Earth's Period of Habitability Is Nearly Over 756
xp65 writes "Scientists at this year's XXVIIth General Assembly of the International Astronomical Union in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil agree that we do not yet know how ubiquitous or how fragile life is, but that: 'The Earth's period of habitability is nearly over on a cosmological timescale. In a half to one billion years the Sun will start to be too luminous and warm for water to exist in liquid form on Earth, leading to a runaway greenhouse effect in less than 2 billion years.' Other surprising claims from this conference: that the Sun may not be the ideal kind of star to nurture life, and that the Earth may not be the ideal size."
Sci-Am May 2009 (Score:5, Informative)
Sooner than that... (Score:2, Informative)
If you believe your local religious nutball, it will be sooner than that. 2012 (for those confused in their religiosity, mixing Mayan and Christian myth), 2 years (if you're one of those bozos who believe the Iranian president is the new Mahadi), by the end of this year (if you believe the wingnuts who think Obama is the anti-christ and national healthcare the end of civilization), or several times in the past decade (if you're one to jump into your bunker everytime the Jehovah's Witnesses call the end of the world).
Get your Apacalypse here! Step right up! One to a customer! Step right up!
Re:Shield against cosmic rays ?? (Score:4, Informative)
Cosmic Rays are electromagnetic radiation, they have no charge.
Untrue. Cosmic rays [wikipedia.org] are mostly high energy protons.
Re:Shield against cosmic rays ?? (Score:5, Informative)
Cosmic Rays are high energy particles, not electromagnetic radiation. They're mostly protons.
Re:This just in from the IPCC (Score:4, Informative)
troll, I'll take your bait. The IPCC doesn't advise paying more taxes, but using our resources better : more insulation, more energy-efficiency ... which leads to : you needing to buy less energy. see for example : http://www.naima.org/pages/about/releases/2001/ase.html [naima.org]
Re:Sooner than that... (Score:5, Informative)
I'm confused... how can 2012 be attributed to Christian myth even by the most loose of interpretations?
It isn't. It's attributed to Mayan myth (and its a fundamental change in the world, not necessarily the end of the world). But you get some confused people who think that's "another sign" of the last days, and that Jesus/the Apacalypse/what have you is coming then.
Totally illogical, not to mention heretical by their own belief system, but that doesn't seem to slow them down any.
Re:Depending on who you believe (Score:2, Informative)
1. guessing one rotation of our galaxy around the universe as one God year
Our galaxy does not rotate around the universe
Re:Shield against cosmic rays ?? (Score:3, Informative)
Cosmic rays include many kinds of charged particles -- protons, electrons, alpha particles etc -- streaming out from the sun (and arriving from other places). Electromagnetic radiation is also known as sunlight, and is, as you said, not deflected by magnetic fields.
Re:Sooner than that... (Score:5, Informative)
None of these are universal christian doctrines.
Luther, amongst many others, pointed to the papal system as the antichrist (literally meaning "in the stead of Christ").
Mark of the beast (on the right hand and forehead) is interpreted to symbolise a certain way of thinking and acting - indoctrination that salvation is attained through "the church" and not through Christ, with all the accompanying abuses of power. (Also keep in mind that the church organisations of today descend from that first church organisation, and although they claim to have reformed to leave behind some doctrines, they have maintained others.)
Persecution of christians under the Roman empire pales in comparison to persecution under the Roman church.
Single currency? Not sure, never heard of that one.
Rapture: I understand it's big in the US in certain circles, as it goes hand-in-hand with the aforementioned views, but it's not universal. When one investigates history and sees that many of these signs (many that you haven't even mentioned), that these people claim go hand-in-hand with the "end times", have been in effect from the days of the apostles, one realises that many christians in modern times have it incredibly good. I often ask proponents of the Rapture doctrine: what makes you better than the millions of early christians that where rounded up and fed to lions and burnt at stakes - why should you avoid persecution by being raptured, and they not?
Re:Depending on who you believe (Score:2, Informative)
In the first place, it never gives a specific timeframe.
In the second place, although the predictions range from fairly severe right on up to extremely dire (watermelon-sized hail, multiple consecutive years of worldwide drought, a day's wages for a quart of wheat, earthquakes so severe they relocate or just plain level every mountain and island worldwide,
Re:Depending on who you believe (Score:4, Informative)
Oh wait, we can ignore it all! Based on the fact that it is just one of many creation/destruction myths, none with any more validity then the next....
Re:Rubbish, of course it is. (Score:4, Informative)
...and that the Earth may not be the ideal size ...
I think your missing the point that they are making in that of course the Earth was able to develop life given it's sun and size. But that if they were to make the ideal star/planet combo that they would tweak some things to make it perfect. /. car analogy: I can get to work every day in a Yugo. But ideally I'd like to be driven in a stretch limo with strippers and an open bar. In fact, forget driving to work...
Re:Depending on who you believe (Score:4, Informative)
Don't worry, the Earth will remain inhabitable even in the most dark of the global warming scenarios.
Just not by humans.
What global warming scenario says the planet won't be habitable for humans? I've seen scenarios where the carrying capacity is drastically reduced (due to serious declines in agricultural output) but I've never seen one where it's eliminated entirely.
Humans have survived serious climate changes [wikipedia.org] before -- without the benefit of modern knowledge and technology. Do you really think we have the ability to do more damage to the climate than the Toba event?
Re:Sooner than that... (Score:4, Informative)
Just because you use the word "faith" to mean two different things doesn't mean those two things are the same.
No one has "faith in airplanes" (well some idiots probably do. I don't "have faith" in the plane when I fly. I see the evidence that crashes are reasonably rare and in a commercial jet require a number of things to go wrong in succession in most cases. I also see that crashes do happen and people do die. I don't "have faith" that my specific plane will be ok and have a good pilot. I expect it to since in the vast majority of cases that is true. I'm not shocked and surprised when a plane crashes though.
Re:So we still have... (Score:2, Informative)
Your argument is flawed in that it assumes there are no preconditions for technological advance. And there are many indeed :
-> agriculture
-> developed economy
-> some education system
-> at least a partial meritocracy
-> a compatible ideology (mainly an ideology that's prepared to accept empirical data)
Various states have existed in the past, and only very few of them made any technological advance at all (e.g. the Jews failed to introduce any large technological advances in the (many) years Jewish tribes dominated Europe, eskimo's, indians, just about any tribal culture ...). Others, like China, had very short periods of extremely rapid technological advance, followed by thousand years of standstill development. Others only had any technology due to conquering, and had only "subjected" scientists, who were outside the mainstream, and whose works were hidden or destroyed (the muslims). Other civilizations had technological development that started allowing for population growth, then failed to deal with that population growth and destroyed themselves (Some southern african states). Others had technological development, which was cut short by an invader, and they never recovered from it (most northern african states).
Unfortunately there is exactly 1 culture that made (for now) lasting technological process, and that would be the (reformed) Christian civilization, which could, though it's a stretch, be said to be an extention of the Roman Empire, or the Roman Republic, which is in itself an extension of the ancient Greek city states, where most people agree representative government was first combined with capitalism.
Given the thousands of civilizations that failed to progress beyond mostly very basic science, how can you claim that it's impossible that we lose the edge we have ? If we only become a bit more like any of those failed civilizations, why exactly would we be spared the same failure they had ?
Especially the muslim case is interesting. They conquered vast swaths of territory, that had thousands of scientists in it, massive libraries and an economy that would not be dreamed possible for 1000 years after they destroyed it. 200 years after the muslim army won, there was barely any science left, and the economy was beyond repair, except in regions where non-muslims were still dominant (Alexandria, Anatolia). The muslims had a *massive* technological advance, acquired by force of arms (and force of numbers), which they lost due to repression of science (or at least that is the prevalent historians' view). They lost it so badly ... to illustrate, can you imagine that in 400 A.D. the center of world science was either Carthago or Alexandria. You should visit those places today and look what they lost.
Re:So we still have... (Score:2, Informative)
The Aztecs, or some other group in Mexico, I'm lazy and don't care for the details, made toys with wheels (and axles) in them. They never employed the wheel as a labor saving device, but they had wheels and axles. I'm currently reading "Guns, Germs and Steel"; in the book, the author, Jarrod Diamond, posits that they did not use the wheel as a tool because they did not have access to any draft animals (the largest domesticated mammal available in the Americas at that point in time was the Llama, but the Aztecs (or whoever) didn't have any).
Technology probably does not advance as a law of nature, but we aren't done yet, and technology clearly transfers extremely rapidly (especially when modern technology is employed when making that transfer). An example would be cellular telephone networks in places like India, or much of Africa; no one ever bothered setting up a bunch of wires, and when the cost of the technology became low enough, someone built the networks.
Re:Sooner than that... (Score:3, Informative)
"I'm confused... how can 2012 be attributed to Christian myth even by the most loose of interpretations?"
It's the Mormons who believe Jesus hopped over to the Americas after the crucifixion and chatted up the Maya, isn't it?
Re:Repent sinners for the end is nigh (Score:3, Informative)
There are a lot of people with embarrisingly silly names like that. For example, Michael Anthony "Mike" Hunt is a former professional American football player who played linebacker for three seasons for the Green Bay Packers, appearing in a total of 22 games. [wikipedia.org] I was looking for a Michigan Attorney General with that name, Google lists a whole lot of them.
Cuntz is probably pronounced "Koonce" rather than "cunts".
Re:So we still have... (Score:4, Informative)
They also drew pictures of wheels: http://www.shields-research.org/Graphics/Wheel/P192p1.jpg [shields-research.org]
They even made larger wheel-type objects that might have been use on carts: http://www.shields-research.org/Graphics/Wheel/P195p1.jpg [shields-research.org]
American Indians built most of their structures and tools out of wood. They used a lot of stone but most things were made out of wood. Wood objects do not last very well over time.
It's true, we don't have a lot of evidence that American Indians used the wheel, although many of them certainly knew what they were. I'll not go into the reasons people give for them not using the wheel but basically it boils down to: we don't know very much about the Indians.
Re:Dang! Things were just getting fun (Score:5, Informative)
and we still haven't found a method to either safely store it away or make it less hazardous.
Even though it's been said 1e6 times before on /. and I'm sure someone will say it elsewhere, bullshit [wikipedia.org].
Re:Dang! Things were just getting fun (Score:5, Informative)
You realize that nuclear power is the opposite of clean energy? It creates highly dangerous/toxic waste that's dangerous for thousands
Please stop spreading this dangerous misinformation. Do you even know how much waste you're talking about? Imagine a cylinder 10mm in diameter. A 5mm slice of that cylinder will supply your energy needs for a year. The rest of the world stores the byproducts safely on site, and there's no reason we can't do the same. Future reactor designs will burn the fuel more completely resulting in less (and safer) remaining waste.
Burning coal (the only practical alternative to nuclear) releases far more radiation into the atmosphere than nuclear power ever has or will. And don't even get me started on the mercury poisoning of lakes, etc.
Re:Dang! Things were just getting fun (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Dang! Things were just getting fun (Score:3, Informative)
Nuclear Fission is the energy of right now. Problem is too many DIPSHITS are in the way of plentiful cheap energy.
With a few small localized exceptions, there have been no laws preventing building nuclear plants. We stopped building nuclear power plants because they weren't cheap. Little to do with the dipshits (ok, some lawsuits); mainly to do with the bean-counters. Coal is just cheaper.
Now, maybe if we institute a carbon tax on fossil fuels and level the playing field, nuclear power might look more attractive. But then your kvetching should be aimed at those opposing said taxes, not greenies.
I'm an environmentalist who is not opposed to nuclear power, though I like some of the CANDU-derived systems better than fuel-rod systems.
Re:Dang! Things were just getting fun (Score:5, Informative)
Nuclear energy is not clean.
The main reason nuclear energy hasn't been clean is that the ones we have had up to now have by and large been optimized for one single primary concern: producing weapons-grade fissionable materials. Manufacturing energy has been a welcome by-product of that and the waste an accepted cost.
If we were to instead design nuclear plants optimized for green energy production we could make them almost arbitrarily clean. We would use efficient breeder reactors that burn up almost all their fuel, and we'd sequester any remaining waste for proper disposal rather than spew the radioactive waste into the air for all to enjoy like our coal plants are doing today.
Re:Dang! Things were just getting fun (Score:5, Informative)
The US has accumulated that much waste because it is illegal in the US to reprocess that waste into more uranium pellets. Other countries with active nuclear programs recycle their waste, drastically reducing the volume and half-life of the net waste output.
Re:Dang! Things were just getting fun (Score:2, Informative)
Plutonium: 19816 kg/m^3 http://www.economicexpert.com/a/Plutonium.htm [economicexpert.com]
Uranium: density = 19.05 grams per cubic centimetre = 19,050 kg/m^3 http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_is_the_Weight_of_1_cubic_meter_of_uranium [answers.com]
60000 tons / 19 tons per cubic meter = ~ 3158 cubic meters, or approximately 1 to 3 olympic swimming pools, depending on depth. http://hypertextbook.com/facts/2005/JeffreyGilbert.shtml [hypertextbook.com]
This nuclear waste stuff redefines the meaning of the term "heavy" in heavy waste.
Re:Dang! Things were just getting fun (Score:3, Informative)
(...) The biggest objection to breeder reactors is that they produce or "breed" fissionable material under normal operating conditions. Ideally in a breeder reactor this material would then be used as fuel to produce more energy and less highly-radioactive waste, but objectors like to note that it could be extracted and used in weapons instead.
This is only really a problem because we have married ourselves to uranium and plutonium based reactor designs, again as a consequence of wanting to build nukes. The civilian offshoots of this technology are quite unpleasant as you say earlier. Had we had purely commercial motives from the start we would have developed thorium breeder reactors at an early point to largely avoid the whole nuclear proliferation issue.
too little carbon dioxide will end complex life (Score:3, Informative)
Where does the CO2 go? It dissolves in the ocean and turns into carbonate rock where its pretty well locked up, unless a volcano burns it back into gas. Sea creature skeletons add to this process. 99.98% of Earth's carbon is currently locked in limestone. The rest is in the biosphere and petroleum deposits.
Fair simple global environmental engineering could reverse the process. Just burn limestone to release CO2. Thats how people make lime for cement. But do this on a gloabl scale.
P.S. The Medea Hypothesis is a pun on the Gaia Hypothesis. Porfessor Ward suggests ecology is not stable and friendly to life. But it goes bserk and causes mass extinctions now and then. Read the rest of his book.
Re:So we still have... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Dang! Things were just getting fun (Score:3, Informative)
That is the most ridiculous thing I've heard this week. Is your definition of a city 10x10 meters or something? Even so, with a city that small, you could just dig up all the polluted land and shove it in another barrel.
And why the hell would an "armored transport car" even a) transport nuclear waste and b) transport nuclear waste through a city!
And to top it off, if the American "documentaries" (with periodic action sequences, scary narrator and annoying background music) that I've accidentally been exposed to are any indicator, I'd say you're better off reading wikipedia [wikipedia.org] or something. Hell, I'll even copy paste a section for you:
So in the future, please refrain from opposing/supporting something just based on what you've seen on some television show. It's called the boob [wiktionary.org] tube for a reason and that reason is not because they have female breasts on it.