I saw a TV program the other day that went into great detail of what would happen to our planet when the sun changes stages and eventually dies off... why is nobody concerned with this? Just because you will not live to see it does not mean you shouldn't slowly work towards a solution… at least for future generations. I heard an astronomer laugh and say "We have 5 billion years to prepare for this"... this is no laughing matter to me.
2007-07-04 16:39:33 · 14 answers · asked by Anonymous in Science & Mathematics ➔ Astronomy & Space
The best thing that we can do is to continue to make technological advances. There isn't a whole lot that we can do right now, but we have the luxury of time. As our technology advances over the course of many millenia, we might be able to develop a feasible solution to the problem. If we take this one step at a time, I believe that human ingenuity will triumph.
Anyway, there's no guarantee that people will still be around in 5 billion years; war, pestilence, and natural disasters are probably going to eliminate the human race at some point before the Sun begins to expand. Frankly, I'm more concerned about supervolcanos, nuclear war, and asteroid and comet impacts because these pose more immediate threats to human existence.
2007-07-04 20:37:20 · answer #1 · answered by clitt1234 3 · 0⤊ 0⤋
who knows, maybe life on this planet will have fizzled out by then anyway, like some cosmic preparation. And 5 billion years, bah, sooner than that when the sun becomes a red giant or whatever, its size alone will consume everything up to about Mars. And then who knows what would happen along with that, since Saturn and Jupiter are dead stars, their gases will probably be sucked up too, or they might ignite and things would just get too crazy. On top of all that, we have a strong, but very general idea of when the sun will crap out, but when it does it will happen so fast no one will see it coming. Just one day, *blink*, and everything is gone.
2007-07-04 18:22:38 · answer #2 · answered by Katie 2 · 1⤊ 0⤋
Yup. The astronomer has a "good" reason to laugh at that 5 billion years preparation. Why? He laughs for himself because he don't have the technology of a safe nuclear "fussion" yet - a technology that would mimic the energy, heat and light-releasing "magic" of the sun.
Maybe there are many who are concerned about the burning out of the sun BUT no one dares speak of it because there is NO solution yet to this kind of problem.
2007-07-04 16:54:36 · answer #3 · answered by semyaza2007 3 · 1⤊ 1⤋
I think 5 billion years is enough time to think about it and anyways we have more things to be concerned about in which can affect the next 50-100 years even next 5 and from generations there on like pollution, global warming, the destroying of the ozone layer, deforestation and many more. We have way way less time to worry about the sun than we do these current situations. Lets first pass these problems which can also seize to have life on earth or five billions years later there will cease to be life already for the sun to kill from all the current problems which all if keep on happening can also destroy life and affect it greatly. anyways there probably will not be an era of the hommo sapiens 5 billion years from now. Like the dinosaurs we also probably have a time limit to how long our species the homo sapiens survive.
2007-07-04 16:51:33 · answer #4 · answered by Anonymous · 2⤊ 1⤋
I understand your concern, but 5 billion years really is an awfully long time. Look at it this way: It's only been 5 MILLION years since we split off from the chimpanzees. Whose to say where we'll be in our culture and/or our evolution in another 5 million years? And after all that, whatever the next 5 million years may bring, we will still be only one THOUSANDTH of the way toward our date with the sun's destiny.
2007-07-04 17:05:03 · answer #5 · answered by RickB 7 · 2⤊ 0⤋
A different dimension of the situation is, we may not even be humans anymore. Our species has only been around for no more then 6 million years max, even if you take into account non homosapiens. In 5 billion years, no matter how comforted we are to the environment now, we will likely change drastically, meaning it wont even be a "human" problem.
In reality, our modern day science has only been solving problems for only about 500 years. 5 billion years gives us a little extra time....
2007-07-04 17:02:13 · answer #6 · answered by Anonymous · 1⤊ 0⤋
Because it will take 5 Bil years give or take and there is nothing that CAN be done about it other than moving out of the solar system but since the universe is approximately only 13 billion years old, noone knows what a 50% increase in the age of the universe will bring so it is pointless to worry about.
2007-07-04 16:45:09 · answer #7 · answered by Rob S 2 · 1⤊ 1⤋
Then you have no concept of what 5 billion years means. That is why you are concerned.
When you consider civilisation has been around for just one millionth of that time, you can see that it is really daft to get worried about it.
or take a long lifetime - 100 years. There are 50 million long lifetimes to the end of the sun.
I think there are a lot more things to worry about in this life.
2007-07-04 17:12:13 · answer #8 · answered by nick s 6 · 1⤊ 0⤋
Maybe by that time it will just be our time to end. Who says that mankind has to last forever? We can't even get our minds wrapped around the possibility of being descended from Adam and Eve, let alone our descendants 5 BILLION years from now. Hey who knows? By then evolution might have given us the power to fly in space without the benefit of a space ship, and we could all be living somewhere else. But then again, maybe monkeys will fly out of my butt.
2007-07-04 17:26:34 · answer #9 · answered by SpaceMonkey67 6 · 2⤊ 0⤋
I would worry about an asteroid hitting the Earth, before I would worry about the sun burnning out.
2007-07-04 16:50:45 · answer #10 · answered by nexteltom17 4 · 1⤊ 1⤋