“Is creating an interstellar human population really possible?”
OPINION
The idea of humans as an interplanetary species has been gaining momentum for the past few decades. Admittedly, I’m a little late to the party as I only first heard the term last year in an interview with the billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk, who revealed his deep concern that our species is extremely vulnerable because we are currently limited to one planet.
My first thought was here’s someone who clearly doesn’t have enough to worry about. But Musk is not alone. The World Economic Forum has set out why humans must become an interplanetary species, while other scientists, including the late Stephen Hawking, have been advocating for going interstellar (because why stop at our solar system, I suppose?).
My gut reaction is surely extracting ourselves from the beautifully complex web of life to create a viable, healthy interstellar population isn’t really possible? It’s just a hunch, but I reckon the gut is a good place to start. The human gut-microbiome is home to 100 trillion bacteria, archaea, fungi, protozoa and viruses, and is just one of many microbial habitats on and inside our bodies.
Every one of us is like a walking planet with a multitude of ecological niches. These are home to microbes whose essential services we employ to help train our immune systems, digest our food, and regulate our energy levels and brain function, even including our moods.
Kick-starter microbial communities are acquired from our mothers at birth and evolve, diversify or shrink, according to life experience and environmental factors, to create a bespoke microbial signature for every individual. It’s thought that these microbial associations have been working their way down the maternal hominid line for more than 15 million years, which makes for an epic research and development phase that will be hard to beat if we were to up sticks and move to a foreign planet.
The role of microbiomes in humans and other animals (wood mice, giant pandas, bison and even common rock barnacles) is a new frontier of science, and so has been the subject of extensive research. But the sober irony is much of it is gleaned from gnotobiotic, or ‘germ-free’, lab animals who, by virtue of being artificially st
