Enmos
Valued Senior Member
Does it matter when the world ends?
- Thread starter StrangerInAStrangeLand
- Start date
Enmos
Valued Senior Member
Enmos
Valued Senior Member
Or so you let yourself believe.
I just hope that I can see my psychologist before it ends to find out if I made it happen! 
Enmos
Valued Senior Member
"..to you."
So?
John Connellan
Valued Senior Member
I don't know about that. I think they mean pretty much the same thing
matter*: a vaguely specified concern
care*: feel concern or interest
*taken from Google definition
Enmos
Valued Senior Member
:wallbang:
Were you expecting something like "matters" to be anything other than personal?
Enmos
Valued Senior Member
Heh.. sorry, I think I got this thread mixed up with another.
Enmos
Valued Senior Member
Well....can the world really end? Anyway, even assuming it can, it doesn't matter
Well.. not to us anyway. It could matter to someone off-Earth though.
Well....can the world really end? Anyway, even assuming it can, it doesn't matter
A planet the size of Jupiter could come hurtling through our solar system and hit us dead-on, driving both straight into the sun. That might do it.
Well....can the world really end? Anyway, even assuming it can, it doesn't matter
The most likely ending of the earth is the same as it has been the last couple times all life was almost wiped out. A large meteor or comit will plow into the planet.
Will the end of the world matter? That's really a question for whoever may be around at the time. And how do you actually mean "end of the world"? Do you mean it as in the point in time when the world becomes inhabitable? Or do you mean when humanity comes to an end? The two will likely not be the same event.
If you're talking the end of the world in relation to humanity, then it will matter to every living being that isn't human. If you're talking the end of the world as in Earth itself...I can't really see how it will matter. You've got to imagine that life has existed elsewhere in this universe (we're all adults here, and to pretend that it hasn't is silly at this point) and has just as likely come to an end on millions and billions of planets. Has it really mattered to us?
If you're talking the end of the world in relation to humanity, then it will matter to every living being that isn't human. If you're talking the end of the world as in Earth itself...I can't really see how it will matter. You've got to imagine that life has existed elsewhere in this universe (we're all adults here, and to pretend that it hasn't is silly at this point) and has just as likely come to an end on millions and billions of planets. Has it really mattered to us?
Fraggle Rocker
Staff member
The world most certainly will end, no later than about five billion years from now. Our sun is halfway through its life cycle and when it finally enters its Red Dwarf stage it will slowly expand to a diameter that will swallow everything inside the orbit of Mars.
However, the sun's temperature will rise slowly. So much sooner than that, about one billion years in the future, the earth will become so hot that all of its water will boil off. At that point the prospects for life are pretty dim. Perhaps a group of humans will manage to build a dome with refrigeration and a supply of water so they and an ecosystem with some representative species can survive considerably longer. But I can't imagine a technology being possible that will allow them to live inside the sun. Besides, even if they migrate to one of the outer planets or moons, that will be a pretty tough life. I'm not sure how much energy a red dwarf emits; there might not be enough solar radiation to build and power an ecosystem in one of those places.
So... at some point they will have to invent interstellar travel. Assuming relativity is valid and the lightspeed limitation is real, and a voyage across our galaxy will take more than a hundred thousand years, they'll need generation starships to go exploring, so they will pretty much have to invent that same technology they would use to survive on a boiling earth: a fully contained ecosystem that will keep operating indefinitely on omnivorous nuclear fusion reactors, refueling at every solar system.
If humanity dies off, I could be content with the hope that some day someone else will land here and discover the carefully preserved and recorded artifacts of our civilization. In the short run that will require establishing an archive on the moon because the weather and tectonic activity on earth will destroy anything we could build in no more than a few million years. For safety I suppose we should actually put it on one of the moons of the outer planets, so that Red Giant sun doesn't swallow it up, in case it takes the aliens more than five billion years to discover it. And of course a few backup copies in other places.
Better yet, send it out in a fleet of starships, manned or unmanned. Let it find the aliens instead of vice versa.
If you're talking about the planet literally being destroyed so there's no trace of our existence, then my answer is no, I would not like that at all. It's time to send those archive capsules to Europa and Titan! Or better yet, let's build those generation starships and get a few tribes of humans out there in the rest of the galaxy where whatever happens to earth won't affect them.
Or perhaps download ourselves into the computers of the future, so we won't be so fragile.
It seems like there are a variety of ways to beat the "end of the world" problem, as long as we have maybe one more century of technological progress before it happens. Oh yeah, and as long as we can get the world's governments to participate. The same guys who are ignoring global warming.
However, the sun's temperature will rise slowly. So much sooner than that, about one billion years in the future, the earth will become so hot that all of its water will boil off. At that point the prospects for life are pretty dim. Perhaps a group of humans will manage to build a dome with refrigeration and a supply of water so they and an ecosystem with some representative species can survive considerably longer. But I can't imagine a technology being possible that will allow them to live inside the sun. Besides, even if they migrate to one of the outer planets or moons, that will be a pretty tough life. I'm not sure how much energy a red dwarf emits; there might not be enough solar radiation to build and power an ecosystem in one of those places.
So... at some point they will have to invent interstellar travel. Assuming relativity is valid and the lightspeed limitation is real, and a voyage across our galaxy will take more than a hundred thousand years, they'll need generation starships to go exploring, so they will pretty much have to invent that same technology they would use to survive on a boiling earth: a fully contained ecosystem that will keep operating indefinitely on omnivorous nuclear fusion reactors, refueling at every solar system.
If humanity dies off, I could be content with the hope that some day someone else will land here and discover the carefully preserved and recorded artifacts of our civilization. In the short run that will require establishing an archive on the moon because the weather and tectonic activity on earth will destroy anything we could build in no more than a few million years. For safety I suppose we should actually put it on one of the moons of the outer planets, so that Red Giant sun doesn't swallow it up, in case it takes the aliens more than five billion years to discover it. And of course a few backup copies in other places.
Better yet, send it out in a fleet of starships, manned or unmanned. Let it find the aliens instead of vice versa.
If you're talking about the planet literally being destroyed so there's no trace of our existence, then my answer is no, I would not like that at all. It's time to send those archive capsules to Europa and Titan! Or better yet, let's build those generation starships and get a few tribes of humans out there in the rest of the galaxy where whatever happens to earth won't affect them.
Or perhaps download ourselves into the computers of the future, so we won't be so fragile.
It seems like there are a variety of ways to beat the "end of the world" problem, as long as we have maybe one more century of technological progress before it happens. Oh yeah, and as long as we can get the world's governments to participate. The same guys who are ignoring global warming.
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