Ask Slashdot: What Happens If We Perfect Age Reversing?

ourlovecanlastforeve writes: With biologists getting closer and closer to reversing the aging process in human cells, the reality of greatly extended life draws closer. This brings up a very important conundrum: You can't tell people not to reproduce and you can't kill people to preserve resources and space. Even at our current growth rate there's not enough for everyone. Not enough food, not enough space, not enough medical care. If — no, when — age reversal becomes a reality, who gets to live? And if everyone gets to live, how will we provide for them?

Comments

Re:Exodus

[Jane Q. Public]

As we leave the solar system radiation should decrease the further out we go.

Just no.

You are confusing Solar radiation with cosmic radiation... and they are largely very different things.

The "solar wind" is largely photons and other, relatively low-energy charged particles from the sun. (Note the word "relatively".) Which is GOOD for us here on Earth. Because cosmic radiation has a much larger component of HIGH energy particles. The solar wind interacts with Earth's magnetic fields in such a way as to shield it from the cosmic high-energy particles.

But it's the cosmic high-energy particles that penetrate far enough into the atmosphere to ionize particles of matter, which form nuclei around which clouds form. So... high sunspot activity generally means fewer clouds, which in turn means it gets hotter. When "solar storm" activity is low, more cosmic rays leak in, forming more clouds, cooling the weather.

Unfortunately, it is these high-energy particles which require the most shielding. And in general, cells are more prone to damage than radiation-hardened silicon chips.

Re:Exodus

[khayman80]

... high sunspot activity generally means fewer clouds, which in turn means it gets hotter. When "solar storm" activity is low, more cosmic rays leak in, forming more clouds, cooling the weather.

When more cosmic rays leaked in, the climate didn't change. Richard Alley mentioned (at 42:00 in his 2009 AGU talk) that beryllium proxy data reveal a spike in cosmic ray intensity during the "Laschamp anomaly" ~40,000 years ago, but the corresponding oxygen isotope proxy for temperature didn't change unusually during that time period.