The looming cosmic smash up
- Thread starter steingar
- Start date
oldShar
Cleared for Takeoff
Wrong attitude!
Get gotta do SOMETHING
for the children, doncha know
Get gotta do SOMETHING
for the children, doncha know
steingar
Taxi to Parking
I would think the fact that Earth itself will someday be uninhabitable would spur folks to some sort of action, but I would likely be disappointed.
rpadula
En-Route
Wrong attitude!
Get gotta do SOMETHING
for the children, doncha know
Do something? Get your towel!
Jeff Oslick
Final Approach
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Nothing to worry about. The Vogons will build the interstellar bypass through Earth first.
Let'sgoflying!
Touchdown! Greaser!
Isn't 4 billion yrs about when the sun is expected to become a red giant?
Once during an astronomical talk here, the speaker said the earth will be gone in 4 billion years.
Tourist asks, "did you say million"?
"No, billion".
Tourist: "Whew, that's a relief"!
Once during an astronomical talk here, the speaker said the earth will be gone in 4 billion years.
Tourist asks, "did you say million"?
"No, billion".
Tourist: "Whew, that's a relief"!
That isn't a given really, considering our placement out on the arm, there is a chance to get a spectacular show and survive. That would be an awesome spectacle to behold.
Yes, you will be.... Problem is tomorrow is always in the way of the future.
FlySince9
En-Route
Better sell your facebook stock...before itcrashes. Probably sooner than 4 billiion years, though...
DaleB
Final Approach
Disappointed? Neither you nor I nor anyone alive today or in the next few thousand years will even be dim memories by the time the Earth becomes uninhabitable.
Don't count on that, we are no more than a few decades away at current rate.
We will be those primitive species that used to drive car and fly around in airplanes. It would be interesting to see how even a million years from now they view our society.
DaleB
Final Approach
I've been hearing that since the 1960s, Henning, and none of the prophesies of doom have come true. In fact we've made some pretty remarkable improvements since then.
And the same process is continuing currently. We are now over 7 billion people at war competing for resources, within 20 years it'll be 9 billion. Antibiotics put us hard on the road to unsupportable overpopulation. We could do something about it. We were on track in the 60s and early 70s, we figured out we needed to quit spewing toxic crap into the environment and pick up the production of clean energy. Then the nuclear program got derailed and a decade ago when the fuel cells were to the point of initial consumer quality and cost, when it was discovered that H2 stripped from petroleum sources was unusable, without the electricity reserves to make clean H2 the program fell by the wayside with auto manufacturers developing equipment for the few H2 markets that exist in Iceland and Scadanavia. The consumer products developed but not the energy source. We are developing no new energy resources and what we have is already not enough on a world scale. Add another 2 billion peoples load, nearly all of them requiring fresh water supplied by desalinization which requires a large quantity of energy.
The evolution of the planet and species was doing ok until we knocked out the nuclear energy program, however a combination of stupidity and greed has us now 30 years behind the eight ball and getting worse as we do nothing about any of it except multiply the problem with exponential breeding habits. Add to that that industry just moved their pollution to places that would allow it didn't help.
If you think the world is a better place than 1969 I suggest you turn off the TV and go see the world first hand. I've been traveling it since I was a kid and I don't see places getting better as I visit them over and over. Even America is not getting better, our society has retrograded in basic humanity from Great Society to throwing the mentally ill out on the streets.
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steingar
Taxi to Parking
As someone else pointed out, the sun will be sufficiently large to make life on Earth impossible without herculean feats of engineering.
steingar
Taxi to Parking
I have the sneaking suspicion that we will be regarded as gods, people who could fly through the air and put their footprints on the heavens.
There are those that theorize that with the reduced density of the expanding sun that our orbit could shift outwards enough to handle it considering the lower temps emitted. I find all the interplays fascinating.
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write-stuff
En-Route
Oh, we don't have to worry about that. Humans will make the earth uninhabitable much sooner than that.