Implications of the Copernican principle for our future prospects

J. Richard Gott

Nature, vol. 363, no. 6427, 1993, pp. 315–319

Abstract

Making only the assumption that you are a random intelligent observer, limits for the total longevity of our species of 0.2 million to 8 million years can be derived at the 95% confidence level. Further consideration indicates that we are unlikely to colonize the Galaxy, and that we are likely to have a higher population than the median for intelligent species.

Quotes from this work

The odds are against our colonizing the Galaxy and surviving to the far future, not because these things are intrinsically beyond our capabilities, but because living things usually do not live up to their maximum potential. Intelligence is a capability which gives us in principle a vast potential if we could only use it to its maximum capacity, but […] to succeed the way we would like, we will have to do something truly remarkable (such as colonizing space), something which most intelligent species do not do.