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The End Not As Near As We Thought
HiyaPower writes: "According to recent calculations cited by this article in TheAge, the calculations that the sun would expand to a red giant and engulf the earth are wrong. It will expand, but due to the loss of solar
mass over time due to the conversion of mass into energy, the earth will spiral enough further away thus avoiding the fate of Venus and Mercury. Personally I find this a great relief, I had some long term plans that I had been putting off..."
If only to watch and point and laugh.
You really do have to wonder exactly why people do so much research into this.
Is there something they aren't telling us??
I was hoping for a spinning pulsar :)
You can't legislate goodness. Let each to his own destiny, by will of his freely made choices.
after all what are the chances your going to survive the asteroid impacts, catastrophic earthquakes, global warming, ozone depletion and the global flooding after the melting of the polar ice caps?
He who defends everything, defends nothing. -- Fredrick The Great
He added that, although the Earth is safe from destruction, life here still faces some formidable challenges in the far future. The new calculations suggest that the surface of the Earth will become too hot to sustain human life for a few million years about 5.7 billion years from now.
This is about 200 million years later than previously thought - an extra period of grace that humans could use to develop technologies for living on a hotter Earth, such as building communities deep underground. Alternatively, the human race could move to another planet for a while.
[snip]
hard to imagine that after 5.7 billion years we'll still be worried about something as banal as the expanding sun. No, by then we'll have figured out a way to transmute our living soul into pure electronic energy and we will roam the cosmos, imortal and all-powerful.
Or we'll die out. How long did the dinosaurs live?
On the other hand, we may still be working the bugs out of the missile defense shield. Damn those decoys!
Sweat
It breaks my pluginses, my precious!
There goes my end of the world party! What am I going to do! Caterer is going to hit me with a huge cancellation fee!
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David O.
Pointless research - the human species will have all transcended their current forms to become 4 dimensional toasters with great hair.
I've read a number of articles that say that life on Earth will be destroyed in a few billion years by increased radiation from the Sun. The Sun's output is slowly increasing as it ages. At some point, the Earth will go into thermal runaway.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
At the end of a lecture young student puts up his hand:
"Professor, earlier you commented that eventually the sun will collapse and life on earth as we know it will cease..."
"Yes," responds the professor, "but not for billions of years."
The young student exhales a sigh of releif. "Thank goodness, for a moment there I thought you had said millions."
Astronomer Patrick Moore said: "In the end, no one really knows what is going to happen. But my message would be 'don't panic'."
Those of us who have already seen the galaxy on 30 Altairian dollars a day agree...
"Your superior intellect is no match for our puny weapons!"
You can make your slogan "Earth: As Close As You Can Get To The Action, With Your Feet Still On The Ground!" Or maybe even "Earth: Now The Closest Planet To The Sun!"
Seriously though, 7.7 Billion years from now is a LONG TIME AWAY. I highly doubt that any life form higher than an insect will exist then in a form that we would recognize today. And while possibly providing insight into what planets orbiting other white dwarves we should look to for signs of past life (once we get equipment that can resolve their existance, much less probe their surface), I don't think this is anything anyone needs to worry about today.
Of course, assuming further checks prove that the Earth will survive past the death of our own sun, perhaps we should leave a legacy to the rest of the Universe by planting the sum knowledge of mankind somewhere safe below the surface (assuming we could sheild it from geologic destruction) and send out satellites to the furthest reaches of the galaxy proclaiming the gift to all Life, everywhere. Just be sure to pack this with some T-Shirts that read, "I went to Earth, and all I got was this lousy Data Crystal."
I love space/universe shows on Discovery and the like, watch it all any chance I get. But I don't know as much as the next guy because I didn't have any 'formal' space nerd training.
Why do I write? Read the quote below.
For decades, astronomy textbooks have insisted that the Earth will be engulfed in an inferno billions of years from now as the sun burns up its nuclear fuel and swells to become a gigantic red star.
You mean this is actually in the texts? I understand why someone would want to check and make sure that the earth isn't going to be burnt up in a nuclear inferno when they leave for work. Hell, check to see if we should celebrate New Years.
But when you are sitting there doing all that astronomical math, and you notice the number is higher than 10,000, why don't you just quit?
Leave the math for later generations.
Get your Unix fortune now!
wonder if this will happen before MS is actually punished for their monopolistic behavior??
...and i was going to get on the other ship with the middle management and the telephone repairmen...
"Earth, what a tan!"
{this below a picture of George Hamilton}
I like this picture or this one.
Get your Unix fortune now!
...there were only cockroaches and Dick Clark.
-- anthony
This matters why? I mean, sure, they have to update the textbooks, but why is this worth researching, let alone newsworthy? Can this problem help us solve other problems that need to be solved?
Um, actually, this is the only problem that actually needs to be solved. What is the point of bickering over wellfare or crime or taxes or wars (or anything really) if we are going to go and cease to exist in the next 10 billion years? If the human species is goint to survive in the long term, then we have to plan in the long term.
"Your superior intellect is no match for our puny weapons!"
This matters why? I mean, sure, they have to update the textbooks, but why is this worth researching, let alone newsworthy? Can this problem help us solve other problems that need to be solved?
Any astrophysicists mind?
Well, as a budding astrophysicist (undergrad physics/astronomy major at UofA), planetary/stellar evolution is quite an important area of research (in fact, a whole branch of astronomy focuses on this. It's even a separate degree program at some schools--planetary science). Also, forgetting to account for the radiation of energy and the resultant decrease in mass seems to be a fairly major oversight, in violation of some of the most basic concepts of orbital motion, such as the fact that the downward force due to gravity (and, hence, responsible for the behavior of orbits) is proportional to the mass of the central object and inversely proportional to the radius squared. Decrease the mass, and the force decreases, resulting in a change in the dynamics of Earth's movement, and increasing the perihelion and aphelion.
This is worth researching because Earth and its fate is somewhat important to us, for reasons that should be obvious. This will help us model the evolution of the solar system up to the white-dwarf stage, one which will be reached by most main-sequence stars (we think).
Wow, someone must have been very nice this past year.
Get your Unix fortune now!
Actually Discover has an article pointing out 20 Ways the World Could End - long before Sun expanding to get us all. Just telling me sun is a whimpy boy doesn't really relief me at all. :)
:)
(btw, I think 17 is about the present world.
I think it's safe to say that humans won't be around long enough for us to worry about this problem. The rate of evolution of species will make us into something else looooooong before then. Even if we are around, we will certainly have the technology to provide light and keep the Earth's geothermal reaction going long enough to move the entire planet to orbit another star. Hell, we may even be able to refuel the sun and keep it going for another 13 billion years. Humans have only been around for 100,000 years, and we've come a long way, but it's only just the beginning of our exponential curve upwards. Just hope we don't kill ourselves off first.
Mr. Spleen
I thought the Long Now Foundation's 10,000-year clock was an optimistic project. Why would anyone, especially learned men of the Royal Society, postulate that human life will exist in its present climate-dependent position even a million years from now?
We have gone from living at the mercy of the elements to building living environments in space in the span of only a few millennia, with the bulk of the technology being developed only in the last century. And now we stand poised to rewrite our own genome. Does anyone expect that, if mankind still exists five billion years hence, that it will be limited to this puny ball of rock, entirely dependent on this one yellow dwarf? Or that we will even resemble our current selves, either physically or intellectually?
Mankind may indeed pass through many cycles of near-extinction before the next million years pass. Look at our current speculative fiction. Scarcely anyone attempts to write about the future beyond a few thousand years, because we know it is beyond imagination.
Perhaps it would be best to say of stories such as this, that the Sun is still expected to continue, without substantial changes, for any conceivable lifespan of the human race as we now know it. Beyond that, we're whistling in the solar wind, for only God can know.
As shown in several movies and recent popul.-charts, humankind will *have* to move to another planet/place due to overpopulation. I wonder where the nearest places are? Do we even have enough ressources to build appropriate spaceships, like, real big and to fire them up? (intentionally not talking 'bout money, there will be enough in case of emergency)
I bet we'll waste the last drop of oil driving to McDonalds to get one of these new SpaceBurgers(tm)
0 001 11 1
After 7 billion years, there will be absolutely nothing left to evolve, irregardless of whether evolution is a reality or not.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
And here I was thinking no matter what my date field would never need to be bigger than enough to hold 5.8 Billion Years.....
Watch them blame us poor programmers when all hell breaks lose......
Wanted : A Signature.
On the other hand, if we plan on lasting that long I suppose it would be a good idea to colonize wherever possible. Mars and Venus seem like obvious candidates. Mars seems like a no-brainer but Venus would be the real challenge. Could we alter its orbit and the greenhouse effects in its atmosphere?
I think it is interesting that we expect that our own species will not last that long. I don't have any evidence for our longevity, but consider that we are the only species that we know of in Earth's history that is intelligent and uses tools to survive. We are the only species that we know of that significantly changes our own environment to suit us and we're the only species that can reach beyond our planet. It would seem already that we are a statistical anomoly.
I guess we'll just have to wait for dubya to turn into the antichrist...
What do you mean, 'wait' and 'turn into'?
"Information wants to be paid"
Because the Vogons are going to destroy this planet soon enough anyway.
/^[A-Z0-9._%+-]+@[A-Z0-9.-]+\.[A-Z]{2,4}$/i
Though the other reasons people have stated are important and true, the real reason one does this kind of research is because they can get published. Not only that, but this isn't hard. Assumming I had calculator and a reference with all the important astrohysical parameters, I could get a rough magnitude of the correction in an afternoon, easy.
If you're anywhere in academia, then coming up with an insight you can publish after less than 6 months of work is a big thrill. Why does it make the news? Because most people have at least some interest in the fate of humanity; we care about our descendants. Oh, and most people are bad with big numbers and don't really understand how remote 5 billion years.
The northern polar ice cap is indeed a big ice cube and will act much as you say. The anarctic cap however is sitting on a continent. That ice is not part of the oceans displacement in any form. If the southern polar ice cap melts, the oceans will indeed rise. Runoff from places like Greenland will probably count some as well.
This expansion of the sun is such a needless bloat. I tried to tell God to use Linux instead but he just wouldn't listen.
Give a man a fish and he eats for one day. Teach him how to fish, and though he'll eat for a lifetime, he'll call you a miser for not giving him your fish.
Terrorists can't threaten a country's freedom and democracy. Only lawmakers and voters can do that.
Nothing to worry about, 7.5 billion years is LOT of time, even with todays technology you could probably colonize whole damn galaxy by then,
The problem is, that's not the time limit we have to deal with - we have to start the process before we run out of readily available resources and before we destroy our civilization (or an asteroid or whatever does it for us). If civilization is destroyed, the survivors will have a lot harder time bootstrapping themselves back up to our level because much of the easily mined resources may have already been used up and what's left takes a certain level of technology to get. If they need the technology to get the resources, but need the resources to get the technology, they're checkmated.
An optimistic guess is that we have a few hundred years to get our act together and get off the planet. A pessimistic guess would be that it's already too late. I think we've got 50 to 100 years, but that's a short time to learn to live in space and get a critical mass of self-reproducing culture and techology up there. We should have done more than we have. We need to start soon. There may be only one chance and this may be it.
What about the possibility of being fried by the sun, in its current state?
I remember watching on TLC, and reading subsequently, that the earth's magnetic field is degrading by half every 1600 years. Geophysics isn't my strong suit - Can anyone lend any supporting/debunking information?
I have been living my life knowing that all the evidance would incinerated.
Now earth will float around the universe forever as an icy tomb waiting to be dug up, until some alien race finds it and gets pissed enough at human beings to cut earth v3 out of dvd region 1 or somthing.
You think they could of told us this before we voted for Reagan.
Novel theory: Modern Man evolved from psychopath
In two different physics classes, the profs made a point of saying that an explosion doesn't change the object's center of gravity. Even though the mass goes flying off helter skelter, the mass'es cg remains where it was or was headed. The equations are still solved as if the mass was compact.
Why would this scenario be any different?
What's even more curious is what happens to matter's ability to attract other matter when the matter is converted to photons? Does the ability to attract matter vanish when matter transmutes to photons?
There are also some deadlines for any species that follow us. E.g., the earth has had fairly consistent temperatures even though the sun has been getting brighter because CO2 was getting locked up by life and other geological processes. So the amount of greenhouse gases have tended downward over time.
So far so good, but there's little CO2 left to remove from the atmosphere. As it continues to drop, we'll lose trees. No trees, no wood for construction projects. A bit latter, we'll lose even bushes and shrubs - the only form of plant life will be grasses.
Over an even longer timeframe (250 MY?), we'll hit a "wet greenhouse" phase. Hot oceans release more water vapor, which initially produces clouds that reflect sunlight. But this only goes so far, eventually the "water vapor as greenhouse gas" effect will dominate the "water vapor as bright white clouds" effect and the oceans will boil. This eventually leads to a "dry greenhouse" like Venus.
I'm not sure whether I'm optimistic (I think our window is much wider than you), or pestimistic (if we fail as a species, our successors may not have enough time to evolve.)
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong. -- H L Mencken
Human foresight doesn't extend beyond timescales longer than two or three human lifetimes. It's just human nature. Look at the resistance to taking any action against far more immediate threats (global warming, overpopulation, depletion of fossil fuel reserves, etc.). If the rise in temperature per year stays below a certain rate, people will drive SUVs around until the atmosphere reaches the boiling point of gasoline. People care about their children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren, but generations beyond that, they only care about in a sort of theoretical sense. Ever hear about that $10 that would be worth $9 million today if it were put in a bank in 1801 and left to accrue interest until now? And yet not one of my ancestors in 1801 seems to have cared about me having $9 million.
So I have to laugh when I see people suggesting that the human race will carry out these wild survival plans that require 200-300 million years for their execution. Nobody will act on a threat from the sun even when it's a million years off, because nobody seriously worries about what's going to happen to their descendants that far in the future. If the sun were even going to explode in a thousand years, you would still be hearing guys on radio talk shows flatly denying that we should do anything involving any sort of personal or national sacrifice.
I don't know about having a wide-area effect, not having read up on the issue but noticing that unlike most volcanos Yellowstone seems to let out a lot of pressure on a regular basis. But anyway...
Despite being one of the most beautiful and spectacular exhibits of geology on earth, Yellowstone certainly is a scary place to visit. Just prior to when I was there, part of a parking lot had collapsed into the hell of boiling mud just underneath. It made me kinda nervous, since one normally doesn't think of the possibility that the ground will suddenly open up beneath you and send you to a horrible burning death.
The enemies of Democracy are
Consider a large iceberg. Say, 90% of it lies underwater, 10% of it above water. This is because it is (in my example) 11% less dense than water. But it still has the same weight as the amount of water taken up by the submerged portion of the ice berg. Find any physics text book, or perform the experiment mentioned in one of the other posts, put an ice cube in a glass of water, fill it to the brim and note the water level doesnt change when it melts.
dominionrd.blogspot.com - Restaurants on
I hope not everyone is like you. Of course, I'm referring to the Mozilla team (slogan: 1.0 sometime before the sun burns out).
Yes, I am exaggerating for humorous effect. I'm sure that, 7 billion years from now, they'll be very close to releasing Mozilla 3.0.
IE, on the other hand, will be up to IE 73,033,075.1, will take up approximately 300 petabytes of storage, and will have a security flaw which will give hackers root access to your machine before you even pop the CD into the tray.
Intel will be destroyed as a corporation after their experimental 27 quintillion transistor processor goes critical, destroying both their research facility and half of North America. Overclocking enthusiasts will then be rounded up and shot for the safety of mankind.
You want the truthiness? You can't handle the truthiness!
It seems that the general consensus seems to be that we will either move to another planet/system, or that we will figure out something to change our orbit. But it just makes me wonder if we'll even last that long. Sure, we'll discover more ways to defend ourselves from various astrological disasters, but what about US? What's stopping us from destroying ourselves? With the advances not only in science, but military. We're discovering more ways to kill other people, and people seem more inclined to use those ways for their own benefit. I think we just need to look at what we're doing to each other on earth BEFORE we can do something as a whole.
The TV tells me what to think, newspapers and magazines back them up, and slashdot does the same exact thing and is somehow worshipped as a haven for free thinking.
Slashdot is certainly not perfect, but it's got one big advantage over TV, newspapers and magazines: most of its content comes from the readers. The ones who run this circus get a few sentences to try to tell us what to think (or what to think about), but then the readers take over. If Slashdot sucks, its our own fault. If we want it to be better, it's our own responsibility to make it so. You don't get that chance with TV, newspapers, or magazines. If they suck, you're stuck with it.
Used to be you could take your business elsewhere, but now they all song the same song.
CNN has this quote under a picture near the bottom of the page:
;-)
The space rock 2001 YB5, identified by the arrow, could have wiped out France, according to a scientist in Britain.
Would the British really be all that upset about that?
... forgetting to account for the radiation of energy and the resultant decrease in mass seems to be a fairly major oversight ...
While we're at it, did they also overlook tides?
Just as the tidal friction of the moon on the earth is accellerating the moon (gradually moving its orbit outward while slowing the earth's rotation while friction-heating the earth's core and thrashing the oceans and atmosphere), the earth's tidal friction on the sun should be gradually moving the earth's orbit outward, at a cost to the sun's angular momentum.
This is because in both the earth/moon and sun/earth system the orbit and central body spin are in the same direction, with the central body spinning faster than the orbiting body's period. Tides raise "bumps" on the central body, which (thanks to damping from friction) are carried forward with the central body's spin and produce an accellerating force on the orbiting body.
In the sun/earth case the sun's tides on the earth also transfer some angular momentum from the earth's spin to its orbit, increasing the effect. That doesn't happen with the moon, because the moon has already used up its angular momentum and is tide-locked with the earth.
Nothing compared to the effect on Jupiter, of course. But as long as the earth's orbit isn't in a harmonic relationship with that of another major planet the effect should be nontrivial and the interactions with other planets should inetgrate out to zip.
So, was that taken into account, too? If not, the start of the bake cycle could be even further into the future.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way