Slashdot Mirror
Studies Say Earth Won't Die As Soon As Thought
sciencehabit writes "Take a deep breath—Earth is not going to die as soon as scientists believed. Two new modeling studies find that the gradually brightening sun won't vaporize our planet's water for at least another 1 billion to 1.5 billion years—hundreds of millions of years later than a slightly older model had forecast. The findings won't change your retirement plans but could imply that habitable, Earth-like alien worlds are more common than scientists thought."
I wish you'd told me this yesterday.
The older prediction had me worried.
Required reading for internet skeptics
Pretty sure I'll still be working at the point of vapourisation given the never ending increases in retirement age and lifespan.
Challenge accepted, bitches!
"Well thanks for the f**king heads up!"
This is going to wreak havok with the GNU/Hurd development schedule.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Whew! I was worried.
It's an input to the Drake equation. That's worth looking at again. When Drake wrote it, most of the numbers were guesses, but we now know that exoplanets are not rare.
I suspect the reason we haven't heard from anybody is that the lifetime of high-power technological civilizations is only a few hundred to a thousand years. We're only about 200 years into industrial society, and we've already burned through most of the easy to get natural resources.
This is the sort of thing that gives ammunition to climate change deniers.
How can congress formulate national policies to deal with impending issues like this when the timeframes keep changing?
At least now they won't have to rush things. Another 100 million years or so of inaction shouldn't make much difference.
We can't even replace someone's arm or liver (yet), or predict weather out farther than a week or two (and not even that super reliably), and have a probe barely out of our single solar system and yet people take these megapredictions so srsly.
I find the work on how the universe was in the past or will be in the future fascinating, but would laugh at anybody trying to stake a serious claim on it being ultimately true. Sure, it may be possibly true, as well as all the predictions predicated on the big bang or explaining what went on the first thousands of years on it, but the grain of salt I'm taking it with ought to be the size of the moon.
Whatever happens, let's hope the species evolved into some higher form (regression is possible) and some get off this rock before bad shit happens. I'm far more worried about a huge asteroid hit or a mega volcano under yellow stone ushering a global iceage than the eventual death of the planet by being boiled by an expanding sun.
Studies say Earth won't die as soon as Thought
Judging from the way some people act on this planet, Thought died a long time ago. That's right, I said it!
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
First the Mayans were wrong and now this? How hard can it be to predict the end of the world??? Geez...
Doesn't take large-scale long-term forecasts seriously. Is worried about Yellowstone caldera and global ice age, hopes we evolve into superbeings.
In all seriousness the physics involved in the forecast in the article are probably simpler than the physics involved in predicting Yellowstone's changes of eruption.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
I find the work on how the universe was in the past or will be in the future fascinating, but would laugh at anybody trying to stake a serious claim on it being ultimately true.
Well, it's a good thing that no scientists resemble your straw man. The scientists come up with an educated guess and test it, refining it as they go. Newton's laws still work great for lots of things, despite Einsteins curved space-time being a more accurate (but still wrong) formulation of reality. The very foundation of science itself is the notion that everything we know is not the ultimate truth.
The real question is how long conditions within human tolerance limits would last. The Mayans were wrong about 2012 (provided people who interpreted their writings weren't duped by a bunch of Mayan 'pot'-heads), but we can't deny the climate changes that have been unfolding the past few centuries, even if we factor in the effects of human industry. Has anyone done a study on just what period of Earth's existence sustained biological life? Is that important in understanding the possibilities of colonizing other worlds?
If his model is based on where continents and oceans are now it could well fail to predict what might happen in a billion years time. If there's more ocean around the equator in the future it could drastically increase how much heat earth absorbs, similarly if another giant continent such as Pangea forms there could be a huge desert in the centre reflecting back heat. Of course that also means less plant life so possibly less CO2 being absorbed etc.
Its an interesting intellectual exercise but I think at best any of these models should be taken with a whole cellar of salt when predicting that far into the future.
In the next computer run with different variables.
There are other limiting factors eventually causing life to go extinct. One important is CO2 which is absorbed into the oceans and recirculated by volcanic activity driven by radioactivity. Radioactivity will cease in about 500 mio yrs, IIRC, which is when life will end due to scarcity of CO2.
Actually no they aren't. They are missing vast swags of data to call these anything but wild guesses based on extremely incomplete (and likely inaccurate) data, external influences that will affect the earth such as asteroids and distant stars are unkowne, not to mention they still are struggling to understand the sun, hell the last 12 months of low solar activity still has them stumped and yet you think they have enough of an understanding to work out a good model for what will happen in a billions years time?
No, read what I wrote again. More worried != worried, in the same way a isdn is faster than dialup, but neither are fast.
Just a few short decades ago, black holes weren't thought to exist and if they did, be rare things, now they are at the center of every galaxy playing a huge part in galactic formation. There is a lot of hand waving going on with dark matter and dark energy, which is code for "we don't know wtf is going on", so excuse my skepticism on the "simple physics" of it all.
Assuming we don't kill ourselves, in hundreds of millions of years space engineering would be so advanced that a partial shield against a warming Sun would be a likely defense. Our problems seem to be on dealing with somewhat shorter range threats, like centuries or millenia (i.e., dealing with global warming, an eventual comet or big asteroid hit, a supervulcano going havoc, a third world war) than on millions years range, when technology would probably be mature enough to enable us to survive.
Heck, in a 5 billions years range, if a species descendent from us still populates the Earth, saving the Sun from becoming a red giant someway or fleeing the planet might be just a matter of economic, and not scientific, debate.
Meet random free proxy.
I had something to say, but forgot it due to being blocked.
No wonder people write bots to spam this shit with goatse links and misheard lyrics.
Never hit that limit, and I don't think there's a person on /. that isn't aware or have a free proxy at their disposal.
10 message limit... think of the spam you could launch if not for the limit.
So concerned about finding away to access /. you forgot what you wanted to say.
No offense intended, my bad.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
Thought will die in the next twenty years or so.
Earth will die in a billion years or so.
Earth won't die as soon as thought.
That's not news.
Now I can sleep better tonight!
thanks for sharing game friv
A proxy, what type of Coward, eh, I mean anonymity connoisseur, doesn't post through the TOR network using a Yagi aimed at the free wifi down the str... Um, never mind.
Also it's hard to aim a Yagi through the basement window. Especially, when mom says that HOA won't allow the antenna to stick outside.
we should make better use of our resources? http://news.yahoo.com/company-west-virginia-spill-failed-disclose-second-chemical-013146604--sector.html
& our heros// world's local hero http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=scott%20olsen&sm=3
lmprove our 'accounting' pf ourselves http://rt.com/business/us-unemployment-economy-crisis-assistance-006/ as crooked little finger pointing is obsolete
never a better time to consider ourselves in relation to each other, & our centerpeace momkind's new clear options.. see you there
'weather' permitting http://www.globalresearch.ca/weather-warfare-beware-the-us-military-s-experiments-with-climatic-warfare/7561
10 post limit is for people that are turds, Wastes of human feces that float in the water....
Us normals never have the problem.
the real weather will return in about 3 years guaranteed
meanwhile!@#$ http://www.globalresearch.ca/weather-warfare-beware-the-us-military-s-experiments-with-climatic-warfare/7561 most of us won't be here?
Humanity will either self-destruct, or destroy the Earth long before 1 billion years.
I give humanity less than 10,000 years. Then it's back to singled celled organisms.
Better repent before it's too late.
Were meteors added into the simulations ?
What are the chances of a wipe out if they include meteor impacts ?
All this assumes that humans with hundreds of millions of years worth of technological development will not be able to figure out a way to reflect away excess sunlight.
A Princeton-led research group has discovered an isolated community of bacteria nearly two miles underground that derives all of its energy from the decay of radioactive rocks rather than from sunlight. According to members of the team, the finding suggests life might exist in similarly extreme conditions even on other worlds.
vapourising all the planet's water ... that's just taking the piss!
Mixed Martial Arts Brooklyn is a MMA academy which provides the skills of kickboxing, wrestling, and fighting to the people of every age with their own experience and help to improve their physical fitness and health standards up to larger extent.
...still plenty of time to try to get laid
from wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T...
In 600 million years
The Sun's increasing luminosity begins to disrupt the carbonate–silicate cycle; higher luminosity increases weathering of surface rocks, which traps carbon dioxide in the ground as carbonate. As water evaporates from the Earth's surface, rocks harden, causing plate tectonics to slow and eventually stop. Without volcanoes to recycle carbon into the Earth's atmosphere, carbon dioxide levels begin to fall.[30] By this time, they will fall to the point at which C3 photosynthesis is no longer possible. All plants that utilize C3 photosynthesis (~99 percent of present-day species) will die.[31]
in 800 Million years
Carbon dioxide levels fall to the point at which C4 photosynthesis is no longer possible.[31] Multicellular life dies out.[32]
I not that this would be rather inconvenient
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
Don't worry, just because Earth will have liquid water for another billion years won't put a damper on our ability to fuck up our climate and end civilization as we know it. We're still right on schedule.
CO2 is gradually being absorbed into limestone by biological processes. It has fallen from 90% 4 GY ago to 1% 1/2 GY ago to .03% just before the industrial age. Photosynthesis and multicellar life terminates at .01%.
Burning limestone, i.e. done in cement manufacture, would return ample CO2 to the atmosphere. Cement manufacture accounts for about 10% current CO production. I am asssuming that hydrocarbon energy combustion is a transient phenomena, unlikely to continue more than a few more centuries after most of the easiliy mined coal, petroleum and natural gas is exhausted. 99.9% of the Earths carbon is in limestone.
I was hoping it would be before my mortgage is paid off.
-- Jim Crigler In 1937, I began, like Lazarus, the impossible return. -- Whittaker Chambers
I suppose the gradually brightening sun won't cause a temperature increase either, because everyone knows that the sun does NOT heat the Earth at all... it's my inefficient lawn mower that I use once a week, during the summer.
As planet scale geo-engineering problems go this one is relatively simple to solve. All it takes is perturbing the paths of a few asteroids every few hundred years such that in aggregate they push the earth out into higher orbits. Totally doable with todays technology.
Other problems such as disappearance of planet magnetic field can be solved with a series of superconducting rings at various latitudes around the planet the power requirements for each ring is about the same as a large commercial nuclear reactor.
Don't worry, the "Death Star under Switzerland" will kill us first. Just you wait, it's going to happen..... And it will be too late for anyone to stop it when they realize what they have done.
in the past week, i seen the N-word used in comments on /. more i have the entire 7 years i've been coming here. what's up with that? seems fishy to me. /. runs a lot of anti-gov stuff. wonder if the NSA has found a new tactic...
flood a site with racist comments so that public backlash forces the site to close...