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Studies Say Earth Won't Die As Soon As Thought

Posted by samzenpus on from the plenty-of-time dept.

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."

21 of 155 comments (clear)

  1. Damn. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    I wish you'd told me this yesterday.

  2. That's a relief! by narcc · · Score: 4, Funny

    The older prediction had me worried.

    --
    Required reading for internet skeptics
    1. Re:That's a relief! by Eunuchswear · · Score: 3, Funny

      Scene: a lecture theatre.

      Lecturer: .... and in 1 billion to 1.5 billion years the sun will vaporise all the oceans...
      Student: What!
      Lecturer: I said that in around 1 billion to 1.5 billion years...
      Student: Oh! That's a relief, I thought you said Million!

      --
      Watch this Heartland Institute video
    2. Re:That's a relief! by michelcolman · · Score: 2

      They should have kept this secret and stuck with the earlier prediction as a deadline for getting off this planet. Then, when it turns out we're not actually ready yet by that time, you can give us the relieving "ok, you've got another few hundreds of millions of years but that's final". Our species is notoriously bad at making deadlines.

  3. harrumph by andyh · · Score: 2

    Pretty sure I'll still be working at the point of vapourisation given the never ending increases in retirement age and lifespan.

  4. Challenge accepted! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

    Challenge accepted, bitches!

  5. terrible news by Trepidity · · Score: 5, Funny

    This is going to wreak havok with the GNU/Hurd development schedule.

    --
    10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
    1. Re:terrible news by ccanucs · · Score: 3, Funny

      And the Perl 6 final release schedule :-)

  6. Where is everybody? by Animats · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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.

    1. Re:Where is everybody? by tlambert · · Score: 3, Insightful

      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.

      Not really. We're just too stupid to reprocess nuclear waste, or build breeder reactors, in the U.S.. France isn't that stupid.

    2. Re:Where is everybody? by rioki · · Score: 3, Insightful

      For example, I have seen a documentary where scientists are starting to consider digging up metals, such as copper from old garbage dumps. It the price for these resources makes this viable, it will be done. Same goes with all things "green", if the cost/benefit ratio makes it viable, it will be widely adapted.

    3. Re:Where is everybody? by sandertje · · Score: 2

      The chance of life parameter is very measurable. We can now find the spectrum of exoplanet atmospheres. A dead giveaway of life is free oyxgen; ever find free oxygen in the atmosphere of an exoplanet and it's sure to have a biosphere. Free oxygen reacts too quickly with just about everything to be caused by geologic processes. Sure, this approach won't find those planets with life that does not run on oxygen, but it will find those with a biochemistry somewhat similar to our own.

    4. Re:Where is everybody? by Lumpy · · Score: 5, Interesting

      If you think the uplinks to the Geostationary satellites are low power and dont spread out, you really dont understand RF or satellite comms. Some of the older TV birds up there are almost deaf, so we are BLASTING 100,000 watts of energy into a 25 to 30 db gain antenna to hit them. when the signal hits it, it is not 3 inches around and fits nicely in the receiving antenna, it's about 5 miles across, and will continue to spread.

      Here is the problem. Radio waves drop in strength Logarithmically. Which means even a 100,000 watt tightly beamed RF signal will be barely above the noise floor before it even get's 4X the diameter of our solar system away. When they talk to Voyager 1 or 2 they are using the largest dish antenna on the planet, and then they are blasting an ungodly amount of power to barely reach it. They also are using the 8GHZ band that has a very low noise floor and almost no interference within a lightyear.

      Voyager has a 23 watt transmitter, but a large gain antenna focusing it at earth, but it requires the massive 1000 foot dish or a huge array of smaller dishes to barely receive it. and not much longer, we will not have an antenna with enough gain on this planet to receive it's signal any longer. within the next 4-5 years we are expected to lose all contact with Voyager 1. And this thing is just in out back yard a few feet from the house.

      Even if an alien race knew where earth was exactly, and had a 1000 foot dish antenna with a 10Terawatt transmitter pointed right at us. If they were not within a 20 lightyear radius of the earth, their signal would not reach us at a strength that we could detect today.

      --
      Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
    5. Re:Where is everybody? by K.+S.+Kyosuke · · Score: 2

      They keep calling F-35 "a fighter", but haven't seen it fight anything recently but problems.

      --
      Ezekiel 23:20
    6. Re:Where is everybody? by MyLongNickName · · Score: 2

      Actually it does... it is the last variable "L", the length of time that civilizations release detectible signals into space. By your theory, this L is very low.

      --
      See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
  7. Woah... dude. Thought's gonna die? by wonkey_monkey · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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.
    1. Re:Woah... dude. Thought's gonna die? by wonkey_monkey · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Man, it's easy to get modded Insightful round here.

      --
      systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
    2. Re:Woah... dude. Thought's gonna die? by jones_supa · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Even this meta-comment of mine, which is not even related to the discussion and does not say anything, is modded Insightful. Geeze!

  8. Re:Damn... by Sique · · Score: 3, Funny

    We don't have many successful end-of-world-predictions to draw conclusions from.

    --
    .sig: Sique *sigh*
  9. Subject to change by Trax3001BBS · · Score: 2

    In the next computer run with different variables.

    1. Re:Subject to change by Sockatume · · Score: 2

      Yes, I'm sure that the computational physics that performed the research must have overlooked one of the simplest principles of numerical modelling in performing the research. I'd love to hear your insights into the Rosetta mission. "That's not a comet, that's clearly just a smudge on the lens. They obviously forgot to clean the probe after they made it."

      --
      No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?