Founding An Inbreeding-Free Space Colony
Thanks to 23AndMe for supporting SciShow. These kits make great gifts, so check out https://23AndMe.com/SciShow How much genetic diversity would we need to found a colony on another planet?...
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SciShow is supported by 23andMe. Whether it’s SpaceX or Lockheed Martin or NASA, eventually someone’s going to start sending people to Mars. And when that happens, we might decide to set up a colony there, too. People could be born, raised, have their own families, and die without ever setting foot on Earth. Sending people across the void of space to a desolate planet is hard enough, but founding a remote colony comes with its own special challenge: low genetic diversity. If we’re going to create new societies on other planets, we need to know how many people to send to avoid the problems that come from inbreeding. Whenever a subset of people goes off and starts their own society, they’re going to be less genetically diverse than the much bigger po...
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SciShow is supported by 23andMe. Whether it’s SpaceX or Lockheed Martin or NASA, eventually someone’s going to start sending people to Mars. And when that happens, we might decide to set up a colony there, too. People could be born, raised, have their own families, and die without ever setting foot on Earth. Sending people across the void of space to a desolate planet is hard enough, but founding a remote colony comes with its own special challenge: low genetic diversity. If we’re going to create new societies on other planets, we need to know how many people to send to avoid the problems that come from inbreeding. Whenever a subset of people goes off and starts their own society, they’re going to be less genetically diverse than the much bigger po...
