Will Technology Progress Enough To Save Us From The Dying Sun?

Megalith

Megalith

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Pretty sure that none of us will even be around by then, but I guess this is something you can think about when you’re on the can.

We need another method of reaching the stars than our current, less than the speed of light restricted means we have now. The nearest star may be only 4 light years away, but in real time, that means more like 70 thousand years travel. Creating large biodomes in space is fraught with problems too, such as radiation, meteorites and micrometeorites, unseen black holes and dark objects, and on and on. Don’t comment about wormholes, either. They’re only theorized mathematically, and even then, only very small ones.
 
There's 10,000 other things to worry about before the sun begins to run out of hydrogen, 1000 of them man-made, and the others we have no idea they're coming. We could literally wait until the last 1000 years of the billion+ years of useful life the sun has left and still have plenty of time to escape the planet as a species, if we survive in general that long.
 
Eh... us worrying about being able to out race the dying Sun to save ourselves is like cavemen being told they need to figure out how to separate the spectrum to not get cross talk between Verizon and wifi routers. A billion years worth of technology is just so unfathomable that it's not funny.

To quote a fairly smart (yet arrogant as all fuck) guy in the late 1800s
"There is nothing new to be discovered in physics now, All that remains is more and more precise measurement."
So yeah...
 
If we don't kill ourselves before then, yes it will. I've got tech today I couldn't even imagine would exist when I was a kid. Assuming no new Dark Ages happen, another few hundred years of progress will produce stuff even the best current sci-fi writers couldn't imagine.
 
lol, the sense of "us" in that question is hugely silly.
 
lol... No. We can't even play nice in the few thousand years we have been on earth. Being around 4 billion more years in itself would be more than a miracle.
 
I'm not worried.
If I'm still around by that time, my consciousness will have been uploaded to a computer and I'll basically be immortal.
A 70,000 year trip won't be much of a problem if you are immortal.
 
Everything must come to an end sometime, including nasty humans that rape, pillage and murder.
 
I'd imagine that in a billion years time, we would have evolved into a different kind of human species. Hopefully something more intelligent, and maybe they'll be able to build something like a warp drive.
 
I would be more concerned about whether we'll be able to develop the technology to break out into other universes before this universe dies by a) heat death b) big crunch c) none of the above.
 
I don't suspect that human beings will be around in even 100 million years so I don't think there is much reason to worry about this. At some point we're going to do something stupid that wipes us all out, or I guess homicidal aliens (although I think it's more likely that if humans develop faster that light travel we'll go to other planets and be the hostile aliens).
 
nutzo said:
I'm not worried.
If I'm still around by that time, my consciousness will have been uploaded to a computer and I'll basically be immortal.
A 70,000 year trip won't be much of a problem if you are immortal.
Click to expand...

Heh, I'd want a 'sleep' option like Windows has. I think being cooped up in a space ship for 70,000 years might be a bit boring!
 
nutzo said:
I'm not worried.
If I'm still around by that time, my consciousness will have been uploaded to a computer and I'll basically be immortal.
A 70,000 year trip won't be much of a problem if you are immortal.
Click to expand...

Unless they physically move your brain itself, a copy of your consciousness is all that will live on, but you yourself will be long dead.
Making a digital clone of your consciousness does not equal immortality for you.

So yeah, you've got some problems...
 
The whole "we need to take drastic action and get off of earth now because of a natural event that will occur in billions of years!" stuff drives me crazy.

We have not been around for very long. Let's see if we can make it a few hundred more years without wiping ourselves out first. I mean okay yeah we should probably make sure we can detect and deflect asteroids. Beyond that...enjoy the ride.
 
Red Falcon said:
Unless they physically move your brain itself, a copy of your consciousness is all that will live on, but you yourself will be long dead.
Making a digital clone of your consciousness does not equal immortality for you.

So yeah, you've got some problems...
Click to expand...

You have a 50/50 chance of having your existing consciousness transferred to the new copy.
 
Actually it's only a couple million years life can be sustained here on earth. The sun is already expanding and getting closer to Earth. Colonization of Mars will be necessary at the very least.
 
sfsuphysics said:
Eh... us worrying about being able to out race the dying Sun to save ourselves is like cavemen being told they need to figure out how to separate the spectrum to not get cross talk between Verizon and wifi routers. A billion years worth of technology is just so unfathomable that it's not funny.

To quote a fairly smart (yet arrogant as all fuck) guy in the late 1800s
"There is nothing new to be discovered in physics now, All that remains is more and more precise measurement."
So yeah...
Click to expand...

He was arguing over one million years (not a billion) but I agree the same sentiment applies ... it took life hundreds of millions of years to evolve a tool creating species ... even 5000 years ago we had not advanced beyond stone tools ... in the last 500 years we have seen massive increases in technological progress (at an exponential rate) ... trying to theorize what human technology would look like one million years from now is an impossible exercise beyond the most imaginative sci fi writter
 
sadsteve said:
Heh, I'd want a 'sleep' option like Windows has. I think being cooped up in a space ship for 70,000 years might be a bit boring!
Click to expand...

That might be enough time for me to catch up on all those books I've been wanting to read, and all those old shows I've never had time to watch :)
 
Well, even if we don't have the technology to save us from a dying sun, here's hoping for the last 10 or so years of our existence, ISPs will give us a fucking break on their data usage caps.
 
thedocta45 said:
You have a 50/50 chance of having your existing consciousness transferred to the new copy.
Click to expand...

Technology and biotechnology doesn't work that way, nor does reality.
Your consciousness can only be copied (electrical signals), not transferred.

The brain itself would have to be moved in order to continue on, otherwise a copy (mental clone) of you would be all that remains.
 
SeymourGore said:
Well, even if we don't have the technology to save us from a dying sun, here's hoping for the last 10 or so years of our existence, ISPs will give us a fucking break on their data usage caps.
Click to expand...

No chance of that ... they will charge exorbitant fees so they can build a spaceship and escape (similar to When World's Collide)
 
The problem is this artificial barrier we have imposed on our advancement, called money. There is a lot of things we could do, but it always boils down to money. We could stop polluting the earth, stop global warming, but because of money, we won't. The smog levels in some cities should be an eye opener, because that's what we're doing to the entire planet, but nope, until the entire planet looks like those cities nothing will get done. Governments don't want to end the oil gravy train, and people don't want to change their life styles.
 
Red Falcon said:
Technology and biotechnology doesn't work that way, nor does reality.
Your consciousness can only be copied (electrical signals), not transferred.

The brain itself would have to be moved in order to continue on, otherwise a copy (mental clone) of you would be all that remains.
Click to expand...

Man no one played Soma I guess.
 
I finally clicked the article and the author's assumptions are way off. It's about 1 billion years from now, not 1 million years, where the Sun's brightness will have increased about 10%. The leading models suggest that could increase the Earth's temperature in a billion years enough to cause runaway evaporation of the oceans, and a wet, hot Earth. But the Sun is still a long ways from dying or roasting the Earth's surface at that point. It will take another 6 billion years before the Sun runs out of hydrogen for fusion. There will be an uncountable number of other potential disasters causing ELEs between now and that far future time.
 
thedocta45 said:
Man no one played Soma I guess.
Click to expand...

Nope, haven't gotten around to it yet, but even so, what I stated above stands correct.
There is no "50/50 chance", the technology to do this, not to mention the human mind, does not operate this way.
Anything other than that is just fantasy, sadly.
 
Red Squirrel said:
The problem is this artificial barrier we have imposed on our advancement, called money. There is a lot of things we could do, but it always boils down to money. We could stop polluting the earth, stop global warming, but because of money, we won't. The smog levels in some cities should be an eye opener, because that's what we're doing to the entire planet, but nope, until the entire planet looks like those cities nothing will get done. Governments don't want to end the oil gravy train, and people don't want to change their life styles.
Click to expand...

Ahhh yes think of all the glorious and utopian things we could do without money, that evil, ill begotten filth of the earth. Screw people and their money! It's not important anyways! We will fight global warming without money! And poverty, we will fight that without money. And smog, who could forget smog. Let's fight that and develop radical new technologies without using any money. that damn stuff just gets in the way.

gimme a fuckin break.:rolleyes:
 
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