The discovery, described in the prestigious British journal Nature, brings to mind some questions that humans have long asked: Are we alone in the universe? And, if Earth can no longer support us, will we have the option of emigrating somewhere else?
“This discovery should make us reflect on the astounding dimensions of the cosmos, and particularly on the significance of our humanity in this vast universe in which we inhabit a planetary system on the periphery of a galaxy, the Milky Way, that has approximately 300 billion stars similar in some way to our sun. But our Milky Way is just one of what the University of Nottingham calculates to be 2 trillion galaxies,” points out Juan Ramón Martínez Vargas, professor in the Faculty of Jurisprudence at the Universidad del Rosario.
“That profound understanding of the universo in which we find ourselves leads to the necessity to understand it, travel to its furthest reaches, conquer it, and of course, establish laws for it,” he says.
Martínez Vargas is director of the Research Group on International Law at El Rosario, and visiting professor at universities in the Americas, Europe, and Asia. He and his research group (comprising students María José Vargas, Laura Quijano, and Alejandra Soler, attorney Daniela Almario, and Professors Jairo Becerra of the Universidad del Rosario, and Macarena Domínguez of the University of Barcelona) have spent eighteen months reviewing current law as it applies to outer space and celestial bodies. Their work combines with efforts by another working group looking at aerospace law. Analyzing current debates on the subject, the researchers have identified gaps in the law and formulated alternatives that should help to further develop the existing corpus juris. They hope to complete this work in one year and put it out through a book.
“Current regulation of outer space is minimal because it has been based on agreements between super powers that have the technology and resources to carry out space exploration but do all they can to avoid the imposition of any limits to their actions. The situation today has undergone a change, however. States are no longer alone in space exploration, since multinational corporations and large private sector companies have now taken the lead in this space race,” says Professor Martínez.
“At the present time,” he adds, “we don’t have adequate tools to respond to the unknown number of disputes that may arise. On the one side we have the 1967 Outer Space Treaty, which is too general and vague, and on the other a corpus juris spatialis that is anachronistic in its fictive conception of a society imbued with the fear imposed by the Cold War era. We are convinced of the need for a legal framework relevant not only to the present, but able as well to anticipate potential events in the near future and their possible effects.”
Space missions will multiply
It is expected that from 2022 there will be a greater number of space missions due to new developments in space shuttles, telescopes that surpass Hubble and, in general, other technological developments that will allow us to study and understand the universe with more precision and discover more galaxies, stars, and planets than we ever imagined.
The Research Group on International Law believes that we have not yet been able to comprehend what could take place and should be prepared for any eventuality. “In regard to the planets that we have discovered, which may be exobiologically similar to ours, we ask if man could consider appropriating them? Is it legally possible to own such celestial bodies as property? This would not be possible under existing law, because they are res communis omnium, common to the community of mankind. This supposition should be reexamined, however, because it is an urgent matter of survival to gain access to other planets and think about their appropriation and use for the benefit of humankind,” explains Martínez.
In fact, one of the burning issues that the research group has considered is the possible appropriation of outer space and the celestial bodies on the basis that humankind has an obligation and responsibility to begin colonizing other planets to guarantee the survival of the species.
“Our planet is coming close to a point of no return. It is within a couple of centuries of a systemic collapse that may be generated by demographic explosion, the indiscriminate exploitation of resources, accelerated climate change, looming pandemics, nuclear wars, intolerable levels of solar radiation, or any other phenomenon that puts the life of humans in jeopardy on this Earth. As things are today, if our planet perishes, the human species will disappear. Nothing could be more catastrophic,” says the professor.