OK, as I’m sure everybody has heard, it’s said that in a few, either million or billion (I forget which) years, our sun will go supernova on us. Now, three of questions about this.
It is currently believed that our universe is constantly expanding, if so, would that mean that there is a danger of us moving too far away from the sun and freezing, long before the sun supernovas?
If we’re going to freeze to death, what is the current thought of what our options would be? Trying the Sci-fi move thing and colinizing another planet, or trying to provide artificial heat and light to keep to keep us all alive, or…
I mean, in I know all this will all happen in a few million (or billion) years from now, so by then, hopefully our technology will be so advanced, solving this problem could be done by a 3 year old.
If our planet will be obliterated by our sun, then, what is the current thought as to what our option(s) would be, if any, or would we just be doomed?
No, because the expansion doesn’t really effect the gravitational attraction between us and the sun. The sun won’t supernova either, it’s not big enough.
To be a bit more specific, in about 4 billion more years, the Sun is expected to puff up into a red giant briefly (consuming everything from Mars inward), before collapsing into white dwarf. I don’t plan on being around when this happens, though.
Our sun has approximately another 5 billion years of life left. As mentioned our sun is too small to supernova. What it will do though is expand in size after it runs out of hydrogen to fuse and starts in on helium. The sun will grow so large that the earth will actually be orbiting inside the sun. At that point the earth’s atmosphere will be stripped away, the oceans will boil off and so on.
Considering that humans had better be long gone from the earth.
Also, the title of this post is a bit misleading. The Universe will be just fine at this point and have a LONG way to go till its ultimate doom which seems to be heat death (i.e. all the stars eventually burn out and the universe cools forever). There is no avoiding that at which point everything is screwed. Still…you have several hundred billion years or so to worry about that happening.
Well, no duh, of course none of us will be around, but I’m sure that hasn’t stopped some scientists and the like from theorizing on how we could save ourselves, and I was just curious what the current theories are on this.
Well, if you asked someone 10,000 years ago, I’m sure they were pretty far from what we’d say today.
And I’m sure what someone will say in 5 billion years when it turns into a red giant, encompassing the earth (i.e. when the answer to the question matters) is pretty far removed from what will be said today.
Good point about the thread. Mod’s, if one of you could change in the title, universe to Earth, I’d appreciate it.
Also, how long before the sun going red giant would we have to evacuate the Earth, assuming by then we’ll have the technology to move to another planet?
The earth is not going to move away from the sun before the sun goes nova. Galaxies are moving away from each other, not bodies within the galaxies. Think of it as if cars left a parking lot going in different directions. The people in the cars can still bump into each other while they are traveling away from the other cars.
We are not going to freeze, see answer 1.
I vote for colonizing extrasolar planets. We have only had powered flight for just over 100 years. We have only understood the main sequence of stars for less than 75 years. Give us some time to come up with options. This problem will not present itself in earnest for quite some time. However, if you want to get upset about cosmic events - our galaxy, the Milky Way, is going to collide with one of the other galaxies in the Local Group, the galaxy Andromeda, within the next 8 billion years.
Taking the Earth with us will be the last thing we will do.
I’m not ruling it out, but it will be the last thing we do (in this solar system).
Before that is necessary we will no doubt leave the solar system in one of a myriad different ways.
The Earth will get uncomfortably hot in a mere 1 billion years-
although we could always put a sunshade around the sun to block some of the light- or at the very least in the L1 point.
I think Q.E.D. was trying to be funny and not slam your post.
Clearly we would need to evacuate our planet if we wish to survive. Assuming humans are still around then they will likely have a good idea of what is coming and plenty of time to formulate a plan. If we wait till we have to pack the entire population into spaceships at one go then that we be a BIG problem. More likely is they will know thousands of years beforehand what needs to be done and start a slow process of colonizing space. We might not even have to go that far…perhaps some of the outer planets (or rather their moons) will be viable for colonization. They wouldn’t be earthlike but a colony might be managed. Still, sooner or later we will need to evacuate the solar system completely. One can only hope the technology will exist to make that possible. If we have figured a way to achieve faster than light travel it shouldn’t be too bad. If it turns out that is impossible (which it very well might be) then you will need to build Arc Ships on which a population could live for generations as it travelled to another star (there is a good amount of sci-fi on just such a thing and what it might do to a society that is born, lives and dies aboard a spaceship and then what happens when that all ends upon arrival at a new planet). A final possibility is you cryogenically freeze everyone and wake them up several hundred years later once they arrive at their destination.
Of course, all of this would require the ability to identify habitable planets in other star systems which may mean sending probes thousands of years in advance to scope out candidates and send their info back to earth. If you don’t do this then you’d be flinging yourself into space with no idea where your next stop will be.
Of course there is no real telling what technology will exist in a few billion years and how that might affect teh final decision. Maybe we will have invented dimension doors and people will just walk from earth to a new planet…it’d be nice and pretty cool but as of today I wouldn’t get your hopes up for that possibility.
If or when the sun becomes: a super nova, red giant, white dwarf or anything in between, will my solar calculator continue to function and if not will I be able to get my money back???
I’m new here and I hope this isn’t one of those hijacks I’ve been reading about.
Actually, it would be pretty easy to move the earth away from the Sun in the amount of time alloted. A large asteroid with a large solarsail attached, in just the right orbit, could do the job in a few million years.
Well, maybe I’m overly optimistic, but I think that in a few billion years, we’d have the technology to do just about anything, except probably traveling the speed of light (barring any catastrophy that would set us back technologicaly). But anyway, you’ve answered my question, so I’m done with this thread. Thank you.
The way I know of that heat energy can become something other than heat is through evaporation- ie. steam turbines and such.
So… if heat death does occur, won’t the massive ambient heat in the universe evaporate and melt whatever elements are still around and become another energy form?
