The Epidemiology of Extrasolar Colonization
Lord knows I'm fascinated by epidemiology, and this fact has only been exacerbated by reading one of the little lady's books about the Syphilis epi/pandemic resulting from contact between the "New" and "Old" world.
This got me thinking, so I did some math:
If c is 3.0e6 km/s and the best method of interstellar travel is either light sails or fusion reactor, both of which yield something close to 0.1 * c, then that would be 43 years to Alpha Centauri. However, if we're talking colonization of terrestrial bodies, then we'd need to look at known terrestrial bodies.
OGLE-2005-BLG-169L is a terrestrial icy/rocky planet, 13x the mass of the Earth, and is 9000 light years away. Using a Fusion drive, that's 90,000 years to reach there.
Migration through Beringia to North America occurred ~12,000 before present. A return trip would be very, very slow.
Scratch BLG-169L. The closest extrasolar planet is Gliese 876, whose mass is about 200x that of Jupiter (!). It's only 15 lightyears from Earth. A return trip from here to there would only take 300 years.
My point is this: Extrasolar colonization will not only lead to speciation due to extreme cases of island biogeography, but will also lead to possibly planet-wide pandemics.
I don't even think pandemic is the right term to use at that scale. The degree to which two populations diverge is likely to be directly proportion to the degree to which the two populations are susceptible to the respective infections of the other.
This got me thinking, so I did some math:
If c is 3.0e6 km/s and the best method of interstellar travel is either light sails or fusion reactor, both of which yield something close to 0.1 * c, then that would be 43 years to Alpha Centauri. However, if we're talking colonization of terrestrial bodies, then we'd need to look at known terrestrial bodies.
OGLE-2005-BLG-169L is a terrestrial icy/rocky planet, 13x the mass of the Earth, and is 9000 light years away. Using a Fusion drive, that's 90,000 years to reach there.
Migration through Beringia to North America occurred ~12,000 before present. A return trip would be very, very slow.
Scratch BLG-169L. The closest extrasolar planet is Gliese 876, whose mass is about 200x that of Jupiter (!). It's only 15 lightyears from Earth. A return trip from here to there would only take 300 years.
My point is this: Extrasolar colonization will not only lead to speciation due to extreme cases of island biogeography, but will also lead to possibly planet-wide pandemics.
I don't even think pandemic is the right term to use at that scale. The degree to which two populations diverge is likely to be directly proportion to the degree to which the two populations are susceptible to the respective infections of the other.