Although he was not the first to proclaim that the human race could become extinct – Stephen Hawking warned of the danger of a meteorite and in 2001 he anticipated that it could be a virus – Elon Musk once again emphasized that all species on Earth have a “100% of possibilities” of becoming extinct in a mass extinction event.
The prophecy that the CEO of SpaceX slipped was not a coincidence, but came from a research article that was published last week, where the subject of the sixth mass extinction of our planet.
This is a phenomenon that indicates the worrying devastation of biodiversity and the need to step on the accelerator in efforts to conserve and protect nature.
As usual, the businessman slipped the statement this Sunday on his Twitter account. Where he shot that “There is a 100% chance that all species will become extinct due to the expansion of the Sun, unless humanity is made to multiplanetary life.”
According to the broad consensus of the scientific community, the Earth has experienced five mass extinctions of biodiversity caused by extreme natural phenomena.
The new study, published in Biological Reviews, offers less than optimistic conclusions. But with a new ingredient: this time the human species would play a leading role in the planetary devastation.
It warns that since the fifteenth century between 7% and 13% of the 2 million known animals and plants could have disappeared. The estimates suggested in the document speak of the loss of 260,000 species that include a high number of invertebrate animals such as snails and slugs since the year 1500.
The Starship -also known as Super Heavy- would reach 120 meters high.
While his competitors perfect their private short-range spaceflight techniques, billionaire Elon Musk envisions landing his powerful rocket on the surface of Mars with humans inside in the next five years.
In the facilities of Boca Chica, in Texas, the Starship -also known as Super Heavy- is built. that would reach 120 meters high, bigger than the iconic Saturn V, the rocket that took man to the Moon.
“Starship is the most complex and advanced rocket ever made. The fundamental optimization of Starship is to minimize the cost per ton to orbit and ultimately the cost per ton to reach the surface of Mars,” Musk said in a recent interview with Time magazine.
In a criticism of the Apollo missions that landed man on the Moon, Musk went further, asserting that humanity cannot afford to get to Mars, leave footprints on the surface, and not return for 50 years.
On several occasions he was heard repeating that the key to the human species, in the future, is to conceive it as a “multiplanetary race” to be able to survive some kind of calamity endanger life on Earth.
“The next big thing is to build a self-sufficient city on Mars and bring Earth’s animals and creatures there,” he says.
This would be, in the words of the tycoon, a kind of “futuristic Noah’s ark” that would house more than two specimens of each species because it would be “a bit strange if there are only two”. Thus, the businessman seeks to develop a large settlement on the red planet.
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