Launching a Biosphere into Space

In ‘Biospheric Imperialists’ I note that Biospheric Communionists and Biospheric Imperialists share a common goal of launching our biosphere into space. How can this be done?

The first vision that I ecountered of this concept was that of Freeman Dyson. Dr. Dyson described a tree that could grow rooted in a tiny ice world. These trees have come to be known as Dyson Trees. Because Dyson Trees make their livings on tiny ice worlds with very low surface gravities, Dyson Trees will be able to launch seeds into space, seeding from one world to another. This means that if we engineer a few hundred Dyson Tree Seeds and launch them into space, we can rely on those trees to eventually populate the entire solar system.

The Oort cloud stretches close to a light-year outward from our Sun. Every few tens of million years, other stars must pass within less than 2 light-years from our Sun (after all the current closest star to us is only 4 light years away). At such times it seems likely that objects from the two stars may be traded. If an Oort-world stolen from our sun has a Dyson Tree on it, then the other star will be infected with Dyson Trees. Over the course of a billion years, thousands of stars will have our Dyson Tree's orbitting them.

So, how do we create Dyson Trees? The easiest way, will be to develop (genetically engineer or breed) trees adapted to new environments on Earth. Currently trees do not grow on glaciers, in the open ocean, in the deepest dryest deserts or even in some grasslands. We could breed trees to grow in these environments. You might think that if the biosphere has not found a way to grow trees in these environments then we have little chance of doing so. But there was a time not that long ago, geologically speaking, that trees did not grow in temperate regions or in any region dryer than a swamp. The biosphere is still young, the Ediacaran explosion was only 600 million years ago. Evolution builds on what it has already built and some of the most recent innovations in plants are only tens of millions of years old. For instance, cactuses only evolved 30 million years ago. In terms of geologic time, the biosphere is still expanding into new environments. We can help accelerate this process.

Trees that grow on glaciers will need a lot of the same adaptations as Dyson Trees; both will be growing on ice. Ocean trees may also have adaptations that our Dyson Trees will need. As we develop all of the different species of tree that we need to create a continuous forest over the entire surface of the Earth, we will make it ever easier to create Dyson Trees. In the meantime, we will increase genetic diversity here on Earth, reversing the mass extinction that we are currently perpetrating.