We are in a strange moment where a lot of exponential curves are lining up at once...

Right now, moving through 2025 and towards 2026 and 2027, we are in a strange pocket of history where multiple exponential curves are all bending upwards together:

• Intelligence (AI and potential AGI)

• Energy (fusion and advanced renewables)

• Biology (ageing, gene editing, synthetic life)

• Space and astronomy (search for alien life, new telescopes)

• Physics and computation (quantum technologies, new materials)

Each of these, on its own, could define an era. Together, they create something qualitatively different: a moment where our tools start to improve themselves, our understanding of life and mind starts to loop back on us, and the universe feels both more vast and more reachable than ever.

It is not just a technological story. It is psychological, spiritual and existential. For a “meditating astronaut”, it is the perfect paradox:
we are becoming more powerful and more uncertain about what it means to be human.

This is a special post because it is less about prediction and more about orientation. Think of it as a map of the possible “big reveals” of the next decade so that you can meet them with clarity rather than shock.

1. Extraterrestrial life: answering “Are we alone?” with data

If we find clear evidence of life beyond Earth, even simple microbial life, it will be one of the deepest shifts in human consciousness ever recorded.

What this could look like:

• Biosignatures in an exoplanet’s atmosphere that very strongly point to biology rather than simple chemistry.

• Subsurface oceans such as those on Europa or Enceladus revealing organic chemistry that is far too organised to be random.

• Ancient microbial fossils on Mars that show life once started there as well.

Even without a radio signal from an advanced civilisation, any confirmed life elsewhere would say:

Life is not a one off accident. The universe does this more than once.

The emotional impact is subtle and enormous:

• Religion and spirituality might reframe humanity’s uniqueness.

• Philosophy of mind and consciousness gains a new data point: life is a cosmic process, not a local glitch.

• The universe shifts from feeling empty but big to alive and big.

For those of us already meditating on our place in the cosmos, this confirmation does not diminish our significance. It widens it. We are part of something larger that produces life wherever it can.

2. AGI and beyond: other minds are arriving

Whilst we look outward for alien minds, we are also building alien minds here on Earth: advanced AI systems that do not think like us, do not feel like us, but may soon outperform us in most intellectual tasks.

What is converging right now:

• Models that can already write code, reason over documents, simulate people and learn new tasks quickly.

• Hardware acceleration and specialised chips pushing computing power sharply upwards.

• A coordinated global effort, with thousands of researchers and billions in capital pointed in the same direction.

Somewhere on this curve sits AGI like capability, systems that can:

• Learn most things a human can, but faster.

• Discover patterns and strategies we would never see.

• Help with science, engineering, design and perhaps even policy at superhuman levels.

This is not just a new tool. It is the introduction of new kinds of agency into the world.

Spiritually and psychologically, that is huge:

• Our monopoly on intelligence ends.

• The question “What is uniquely human?” becomes sharper, not softer.

• We are forced to distinguish awareness from ability, and consciousness from competence.

Meditatively, the challenge is clear:
Can we stay grounded whilst the concept of “mind” itself is being rewritten in real time?

3. Cheap, clean, abundant energy: removing a fundamental constraint

If intelligence is one axis, energy is another. Civilisations are, in a sense, what happens when matter organises around flows of energy and information. At the moment, those flows are constrained.

Breakthroughs in:

• Fusion (tokamaks, stellarators, inertial confinement, and novel approaches)

• Advanced solar, storage and grid technologies

• High efficiency materials and power electronics

could move us towards a world where:

• Electricity is cheap and clean in most places.

• Many climate and emissions battles shift from “How do we reduce?” to “How do we transition and clean up quickly?”

• Entirely new industries, such as cheap desalination, always on computation, massive vertical farming and continuous AI training, become economically trivial.

On a human scale:

• Energy poverty could decline dramatically.

• Some geopolitical tensions over oil and gas may loosen.

• Innovation becomes less about “What can we afford?” and more about “What should we build?”

Abundant energy does not automatically give us wisdom, but it amplifies whatever wisdom, or lack of it, we already have.

For a meditating astronaut, this raises a question:
If the material constraints loosen, what do we choose to value, build and become?

4. Deep control over biology and ageing: time itself becomes flexible

We are starting to understand life at something close to code level:

• Gene editing, including CRISPR and its successors

• Epigenetic reprogramming and cellular rejuvenation

• Senolytics and therapies that target the core hallmarks of ageing

These are not just incremental improvements in medicine. They hint at a future where we can:

• Extend healthy lifespan significantly.

• Treat ageing itself as a modifiable process rather than simple fate.

• Design or grow tissues and perhaps entire organs on demand.

Imagine a world where:

• Eighty is the new forty in health and capability.

• Career, family and life arcs are no longer bound by the same timelines.

• Death is still certain, but its timing and quality are far more negotiable.

Existentially, this is disorientating:

• If you might live 120 years or more in good health, what do you do with that time?

• How do relationships, commitments and purpose evolve across such long spans?

• Does spiritual urgency decrease, because “I have time”, or increase, because “I have a longer arc to take responsibility for”?

Meditation has always been a way to step outside the clock.
Biotechnology is starting to bend the clock itself.

5. New physics and deeper reality: updating the rules of the game

At the edges of science, our current models do not fully work:

• Dark matter and dark energy appear to dominate the universe, yet we barely understand them.

• Gravity and quantum mechanics still do not unify cleanly.

• There may be new particles, fields or principles waiting just out of reach.

The coming decades could bring:

• A much clearer picture of what dark matter and dark energy actually are.

• A working quantum gravity theory that ties space, time and information together.

• Practical spin offs in quantum technology, materials or computation that we cannot yet foresee.

Historically, every major shift in physics, from Newton and Maxwell through Einstein to quantum mechanics, has eventually reshaped daily life, sometimes after a delay:

• Electricity

• GPS and satellites

• Semiconductors and lasers

• Nuclear power and medical imaging

This next layer might:

• Recast space time as something emergent from information.

• Change how we think about causality, locality and perhaps even consciousness.

• Give us new tools that feel “magical” by current standards but are simply deeper physics.

For the meditating astronaut, this overlaps with something familiar:
the sense that reality is more fluid, relational and interconnected than our everyday intuition suggests.

Science and introspection may be inching towards the same cliff from different sides.

Living sanely at the intersection of all these curves

When so many exponential trends stack together, it is natural to feel:

• Excited

• Overwhelmed

• Anxious

• Hopeful

• Numb

All of these are sane reactions.

A few orienting principles for this era:

1. Distinguish signal from noise
   Most headlines are noise. The real shifts unfold across years, not news cycles. Cultivating calm attention, through meditation, reflection or simple conscious stillness, helps you see the deeper pattern instead of being pulled about daily.
   
   

2. Stay human on purpose
   As AI becomes sharper and biology more editable, “being human” stops being an automatic setting and becomes a choice. Empathy, presence, integrity and awe will not be automated. They will be your differentiators.
   
   

3. Build inner stability before outer acceleration
   Technology accelerates everything, including confusion. Practices such as meditation, journalling and deep conversation are not luxuries. They are navigation systems.
   
   

4. Hold paradox comfortably
   It can be true that:
   
   

   • AGI could solve immense problems and introduce existential risks.

   • Longevity could deepen gratitude and challenge meaning.

   • Alien life could make us feel both smaller and more connected.

5. The mind wants a single narrative. Reality often insists on several at once.
   
   

6. Let wonder be your anchor
   Beneath the anxiety and disruption lies an astonishing fact:
   A species that quite recently lit its first campfires is now decoding its own mind, its own body and its own universe, and is building new kinds of minds to help.
   
   Wonder does not mean denial. It means staying open, curious and receptive, even whilst acting responsibly.
   
   

We are, truly, in a strange moment where a lot of exponential curves are lining up at once.

From one meditating astronaut to another:
The task ahead is not just to survive this moment, or even to optimise it.
It is to remain awake as the universe discovers more of itself through us and, perhaps, through the new minds and new forms of life we are about to call into being.

Nigel John Farmer - Nov 19-2025