Wilfredo Joel Núñez Pacheco: Colonizing the Universe

In the late 1960's, America was the pioneering country in discovery. Coming off just landing Apollo 11 on the Moon and the first steps taken by Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin in its surface. This pioneering spirit was also fueled by the Cold War between the United States and Russia. But since the end of that era, the exploration of space has been put on hold taking with it the dreams of a nation. What are the next steps in the exploration of space? Scientists and physicists agree that the exploration of Mars should be the next objective. What problems does this challenge pose? In the following essay we shall discuss how the absence of an life sustaining atmosphere in this planet can cause major setbacks and how one British mathematician attempted to solve this problem.

The colonization of Mars brings forth many challenges. The two primary ones being the lack of a life sustaining atmosphere in Mars and that it would take about 150 to 300 days of interstellar travel to get there, depending the amount of fuel used. Also, because Mars is so far away, there is practically no room for mistakes. Because of the distance, any error could prove fatal because if the astronauts can't fix it immediately, there is no possible way of extracting them. Therefore, first we must make a small liveable habitat for our astronauts consisting of an oxygen rich atmosphere, food and drinkable water. At least one of this problems might have been solved by John Conway.

The computer simulation better known as "Life" was created by British mathematician, John Conway. "Life" is a cell automaton simulation system. Conway hypothesized that complex life could come about naturally from simple rules or parameters. These rules are:

1. Any live cell with less than two live neighbors dies, as if caused by under-population.

2. Any live cell with two or three live neighbors lives on to the next generation.

3. Any live cell with more than three live neighbors dies, as if by overcrowding.

4. Any dead cell with exactly three live neighbors becomes a live cell, as if by reproduction. 

The setting for this program is an infinite two-dimensional orthogonal grid which only requires one input in the beginning for the "evolution" to begin. Conway noticed that when this system was accelerated, not only would it put forth different patterns, but these patterns seemed to "take life". With this discovery, John Conway concluded that life can indeed come about from simple rules, rejecting the idea that the Universe needs a creator.

In summary, the "Life" system can be used to solve the problem in Mars if we were to implement it with life-forms or robots that can turn the iron oxide or rust in the atmosphere of Mars and turn it into oxygen, all this under a dome so that the amount of oxygen needed to eventually sustain life can be achieved quicker and can be managed efficiently for the arrival of our astronauts.