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Comments: 756 +- News: Earth's Period of Habitability Is Nearly Over on Tuesday August 11 2009, @04:38AM
Posted
by
kdawson
on Tuesday August 11 2009, @04:38AM
from the nice-while-it-lasts dept.
from the nice-while-it-lasts dept.
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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."
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Dang! Things were just getting fun (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Dang! Things were just getting fun (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Dang! Things were just getting fun (Score:5, Funny)
*Not the sound of the atmosphere evaporating.
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Re:Dang! Things were just getting fun (Score:5, Insightful)
You may be a troll and have hopeless grammar, but nevertheless as a "hippy treehugger" myself, I absolutely agree with you. Being a greenie and being OPPOSED to nuclear energy has always struck me as complete madness.
Save the planet, use clean nuclear energy!
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Re:Dang! Things were just getting fun (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm in the same mindset as you.
Up here in Canada, the Green Party used to have a wiki for their policy that intended to foster debate. On one of their pages, they decried fission. I posted a comment (not an edit, a comment), asking, basically that if the looming problem is global warming, and the waste products of nuclear fission are manageable, how is replacing coal plants with nuclear plants a bad thing. My comment was deleted.
Kinda stunning.
There are elements of the Green movement that are irrational, all you have to say is "we must/mustn't do X because it's good/bad for the environment", I consider myself a Green, and I find this behaviour abhorrent. While GP paints with too broad a stroke, imo, the colour is just right.
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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].
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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.
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Re:Dang! Things were just getting fun (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Do *you* even know how much waste *you* are talking about? The US alone has accumulated over 60,000 metric tons of nuclear waste from fission reactors. Your figure of a 5mm by 10mm cylinder per year of waste is ridiculous.
Yes, of course coal releases more radioactive material into the atmosphere. Since we have to store the nuclear waste, *none* of it ends up in the atmosphere.
Now I'm not saying coal is good, or that nuclear isn't necessarily worth it...but if you want to advocate nuclear power, then stop damaging its credibility with arguments like these.
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Re:Dang! Things were just getting fun (Score:5, Interesting)
As for waste, a large coal power plant (under full load) requires about 10,000 tons of coal per day. This doesn't include the energy needed to transport the coal to the plant (via a big ass train).
And that nuclear "waste" that we've got 60,000 metric tons of? Were it legal to actually build breeder reactors, we could use it to generate more power, and be left with hardly any radioactive waste in the end.
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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.
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Re:Dang! Things were just getting fun (Score:5, Informative)
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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.
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Re:Dang! Things were just getting fun (Score:5, Funny)
It should be made of gilded marble and be large enough to be seen from space. You're welcome.
Ok, we did that, but it melted and crumbled under the blazing heat. We live underground now. - The Future People.
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Re:Dang! Things were just getting fun (Score:4, Funny)
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Re:Dang! Things were just getting fun (Score:5, Funny)
Yep, me too. So long, and thanks for all the fish ...
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Re:Dang! Things were just getting fun (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm out of here!
Yes, long before the earthe becomes uninhabitable. I'll likley be gone before you; my life is more than half over. Half a billion years is a damned long time. Humans will be extinct long before that, evolved to become some other species. Only sixty fife million years ago the birds were dinasaurs and we were small mouselike creatures.
By the time the earth is uninhabitable, we will have terraformed Mars and Europa.
I find the speculation that "Sun may not be the ideal kind of star to nurture life, and that the Earth may not be the ideal size" ludicrous. Life is here and we've yet to find any sign of it anywhere else. It doesn't have to be "ideal", obviously it's good enough.
By the time this happens we will have reached the other stars. So you can stop worrying about it.
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Re:Dang! Things were just getting fun (Score:5, Insightful)
Humans will be extinct long before that, evolved to become some other species.
Why do you say that? Species tend to evolve because the new form offers advantages/adaptions that enable them to better survive in the current environment. In the absence of this pressure there isn't much incentive to evolve. Sharks and crocodiles are two examples that come to mind -- they haven't changed much in the last hundred million years or so. You could go back to the time of the dinosaurs and they would still be recognizable.
What pressure does homo sapiens to evolve, given that our technological abilities largely shield us from the pressures of our environment?
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Re:Dang! Things were just getting fun (Score:5, Funny)
What pressure does homo sapiens to evolve, given that our technological abilities largely shield us from the pressures of our environment?
Our technology itself. Hopefully. If we haven't figured out cybernetic immortality in a half a billion years, I'll be... well, dead, but disappointed.
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Re:Dang! Things were just getting fun (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Dang! Things were just getting fun (Score:5, Funny)
That will all change after she goes through puberty.
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Re:Dang! Things were just getting fun (Score:5, Insightful)
* 2100 - humans loose ability to read/write
Mod +5 Ironic
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Re:Dang! Things were just getting fun (Score:5, Funny)
What else is there to figure out?
How to make unicode work on slashdot...
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So we still have... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:So we still have... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:So we still have... (Score:4, Insightful)
If we don't try, it won't just happen.
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Re:So we still have... (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:So we still have... (Score:4, Funny)
I'm sure we'll develop something that can shift us around the universe - even if it's just building a generation-ship, but will it be big enough to take *everyone*?
Then it should be a lot bigger than the previous one.
According to ancient sources, it only had space for one family and one pair of each animal species (or seven pairs for clean beasts and fowl)
See Genesis 7...
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Re:So we still have... (Score:5, Insightful)
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This might be what Earth needs. (Score:5, Funny)
Just think--an end to war, violence, depravity, poverty, oppression. Everyone will TRULY become equal then. Who knew the sun could be so... so... progressive?
Linux on the desktop (Score:5, Funny)
So Linux on the desktop will really never happen! Pity.
Repent sinners for the end is nigh (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Repent sinners for the end is nigh (Score:5, Funny)
For a second, I thought you'd made that name up, then I RTFA. His name really is Manfred Cuntz.
Man Bear Pig, I give you, Man Fred Cuntz.
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Sci-Am May 2009 (Score:5, Informative)
Ideally... (Score:5, Insightful)
Homo sapiens may not be the ideal kind of advanced life form either. Otherwise it wouldn't destroy its own habitat on a global scale, nor cause avoidable mass extinction of other species. The good news? We don't really need to start worrying about the sun quitting on us. We'll be long gone before that, and I don't mean on another planet. I mean gone in a dinosaurial kind of way...
Re:Ideally... (Score:5, Insightful)
I mean gone in a dinosaurial kind of way
We'll evolve into birds?
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Re:Ideally... (Score:5, Insightful)
Not everyone has the same balance of these desires, and hence not everyone is as concerned about protecting the environment as they are about having shiny toys. They may like the taste of fishes a bit more than seeing them swim. This leads to some inevitable conflict, and the large debates, and a lot of hair pulling from the people who have strong opinions (probably because of strong desires) on each side who find it unbelievable that everyone doesn't prioritise things in the same way they do.
The attitude that we have some 'higher purpose' or that everything else is somehow more sacred than us is a strange to me. It's like people feel guilty about their own existence. I think that is has some of the same overtones of religion - that you are imperfect, you are inferior, you are sinful and therefore you should feel bad, and worship this, and promise not to do this list of things, promise to do this other list of things. The original sin becomes the carbon footprint. The objects of worship are trees and rocks and animals. You should forgo warmth and meat and convenience because they are an affront to your belief. And if you really get upset you should forget all respect for your fellow men and go and cause destruction in the name of your beliefs. Like all religions there are great benefits for many involved. And there is also the way it is used to control people, and to justify actions against fellow human beings, and often against everything you claim to stand for. The attitude of 'humans are the nastiest bunch of bastards on the planet, we should hate ourselves' is the first step of the crazy thinking towards things starting to get blown up (and peoples grandparents being exhumed). Destroy the infidel, for he does not share our beliefs as we are told to believe them.
Back to the original point though - humans are just one more example of life. Another species. Another part of the universe. We are not here for some higher purpose. We exist, like all life, simply to exist. That we are conscious of this, that we can analyse it in this way makes us one the most fascinating creatures on the planet. But we are what we are, and if we fuck it up and destroy ourselves, we will know who to blame. It would be a great shame, but you're not going to get me to start hating myself because I accept my own and others fallibility. We may be able to achieve much more, but we may not. What will be will be, so live your life because you can, simply live, that is all.
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On a serious note (Score:5, Insightful)
If true, our existence is quite incredible. Life on earth is thought to have taken between 2 and 3 billion years to evolve to the current biosphere extant today. Obviously, that means it took the process of evolution all this time to design creatures as complex as humans, as well as the other sophisticated life on this planet.
More than likely, humans will develop technology that will allow humans (or more likely, human creations) to spread beyond this star to the broader universe beyond. Yet, had evolution been a mere billion years too slow, or had random accidents meant that intelligent life was never evolved, then this would have never happened.
Rubbish, of course it is. (Score:5, Insightful)
Since life evolved to suit the conditions, this statement is silly. The Sun and the Earth are perfect for life as it is found in the Sun/Earth system.
Possible answer to the Fermi paradox (Score:5, Interesting)
From TFA:
Maybe nobody has visited us because, from interstellar distances, Earth doesn't look like a place that could harbour life?
Would it help if I drove a Prius? (Score:5, Funny)
Joke (Score:5, Funny)
World Ends Tomorrow: Women, Minorities Hardest Hit (old journalism joke)
Re:Depending on who you believe (Score:5, Funny)
I expect this basement to stay nice and cool (read: inhabitable) so long as my parents keep paying the rent.
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Re:Depending on who you believe (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Depending on who you believe (Score:5, Funny)
If I was God here's how I'd do things
The Bible would have performance targets - e.g. colonise the moon and so on. Once those were achieved I'd just change them retroactively so humans thought they had to do say the moon and mars. Basically every time anyone picked the book up it would tell them that God thinks that as a species we're a day late and a dollar short and he's sick of it. I'd also explain that the dinosaurs didn't meet their targets either and even humans should be able to deduce the consequences of that.
Oh and by the way, FORE!
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Re:Sooner than that... (Score:5, Insightful)
According to christian doomsday lore, several things which need to happen have not, including the mark of the beast, the universal persecution of the christian faith, the single currency system... the anti-christ...
And even then, the rapture is supposed to occur seven years before the destruction of this world... basically under christian theology, the rapture happens, then seven years of absolute devestation occurs.
Where in the world did you get the idea that the Christian faith even hints at something near 2012?
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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.
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Re:Sooner than that... (Score:5, Interesting)
Religon making sense, doesn't that destroy the need for faith?
Not necessarily. An airplane's principle of flight makes sense (air pressure difference provides lift), but you still need to have faith that it your specific plane will be fine and that the pilot is good. It also doesn't prevent people from not putting their faith in airplanes, regardless of them being an incredibly safe form of travel.
I'd liken religious faith to quantum mechanics. Quantum makes sense, but not according to our normal methods of understanding. It has different rules very different from classical mechanics (secular worldviews), but taken as a whole is consistent.
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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?
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Re:Shield against cosmic rays ?? (Score:5, Informative)
Cosmic Rays are high energy particles, not electromagnetic radiation. They're mostly protons.
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HALF A BILLION YEARS (Score:5, Insightful)
They aren't saying we've "only" got 500,000 years they are saying that we've only got 500,000,000 years. Given that mankind in its present form have only been around for 100-50,000 years and that we've only had civilisations for around 10,000 years then even 500,000 years is a mind bogglingly staggering amount of time.
Sure we could do propulsion systems, space drives, kill ourselves directly, die from a meteor strike or new virus. What these people are saying is that in 500,000,000 years or more that the earth as it currently stands won't be a great place to live. This doesn't mean panic. It doesn't mean say "who are they to say we aren't going to have technology to fix this problem" its a piece of science that helps us understand more about our planet and solar system and the potential for life elsewhere in the universe.
Half a billion years ago was the Cambrian explosion when life really got going on this planet. So the odds on humans existing in our present form is pretty much zero given the amount of evolution that has happened in the previous 500 million years.
Clever technology is one thing, but half a billion years is another. Evolution works wonders on those sorts of timescales.
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