Taras Gerya, how can we ensure the long-term survival of human civilisation?
For geodynamicist Taras Gerya, one thing is clear: our highly developed civilisation is the only one in the entire galaxy and therefore all the more worthy of preservation. To develop approaches for its protection, he has co-founded a new interdisciplinary field of research.?
We are very lonely in our galaxy: so far, no one has found any evidence of a second civilisation as complex as the one on Earth. The recently estimated probability of the emergence of such a technological civilisation on a planet with primitive life is extremely low (<0.2%).
This understanding of our civilisation's uniqueness compels us to safeguard it for the entire galaxy. And not merely for a few centuries, but into the distant future.
In particular, we must prevent the knowledge and technical expertise accumulated by modern humanity from being lost. It must be put into a form that can still be used a thousand generations from now. However, such long-term thinking is a challenge for us humans. As individuals, we may consider what is essential for our children and grandchildren. But we tend not to look beyond that. Not to mention politicians, who only focus on the next election cycle in four years.
The expert
Taras Gerya is Professor of Geodynamics at the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences. He uses computers to model processes inside planets that take place over millions of years. In 2025, he received the Alumni Award for Best Teaching for his teaching.
The history of humanity should teach us better lessons. Civilisations have risen, collapsed and disappeared many times before. There are several reasons for the downfall of earlier advanced civilisations, such as the Maya: climate catastrophes, volcanic eruptions and diseases. But another reason is that these societies needed more resources than the Earth could provide or regenerate. And in doing so, they robbed themselves of their livelihood. The same could happen to us.
If our civilisation collapses – for the same reasons that previous complex civilisations collapsed – it could well be that future generations will have to start all over again and develop previously existing technologies from scratch. They might even have to reinvent the bicycle – or even the wheel.
But suppose we want to lead the only civilisation in the entire galaxy into the distant future. In that case, we must learn to live in harmony with natural cycles, especially when it comes to natural resources and the climate.
This extremely long-term thinking is not new, but is rarely applied. Consider the issue of storing radioactive waste, for example. Today, humanity is building storage facilities that must remain intact for tens of thousands of years. Future generations will also need to understand the rules we establish today for the safe storage of radioactive waste in a thousand or ten thousand years.
To identify possible paths into the distant future, I have therefore joined forces with other colleagues to establish a new interdisciplinary field of research: external page Future Dynamics. This discipline focuses on modelling and quantifying the potential future development of the Earth-life-human system over very long periods ranging from hundreds of thousands to millions of years.
The pillars of Future Dynamics include climate models spanning hundreds of thousands of years and the sustainable use of resources such as water, soil and minerals – keyword: rare earths. The new discipline explores strategies for preventing global catastrophes, such as nuclear war, and for asteroid defence and analyses geological risks, such as volcanism and plate tectonics. It develops ideas for resilient cities and infrastructure. At the same time, it explores social changes that strengthen education, justice and global cooperation.
Accurate predictions will not be the goal of Future Dynamics. That is simply not possible. However, gaining more knowledge about potential future trajectories will create new opportunities to think much more long-term – and to act accordingly to lead this unique civilisation into the distant future.