fact that it is Russia that is destined to arm mankind with a new theory of salvation and put it into practice. It is the communists that are in demand by the time to once again save humanity from the brown plague, from liberal fascism in the form of American-style globalization.

Today, the drama of Russia is becoming more and more obvious: either a new model of development will be found, or the territory of the Russian Federation, without acquiring a stable political state form, will turn into an object of activity for world actors of power, and in the worst case, into a dump of human waste.

At present, a grandiose battle for the future is unfolding before our eyes, the outcome of which determines the alignment of forces in the already emerging information civilization. Five super-projects compete with each other for the right to determine the future world order.

The most powerful of these is "Atlantic or American Project". It is supported by all the economic and military might of the only superpower today. The project presupposes the preservation of the achieved power by all forces, as well as dictating their will to the whole world and balancing on the brink of military conflicts.

"European project" provides for the concentration of forces and means of a united Europe to build an information society.

Promising "Japanese project", designated as creating the prerequisites for the emergence of computers of the sixth generation. Powerfully gaining strength " Chinese project"Approaching the technological support of Western countries and conducting trade expansion around the world. Formed Islamic project", Striving at this stage to unite the countries of their religious culture.

But in this future world order, the place of Russia has not been determined. She does not have an independent project... Russia is trying to integrate into the joint Euro-Atlantic project. This catch-up strategy is extremely dangerous. Providing with its raw materials the transition of developed Western countries to a real informational future, Russia itself remains “in the industrial past”. At the same time, it is rapidly losing its economic and, therefore, political independence and is increasingly turning into an object of management for the leading information powers. Meanwhile, it is Russia that now has all the capabilities to put forward its own civilizational project in scale and content comparable to the projects of the West and the East.

In order to break into the information community, Russia has a rich scientific and theoretical heritage, as well as problems that require urgent solutions. The first of them is the complete absence of state support for the development of science in accordance with the cosmic world outlook. Zyuganov in his election program clearly stated that under him the development of science will become the strategy of the state, which:

It will immediately double the funding of science with the prospect of bringing it to 8% of the expenditure side of the budget;

Modernizes the laboratory and technical base of scientific institutions;

Provide scientists with proper working conditions and a decent level of wages;

Will support the main headquarters of Russian science - the Russian Academy of Sciences;

It will develop a network of science cities and implement the program to prevent the "brain drain", the return of scientists and specialists to Russia.

President Zyuganov will create all conditions to ensure a breakthrough in digital and nanotechnology, in other branches of fundamental and applied science. This will provide Russia with the development of advanced technologies, the release of competitive products and a worthy place in the new information civilization. By voting for Zyuganov, you are voting for a happy future for Russia and your family. Make the right choice!

The crisis of science is an integral part of the crisis of techno-civilization

The roots of the crisis in world science should be sought in the fact that science began to be used for the exploitation of nature. G. Galileo compared the experiment with a Spanish boot, in which you need to squeeze nature in order for it to reveal its secrets; our I. Michurin urged: "We cannot wait for favors from nature, it is our task to take them from her."

F. Bacon already in the 17th century formulated the slogan: "To conquer nature!" (quoted from I.R.Shafarevich's article "The Future of Russia", newspaper "Zavtra", No. 7, 2005). Today we are reaping the fruits of this "victory". The scientist - an intermediary between nature and people - neglected this mission and participated in the gravest crime - he used the knowledge of the laws of nature for its barbaric exploitation.

The scientific and technological revolution of the 20th century contributed to an unlimited expansion of the scale of production, an increase in the efficiency of the use of natural resources, which made life comfortable, independent of climatic changes, crop failures, epidemics, but at the same time inspired a person with an absolutely false sense of power, "power over nature."

Science took a decisive part in the creation technocivilization, which was built under the leadership of a speculative financial system, acting in order to obtain super-profits for the "global elite".

Dependence financial fraudsters has become a tragedy for science. Under the rule of financial speculators, science became commercial.

Scientists have chosen a cynical motto: "We do what they pay for!" Science, and, above all, Western science, has always fulfilled an order dictated by the competition of financial structures for spheres of influence and sales markets.

Science became an instrument in the struggle for competition in the world of two Superpowers, therefore, in the 20th century, investments in science were distributed approximately as follows (data of Academician V.I.Strakhov):

– 50% - weapon development;

– 30% - development of technical means;

– 10% - fundamental science, natural sciences, mathematics;

– 5% - social Sciences;

– 5% - education and medicine.

The payment for such a position of science was the rapidly growing narrowness of thinking of scientists, meager mind, which did not allow taking care of the consequences of using their discoveries. Science has demonstrated that a mind without conscience can cause enormous destruction.

In pursuit of honors and money, scientists did not even try to convince politicians that defending the Motherland by destroying nature is madness, fraught with the death of all living things, and under the pressure of politicians began to develop new types of weapons - chemical, bacteriological, atomic.

In the production of atomic weapons, in their testing and use, in the production of nuclear fuel on an industrial scale - in all these actions only political and economic expediency was taken into account, and the environmental consequences were very superficially calculated, which led not only to severe contamination of vast regions (Hiroshima and Nagasaki , Semipalatinsk test site, South Ural - the area of ​​the "Mayak" plant, Bikini atoll, etc.), but also to general increase in the background radiation of the planet.

But, judging by the memoirs of scientists - the authors of the Soviet atomic project (Frenkel, Khariton, Zeldovich, Tamm, Ginzburg), they did not think about how many people would die and get sick during the tests, what harm would be done to nature - the trace of an atomic explosion was not calculated.

But memories abound with descriptions of the commercial success of authors such as: "a golden rain was poured", bonuses were up to 40 salaries, for barbed wire in Arzamas they paid extra 70% to the salary. Mention are made of elite apartments, dachas, etc. Thus, Academician V. Ginzburg in his memoirs cheerfully and without shame admits that A. Sakharov, who at first had no relation to the atomic project, was included in it because at that moment he really needed an apartment.

The names of these "wonderful hero physicists" should be hung in the cancer buildings so that patients know to whom they owe an early and painful death. And in Japan, where the growth of cancers did not stop even decades after the atomic bombing, these names should be made public.

Today, scientists, cowardly and obsequiously following the insane financiers and politicians concerned only with the growth of their capital, are participating in the promotion of nuclear energy, although the “peaceful atom” is obviously not completely peaceful, even in the absence of disasters such as the Chernobyl one.

And the problems of hydropower - ineffective economically and extremely dangerous ecologically, do not find a place in official scientific discussions. Only rare desperate "dissidents" from science risk discussing them (see, for example, the works of M.Ya. Lemeshev, B.M. Khanzhin, etc. "Socio-ecological apocalypse", V.G. Vasiliev "Energy of the planet Earth").

And the space industry, with the tacit connivance of scientists, acts to demonstrate the military strength of states, their prestige, for the sake of performing insignificant experiments, for the sake of getting money, for example, for skiing tourists. That every launch is catastrophic damage to the atmosphere, violation of the ozone layer, the release of huge masses of highly toxic substances, the consumption of thousands of tons of non-renewable resources of the planet - this is not taken into account. The mass launch of spy satellites and satellites for communication systems, carried out today, is also not assessed in terms of environmental harm.

The biological hazard associated with the large-scale distribution of genetically modified foods (GMOs), which are poorly understood and whose safety has not been proven, says the doctor of biological sciences, a member of the Women's Environmental Assembly at the UN I. Ermakova:

“A number of independent scientific studies show the harm that they can do to humans and the environment, leading to the death of all life on the planet. Statistics show terrible facts: every year 800,000 children in Russia are born with various forms of pathology (about 70%). In Russia, the death rate is twice as high as the birth rate, and the average life expectancy has decreased by more than 10 years. There is a sharp decline in the number of animals and plants, the disappearance of many species. The process of degradation and destruction can be stopped only by preserving science in Russia, which will save Russia and the entire planet, which, due to human carelessness, stupidity and cowardice, has found itself on the verge of a powerful environmental catastrophe and self-destruction.

Nevertheless, genetically modified crops spread across the planet. In 2004, they sowed about 81 million hectares in the world, that is 17% of all areas suitable for farming, which is 15% more than in 2003. This is due to the economic benefits from the use of genetically modified products by manufacturing companies. And it is not profitable for scientists to lose well-paid jobs, since grants are allocated for these studies. Therefore, science should not depend on businessmen, but should be supported by the state. In the meantime, Russian counters are flooded with hazardous foodstuffs, which there is no one to check and study, and independent scientists who honestly conduct research on genetically modified products are being attacked by transnational companies ... "(Vremya newspaper No. 11-12, 2006).

But, according to A. Golikov, director of the Center for Risk Management of Genetic Engineering of Living Organisms, “if a new product or technology is economically justified, then they will come”. We add: despite any warnings from scientists. And genetically modified products are commercially profitable, because they do not require treatment against pests - not a single living creature on Earth, except for humans, wants to eat them.

They are being pushed onto the food market not only by businessmen like the head of the Russian Grain Union. Arkady Zlochevsky who shouts from TV screens that he wants to eat only transgenic foods, but also "scientists" like the director of the Institute of Nutrition of the Russian Academy of Medical Sciences Tutelyana... Alas, today science abounds in individuals who value the chair more than life on Earth. And what less mind and conscience for such a "scientist", the higher the chair he occupies.

To exploit intellectuals for the sake of profit or to occupy them with meaningless trifles - this is the policy of global financial structures, which today command all spheres of life, including science. And scientists, striving for financial well-being, themselves humbly surrendered their positions as ideologists, spiritual mentors of society, public leaders and humbly agreed to make science primitive utilitarian.

Science turned into a factory of tech gizmos that provide companies with profits. Modern exhibitions of scientific achievements resemble a demonstration of clockwork toys, where something glows, moves and squeaks.

The irresponsibility of scientists is a source of serious environmental hazard. Here are a couple of new "breakthrough" scientific projects.

The motivation for these projects is more than dubious: the authors of the creation of the giant accelerator babble that they want to test the theory of the explosion, although they may well arrange a practical explosion, forcing all earthlings to test vague theories for themselves. Biologists are just as vague about the possibility of stem cell treatment of embryos obtained as a result of crossing, Parkinson's disease and Alzheimer's. But the possible catastrophic consequences of such experiments are not seriously discussed. Scientists get off with jokes about the end of the world - they are well paid. And it would never occur to anyone to think about the preservation of nature, about the prevention of diseases, not by dubious treatment, but by the restoration of the purity of the natural human environment.

Back in the early twentieth century, the genius V. Vernadsky warned that man, having become the main geological force of the planet, approached the threshold of the permissible. Academician N. Moiseev in his book "The World Community and the Fates of Russia" wrote that "the most dangerous and tragic for a person may be the loss of stability of the biosphere ... the transition of the biosphere to a new state in which the parameters of the biosphere exclude the possibility of human existence."

But the authorities do not listen to the warnings of scientists... In a short period of more than a hundred years, human activity, armed with scientific achievements, caused the so-called "scientific and technological revolution", which almost completely exhausted the natural resources accumulated by the planet for billions of years, led to catastrophic pollution of air and water, caused space monstrous, possibly irreparable damage

89 million barrels of oil are produced on Earth every day. All natural resources are extracted and consumed every day so much that it will take nature about 100 years to restore them. For a year, mankind burns such an amount of hydrocarbons that has been accumulated by the Earth for more than a million years.

The head of the Federal Agency for Subsoil Use A. Ledovskikh reassures us: "We will have enough oil for about 50 more years, gas for 100 more." True, the official did not specify who it is for "us" - there will be enough oil and gas in Russia. Judging by the rise in gasoline and gas prices, we are clearly not talking about the majority of the population. Then about whom? About Russian billionaires? They will definitely have enough oil and gas.

According to the magazine Forbes(May, 2008) there are already 100 dollar billionaires in Russia "We have enough oil!" - this is the only thing that worries the authorities, although the situation in the country and in the world requires an urgent revision of the attitude towards the extraction of mineral resources.

Techno-civilization, which has already absorbed the lion's share of irreplaceable reserves of raw materials, most of the Earth's space, has almost exhausted resources not only for its development, but also for maintaining its existence. Man-made disasters have become an everyday reality today. Artificial world, which man created, is teetering on the brink of death. Accordingly, science, focused exclusively on the creation of the technosphere, a science that works for businessmen, which has forgotten about saving nature, is also on the verge of death.

It is the irresponsible willingness of scientists to do what they pay for, without caring about the consequences of their exercises, that has led to a situation that is increasingly referred to as "Technosuicide" of humanity- hypertrophied growth of the technosphere, killing the biosphere of the Earth and man.

Observing how technological progress, science and medicine are developing, more and more often you come to the idea that by the end of the 21st century, mankind will acquire the power of the ancient gods, about whom myths were once formed. But where will all this lead and what awaits us on the way to Olympus?

All the technical revolutions that we are witnessing can be considered stages of a long path towards one great goal: the creation of a planetary civilization. The transition to it should be probably the greatest event in the history of mankind. Moreover, the generation of people living today can be safely considered the most significant of all that have ever lived on our planet. It is they who must determine whether humanity will achieve this great goal or will be plunged into the abyss of chaos. Since the moment when our ancestors first left Africa about 100,000 years ago, about 5,000 generations have passed, but only one generation - today - will determine the fate of our world.

Unlike professional historians, who view history through social movements, wars, the deeds of kings, the spread of ideas, and so on, physicists view history through the prism of energy consumption.
For countless thousands of years, man has been limited to one-fifth of a horsepower, i.e. by the strength of your hands. Entire epochs of man, in essence, are difficult to distinguish from the life of wild animals: small tribes, foraging in a harsh and hostile world. There were no records, all information was passed by word of mouth around the lonely steppe fires. The average life expectancy was 18–20 years. All a person's property was limited to what he could carry on his shoulders. For most of his life, a person suffered from hunger, and after death he disappeared without a trace, leaving nothing behind.
But now the last ice age ended and people managed to domesticate horses and bulls, thereby increasing the energy that they could dispose of up to 1 hp.

The surplus created by the agricultural revolution has spawned new, non-trivial ways to preserve and increase wealth. Mathematics and writing arose, which made it possible to organize the accounting of welfare. It took calendars to determine when sowing and harvesting; required scribes and bookkeepers capable of keeping track of capital and taxing it. From the surplus, large armies, kingdoms, empires were created, slavery and ancient civilizations arose.
The Industrial Revolution showed that capital can be created by machines, and mass production can bring fabulous wealth. Peasants, starving in yet another lean year and exhausted by hard labor in the fields, fled to the cities and turned into industrial workers. Then the carts and blacksmiths were replaced by car mechanics, and the internal combustion engine gave humanity hundreds of horsepower.
And finally, today we are witnessing another wave: now information has become a source of capital. The wealth of countries is now measured by electrons running around the world on wires. Already, Internet payments, electronic currencies (including game currencies, cryptocurrencies such as, for example, the sensational Bitcoin), various payment systems are used and developed around us everywhere. Science, commerce and entertainment travel at the speed of light today. A person, wherever he is, at any time can receive all the necessary information.

Type I, II and III civilizations

People living today happened to live in a period
which can be thought of as three or four
most extraordinary century in the history of mankind.
Julian Simon

But where will humanity's exponential growth in energy consumption lead? Can we answer the question: what will happen to humanity in a hundred or even a thousand years of such development?
For the classification of civilizations, physicists evaluate them on the basis of the laws of thermodynamics, as well as all by the same criterion: consumed energy. Scanning the sky in search of extraterrestrial civilizations, they are not looking for biological life forms at all, but objects with the generation of energy corresponding to civilizations of types I, II and III. For the first time such a hierarchy was proposed by the Russian astrophysicist Nikolai Kardashev in the 1960s for the classification of radio signals from possible civilizations in outer space.

He perfectly understood that civilizations can radically differ in culture, social structure, principle of government, etc., but the laws of nature are inexorable and therefore even the most highly developed civilizations are forced to obey them. Thanks to this, it is clear that from the Earth we can register and measure only one thing - energy consumption, and civilizations should be classified according to this criterion. In addition, according to the Second Law of Thermodynamics, any highly developed civilization will create entropy in the form of waste heat, which will inevitably go into space. Therefore, even if this civilization tries to disguise its presence, it will be impossible to hide the faint glow created by their entropy.

A type I civilization is a civilization that uses all the energy from a star to a planet, or more precisely 10 16 watts. With the help of this energy, such a civilization can control hurricanes, adjust the weather, and build cities even in the oceans. Their rockets roam space, but their power sources are mostly limited to their home planet. Such civilizations are the real masters of their planet and therefore are called planetary.

A Type II civilization uses the energy of the entire star, or approximately 10 26 watts. Such civilizations could probably even control solar flares. Apart from the stupidity of the inhabitants of the planet, nothing known to science can destroy such a civilization. Comets and meteors can be directed in the other direction, ice ages can be prevented by changing climatic conditions, even the threat of a nearby supernova explosion can be avoided by simply leaving the home planet and transporting civilization away from danger.

Type III civilizations have already depleted the energy of one solar system and colonized vast swaths of their native galaxy. The power consumption of such civilizations is estimated at about 10 36 W - 10 billion stars give such energy. A Type III civilization might be the Empire from the Star Wars saga, or perhaps the Borg from Star Trek. They and others have colonized a significant part of their galaxy, capturing millions of star systems. They can travel the galaxy however they like.

Thus, the types differ from each other by a factor of 10 billion, i.e. the energy consumption of type III civilizations is 10 billion times higher than that of type II civilizations.

According to this scale, our earthly civilization belongs to type 0, because we still receive energy from the remains of dead plants, that is, from oil and coal. Even managing hurricanes that carry the force of hundreds of nuclear bombs is beyond our technological capabilities. However, the American astronomer Carl Sagan proposed to interpolate the scale values ​​to indicate smaller orders. Sagan used the following formula:

where K is the rating of the civilization, and W is the energy consumption in watts.

As of 2007, the value on the Kardashev scale is approximately 0.72. It is important to note that according to Sagan's formula, a value of 0.72 means that humanity uses about 0.16% of the total energy budget of the planet. So we still have to go and go to a planetary civilization of type I, because in terms of energy production, a civilization of the first type is still a thousand times superior to a civilization of type 0.7.

To understand how long it will take us for this transition, you can make some simple calculations. The grander the economy, the more energy it needs, and since the GDP of many countries is in the range of 1-2% per year, energy consumption can be expected to grow at about the same rate. With such modest indicators, it will take us 100-200 years to achieve the status of a planetary civilization. It will take from 1000 to 5000 years to reach the level of civilization type II. And, finally, for type III, it takes from 100,000 to an incredible 1,000,000 years by human standards.

Transition to the first type

To stop striving for a future where technology and biology merge into a single whole and lead to a singularity is like giving up your essence.
Deus Ex: Human Revolution

Reading articles on our beloved Habré, newspaper articles, seeing news on a zombie box, we constantly see new evidence that humanity is on the verge of transition from conditional type 0 to type I. Type I civilization is being born before our eyes.

• Languages. Today people on our planet speak 600 languages, but in the next few decades, 90% of them are doomed to extinction, according to Michael E. Krauss of the Center for Indigenous Languages ​​at the University of Alaska. The telecommunications revolution is accelerating this process more and more, as people living in even the most remote areas have free access to resources in English. However, bygone languages ​​will remain forever in the repository of human knowledge - the Internet. Thus, the English language has all the conditions to become a planetary language. Already today, English has become the de facto language of science, finance, business and entertainment, as well as the most popular foreign language on the planet.
• Internet. People were able to communicate with each other while being in different parts of the world. Skype and other technologies allow us to use the Internet as a planetary means of communication. Some people already believe that they have more in common with someone from another part of the planet than with their neighbor. And this whole process is just beginning to accelerate, and will continue as new fiber-optic networks are laid and new satellites are launched. Suffice it to recall Google's recent project to launch a network of balloons for worldwide Internet access.
  It is no longer possible to stop this process.
• Economy. Today, without taking into account the general trends of the world economy, it is impossible to consider the economy of one individual country as a whole. A financial crisis in one country inevitably affects all other countries and rolls like a wave around the world. This has happened more than once over the past decade, and we all remember it. Thus, we are all witnesses of the birth of a single planetary economy. This is clearly evidenced by the rise of the European Union. For centuries, warring European states have abandoned all old feuds and united together. Now the EU has the largest concentration of capital on the planet. In the future, other countries, seeing the impossibility of maintaining competitiveness alone, will continue to unite into economic blocs. Even the Customs Union of Belarus, Russia and Kazakhstan is dictated by this need.
• Culture. Already today, no matter where you travel in the world, the same cultural trends in music, fashion, art are noticeable everywhere. Hollywood, evaluating the future success of a new film, carefully calculates the impression that it should make on representatives of different cultures. The main sources of income for Hollywood - and testament to the dawn of a planetary culture - are cross-cultural films featuring international celebrities. In the world of fashion, the same thing happens - world famous brands make fashion the same all over the planet. More and more people, having entered the middle class, are joining the world fashion. Haute couture is now available not only to the privileged elite. Global culture will become a connecting link in communication between people of different cultures. This has already happened with many of the world's local elites. These people speak their own language and observe their traditions, but when communicating with people of other cultures they speak English and follow the international rules of conduct. This is a model of an emerging type I civilization.
• Tourism. For thousands of years, people have lived their lives mainly in the same places where they were born. Different cultures and peoples had little contact with each other. But now, with the development of means of communication, traveling is becoming easier than ever. Students with one backpack behind their shoulders and a small amount of money manage to travel all over Europe or America. And now tourism is one of the fastest growing industries. The economies of some countries are even mainly based on tourism.
• Middle class. Hundreds of millions of people from China, India and other countries are constantly joining this category. This is truly the greatest social upswing in human history. These people, who are well versed in cultural and economic trends on the planet, do not care much about wars or religion, but more important to them is political and social stability and consumption. Their goal is to acquire a house in the suburbs and two cars.
• Ecology. People are gradually realizing that environmental disasters do not have national boundaries and can cause international conflicts. Increasingly, environmental threats are widely discussed around the world. After the ozone hole formed over the South Pole, the countries united and agreed to limit the production and consumption of freons, which are used in refrigerators and industrial systems. In December 1997, Japan adopted the Kyoto Protocol, which obliges developed countries and countries with economies in transition to reduce or stabilize greenhouse gas emissions, because the threat of the greenhouse effect is much worse than the ozone hole.
• Wars. They will continue to happen, but their character will change as democracy spreads around the world. When people's well-being grows and they have something to lose, it becomes more difficult to wage wars. Moreover, in developed countries, fewer children are born, so there is no one with the same ease to replenish the ranks of the army as it was before. In a democratic society with a lively press, opposition parties and a large middle class that can lose everything in a war, war fever is difficult to cultivate. When mothers want to know why their children are being sent to war, and the press is skeptical, it's even more difficult. Moreover, falling prices for intercontinental flights make contacts between different peoples and the integration of cultures regular. Misunderstanding breeds hostility, but, you see, it's quite difficult to start a war with someone you know well.

A turning point in history

So, now you are convinced that humanity is at a turning point in the history of the development of our civilization - the transition to the first type. But what does this transition conceal?

It is now being determined whether humanity will prosper or die out of its own stupidity. This transition is incredibly dangerous, because we are still hostages of primitive savagery and barbarism, but with the difference that we now have nuclear, chemical and biological weapons. In our society, as before, there are racism, sectarianism, intolerance, hatred - human nature has not changed over the past millennia.

The path to the first type will be accompanied by ever-increasing entropy (greenhouse effect, pollution, nuclear wars, diseases), which in the end can destroy us. Cosmologist Martin Rees gives a sobering estimate of the odds of successfully overcoming this problem: fifty-fifty. Terrorism, the creation of bacteria and viruses, advances in bioengineering and other technological nightmares are one of the most difficult problems of humanity.

Perhaps it is for this reason that we do not observe other civilizations in our galaxy. They were destroyed by internal contradictions or their own pollution, while they sought to achieve the status of a civilization of the first type.

So, this transition will be a test of fire for our entire civilization and the main role - the role of a blacksmith belongs to our generation. If we survive, we will become stronger - just like steel is hardened.

Classification by information

We have created such a complex, rapidly changing and information-laden environment that we have to increasingly cope with excess information in the same way as the animals we have long ago surpassed.
Robert Cialdini. "Psychology of Influence"

The information revolution forced scientists to pay attention to the fact that not only the power supply can show the level of development of a civilization, but also the amount of information that a civilization is able to process.

Development conditions for different civilizations in the Universe cannot be the same. One can imagine a planet where the atmosphere conducts electricity well. In such conditions, any computer will quickly burn out, so that the inhabitants of this planet can use only the most primitive electrical devices. It will be difficult to create the Internet, which will greatly hamper the development of science and economics. Ultimately, such a civilization will be able to climb the Kardashev scale, but this rise will be very long and painful.

Sagan proposed to apply the information criterion for another classification. He identified types from A to Z, where type A includes primitive civilizations that do not yet have a written language, but a spoken language already exists. To understand how much information such a civilization can contain, Carl Sagan suggested using the game "20 questions" when you need to guess the hidden object, while asking no more than 20 questions, the answer to which is only "yes" or "no" (for example, the question: " Is it edible? "). As a result, we will divide the world into 2 20 parts (or approximately 10 6). That is, the information content of a civilization of type A is equal to 10 6 bits of information.

Ancient Greece was a civilization with a developed written language, rich literature and contained about a billion units (10 9) of information, which corresponds to type C.

Having roughly estimated the current number of books in libraries, the approximate number of pages in each book, the number of photographs, videos, Sagan came up with a figure of 10 15 bits. So we can be classified as type H. Given our energy consumption, we are a 0.7H type civilization.

When the terrestrial civilization develops to the type 1.5J or 1.8K, masters the technology of interstellar flights - perhaps then our first contact with extraterrestrial civilizations will take place. But up to this moment, we still have at least several centuries or even millennia ahead of us. Information assessment of the type III galactic civilization is possible if we multiply the number of planets in our galaxy favorable for life by the information content of each planet. Sagan estimates such civilizations as type Q. While type Z corresponds to a civilization capable of using the information content of a billion galaxies, that is, practically the entire visible universe.

Entropy classification

The road to civilization is paved with cans.
Alberto Moravia

To comprehensively assess the development of civilization, energy and information alone is not enough. The more energy a civilization consumes and the more information it produces, the more the environment suffers. And it's not just rubbish. Waste from civilizations of I and II types can simply destroy them.

Something similar was depicted in the cartoon "WALL-E", where humanity so badly polluted the Earth that in the end it left everything as it is and moved to spaceships.

• The first type is a civilization that restrains the growth of entropy, using all possible means, restricts the growth of heat and the accumulation of waste. Ultimately, in the course of the exponential growth of energy consumption, civilization realizes that further growth in energy demands could make the planet uninhabitable. Reasonably using renewable energy sources, nanotechnology, excluding unnecessary losses and inefficiency, such a civilization will postpone this moment.
• The second type is a civilization that continues to expand, grow and increase energy consumption without thinking too much about entropy. When the home planet falls into disrepair, this civilization will leave it and move to other planets. But space expansion is a very difficult and expensive pleasure, and if the entropy grows faster than the ability of a civilization to expand, then such a civilization will die.

Steps to the future

It is impossible to imagine to what heights the power of man over matter can rise in a thousand years. Maybe we will learn to take the weight off weight and give it absolute lightness, so that it is easier to transport. Agriculture will probably require less labor and double the output. All diseases can be prevented or cured, not even excluding old age, and life can be extended as much as necessary, up to antediluvian standards and even more.
Benjamin Franklin

As for our earthly civilization, since space flights will be insanely expensive for several centuries, and the terraforming of nearby planets and moons will pose a gigantic scientific and economic problem, our developing civilization can potentially suffocate in its own excess heat if it fails to miniaturize and streamline information processing.

The human brain contains about one hundred billion neurons (the number of galaxies in the visible universe) and produces little or no heat. Now scientists are trying to simulate the work of the neural network of the brain using a supercomputer (simulating 1 second of activity of 1% of the brain took 40 minutes on a cluster of 82,944 processors), but apparently, if the task was to create a computer capable of performing calculations at a speed quadrillion bytes per second - a task the brain does without any strain - such a computer would probably take several blocks and would require an entire reservoir to cool it down. We can meditate on subtle matters and at the same time do not sweat at all.

Of course, the brain is not a computer at all; there is no central processing unit or operating system. The brain is a neural network in which patterns of memory and thought are distributed throughout the brain, rather than concentrated in a central processing unit. And electrical signals between neurons are essentially chemical, so that the brain cannot perform fast complex calculations, but it compensates for its slow work with the possibility of parallel processing of data and can fantastically quickly accept new tasks.

Now scientists are trying to apply ideas borrowed from nature. Work is underway to develop DNA computers and quantum computers. Together with the development of nanotechnology, we will be able to find more effective ways of development than creating huge amounts of excess heat that threatens our existence.

While space travel will remain the lot of the wealthiest people and nations for much of the 21st century, the creation of a "space elevator" could change everything. Carbon nanotubes are strong and light enough to serve as the cable for such an elevator. The creation of the elevator is estimated at US $ 7-12 billion. NASA is already funding relevant developments at the American Institute for Scientific Research, including the development of a hoist capable of moving independently on a cable.

But even if such a technology becomes a reality, the elevator will be able to deliver cargo or astronauts to low-Earth orbit, and not to other planets. All the problems of space colonies rest on the fact that a flight to the Moon (not to mention flights to other planets) is many times higher than the cost of a flight to near-earth space. Placing a human colony on the Moon or Mars would bankrupt any state without generating any income.

In addition to economic problems, it is necessary to take into account the danger to people on board, space radiation, a long stay in zero gravity, the possibility of a catastrophe (we still use rockets on liquid fuel, and the probability of disasters is one in seventy) - all these problems will prevent us from mastering the Solar system.

Of course, in a couple of centuries everything will change: the cost of flights will decrease enough to actively maintain and develop colonies on Mars that we can create, perhaps in a couple of decades. The landing of the first people on Mars, according to the Mars One project, will take place in 2023.

The creation of a solar-ion engine could be the impetus for interstellar travel. Such engines will have low thrust, but they can maintain this thrust for years. They will concentrate solar energy, heat a gas such as cesium, and then release it through a nozzle, which will provide moderate thrust that can be sustained almost indefinitely.

While heading for a Type I civilization, we are unlikely to reach for the stars, most likely we will remain on Earth for many centuries, overcoming nationalist, fundamentalist, racist and sectarian problems, fighting the rising temperature on the planet, the greenhouse effect and countless other problems.

Science has allowed humanity to raise destroyed cities and countries from the ruins of war, to ensure peace and prosperity for billions of people. The true power of science is that it enhances our capabilities and empowers us by giving us choices. On the one hand, science fosters the inventiveness, creativity and patience inherent in humanity, but on the other, it reinforces our obvious shortcomings. It is very important for humanity to gain wisdom and direct the sword of science in the right direction.

It is difficult to find wisdom in our society. Isaac Asimov once said: "The saddest thing in today's society is that science accumulates knowledge faster than society gains wisdom." Martin Rees warns: “If we kill each other, we will destroy truly cosmic possibilities. So if someone believes that life on Earth is a unique phenomenon, this does not mean that life will always be an imperceptible detail of this universe. "

Well, we live in a very interesting time. Science and technology open up new worlds for humanity that we could only dream of before. It is our generation that will decide whether humanity will perish or gain immortality by taking a step towards Type I civilization.

P.S.

While writing this article, I many times turned to my favorite books "Parallel Worlds" and "Physics of the Future", written by the famous popularizer of science Michio Kaku. I advise everyone to read them.
This is my first article, I spent several evenings writing it. I apologize for being so voluminous, but, I hope, interesting.

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