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By Larry B. Dendy
Is it possible for humans to travel from earth to other planets or celestial bodies and establish livable communities?
 Physicist and futurist Freeman J. Dyson believes space colonization is not only possible but inevitable. And he has suggested how it could be accomplished through such fanciful notions as growing genetically altered “warm-blooded” plants that would create life-sustaining “greenhouses” in hostile environments, and linking together pieces of comets to form orbiting cities.
Dyson, hailed by many as one of the most imaginative thinkers of modern times, will bring his visions of the future to the University of Georgia Nov. 9 when he delivers the fall Charter Lecture at 4 p.m. in the Chapel. Titled “Gravity Is Cool: Or, Why Our Universe is Hospitable to Life,” the lecture is open free to the public.
A physics professor at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton University, Dyson is a highly honored scientist whose research on the foundations of quantum electrodynamics strongly influenced many branches of modern theoretical physics. He is also widely respected for work in nuclear engineering, rocket technology, climate studies and astrophysics.
But he is perhaps best known for what he admits is his hobby--his visionary theories about how humans can populate other celestial bodies. In popular books, magazine articles and speeches, Dyson paints a science fiction-like scenario in which people could use laser-powered rockets to travel to distant planets, asteroids or comets where they would live in artificial biospheres.
To create a livable extraterrestrial habitat, Dyson suggests using geneticengineering techniques to develop and grow “warm-blooded” plants that could survive in the frigid environment of space. Such plants would create their own thermal “greenhouse” capable of sustaining other plant and animal life, including humans.
Born in England, Dyson graduated from Cambridge and studied physics in the United States at Cornell and Princeton. He has presented his ideas on space colonization, the search for extraterrestrial life and other futuristic theories in such popular books as Disturbing the Universe, Weapons and Hope, Origins of Life and Infinite in All Directions. He has received numerous honors, including the American Institute of Physics Heineman Prize, the J. Robert Oppenheimer Memorial Prize, the Max Planck Medal and the Britannica Award.
The Charter Lecture was started in 1988 to honor the high ideals expressed in the 1785 charter that founded the University of Georgia as the first chartered state university in America. The series brings to campus speakers who discuss ideas of general importance to a free society.
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