SpaceX's Elon Musk Wants To Immigrate To Mars: 'Where Are The Aliens?'

During a recent discussion with Alibaba chairman Jack Ma, Elon Musk of Tesla and SpaceX expressed his strong desire to colonize Mars. According to Musk, doing so is an important step in finding proof of alien life and turning humans into a multi-planet species.

Musk and Ma recently met during the World Artificial Intelligence Conference held in Shanghai to talk about pressing matters related to technology and the future of Earth. While the two were discussing the growing problem of overpopulation, Musk suggested migrating to Mars as a viable solution.

Aside from moving to another planet to solve Earth’s overpopulated state, Musk noted that this action is essential in expanding humans’ knowledge about space in the future. Specifically, Musk believes colonizing Mars is a crucial step in finding intelligent life in space.

“The thing about Mars is that I think it’s important for us to take the set of actions that are most likely to continue consciousness into the future,” he said, according to Bloomberg. “I think we should not take for granted that consciousness will continue because we have not encountered any aliens. Where are the aliens?”

Ma confirmed Musk's sentiments, "Yeah, you want to immigrate to Mars."

On the subject of finding extraterrestrial life, Musk referenced the Fermi paradox. Developed by physicist Enrico Fermi, this theory states that since Earth is part of a solar system that’s younger than the rest of the universe, the planet should have already been visited by a highly advanced race of aliens from a different galaxy.

With this concept in mind, Musk believes colonizing a planet or becoming a multi-planet species would bring humans one step closer to finally answering the Fermi paradox.

“There are people out there who think we have found aliens,” he said. “Trust me, we have not. I would know. One of the actions is to become a multi-planet species or ensure that life is multi-planetary.”

“There is a probability at a certain point that some either external force or some internal unforced error causes civilization to be destroyed or sufficiently impaired such that it can no longer extend it to another planet,” he added.

Musk’s desire to move to another planet is certainly not new for the tech mogul. Currently, his company SpaceX is focused on developing its Starship, a space vehicle designed to provide commercial spaceflights to Mars. Musk is hoping that his spacecraft will pave the way for the human colonization of the Red Planet.