The InterPlanetary Project seeks to engage with the pressing problems of today by imagining the challenges of tomorrow. Mark Twain wrote, “You can’t depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus.” InterPlanetary seeks to restore focus at a planetary scale. What terrestrial challenge could provide greater focus than nourishing and uniting the peoples of the Earth to explore extrasolar planets? And what great solutions might we find by searching beyond the confines of our earthly troubles?

To search through outer space we shall need to rise above our inner spaces, and face the gravest challenges of our time — from reducing disease and economic inequality, to managing finite resources and surviving war — to take all necessary steps towards a larger, shared goal: an understanding of life’s place in the universe. Confronting the challenges of space requires braving and solving the complexities of life.

SFI MISSION: Searching for order in the complexity of evolving worlds.

Santa Fe Institute researchers endeavor to understand and unify the underlying, shared patterns in complex physical, biological, social, cultural, technological, and even possible astrobiological, worlds. Our global research network of scholars spans borders, departments, and disciplines, unifying curious minds steeped in rigorous logical, mathematical, and computational reasoning. As we reveal the unseen mechanisms and processes that shape these evolving worlds, we seek to use this understanding to promote the well-being of humankind and life on earth.