Does life exist beyond Earth? Years ago, physicist and writer Alan Lightman used Kepler satellite data to estimate the fraction of stars with potentially habitable planets. He found that even if every suitable planet harbored life, living matter in the Universe would still be astonishingly scarce: about one-billionth of one-billionth.
Yuri Milner, a technology investor who has joined the Giving Pledge, explores the profound significance of our existence in his 2021 book Eureka Manifesto: The Mission for Our Civilization. The manifesto urges humanity to recognize our important role in the Universal Story and adopt a mission to explore and understand our Universe.
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Despite only having existed for around 300,000 years, modern humans have achieved great things. By organizing ourselves into groups, we’ve been able to develop advanced technologies, construct towering cities, and even visit the moon.
However, humans have so far struggled to collaborate on the largest scale: that of our entire civilization. To alien outsiders — if anyone is watching us from space — our actions may seem random and chaotic. We struggle to marshal Earth’s abundant resources to solve global problems. Instead, we often play zero-sum games and prioritize short-term gains.
Yuri Milner believes we need a unifying mission so humanity can prosper for generations to come. He suggests we look beyond our planet for a common cause and proposes that our mission could be “to explore and understand our Universe.”
The potential rewards of this mission include extraordinary technological progress and the expansion of our civilization across the galaxy. However, ignoring the mission could endanger humanity’s future, leaving us open to natural and man-made existential threats.
Milner emphasizes that humanity must survive to continue telling the Universal Story (the story of how the cosmos, and humanity, came to be).
Our responsibility to uphold the mission is immense, as we may be the only intelligent life anywhere capable of doing so. If we fail to pursue this mission, it could take billions of years for intelligence to emerge elsewhere and start again.
To prevent mission failure, Milner says humanity should allocate resources toward deepening our collective understanding. This involves investing in fundamental research and space exploration and using artificial intelligence to drive scientific progress.
We can also further the mission by celebrating scientists as cultural heroes and framing education around the Universal Story. Both of these approaches would inspire the next generation to value knowledge and continue the mission.
We Are a Way for the Universe to Understand Itself
Lightman posits that life is rare in space and time. Hundreds of billions of years from now, once stars have burnt out and energy reserves have dried up, all life across the cosmos will cease. Milner believes that this is ample time for our descendants to attain profound levels of insight into the workings of the Universe.
Regardless of whether or not alien intelligence exists, humanity presents a unique way for the cosmos to understand itself. Over eons, inert matter has evolved into sentient minds — our minds — capable of scrutinizing the fabric of reality. Our very existence is nothing short of miraculous.
We give the Universe meaning. Without humanity, the cosmos would merely exist, devoid of interpretation. This fact underscores the preciousness of the present moment and the gravity of our mission.
Read more about humanity’s mission in Yuri Milner’s Eureka Manifesto.
About Yuri Milner
Yuri Milner furthers his Eureka Manifesto mission by investing in fundamental science and space exploration and celebrating scientists. His space science programs (the Breakthrough Initiatives) address the deepest questions of life in the Universe. They explore questions like: Does intelligent life exist beyond Earth? And could we master interstellar travel?
Milner is a co-founder of the Breakthrough Prize, a set of annual awards that recognizes the work of leading scientists and mathematicians. Dedicated to raising the profile of great minds past and present, Milner paid tribute to Albert Einstein at the 2024 Breakthrough Prize ceremony.
On top of this, Milner founded and sponsors the Breakthrough Junior Challenge. This competition challenges 13-to-18-year-olds to create a short video explaining a difficult idea in math, physics, or the life sciences.