SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
Earth has been hit by objects in the past, with devastating effects. Scientists largely agree that it was an asteroid or comet impact that started the chain of events that wiped out the dinosaurs around 60 million years ago.
[...] impacts from objects in space are just one of several ways that humanity and most of life on Earth could suddenly disappear.
We are already observing that extinctions are happening now at an unprecedented rate. In 2014 it was estimated that the extinction rate is now 1,000 times greater than before humans were on the Earth. The estimated number of extinctions ranges from 200 to 2,000 species per year.
From all of this very worrying data, it would not be a stretch to say that we are currently within a doomsday scenario. Of course, the “day” is longer than 24 hours but may be instead in the order of a century or two.
So what can we do about this potential prospect of impending doom?
[...] But the threats we face are so unpredictable that we need to have a backup plan. We need to plan for the time after our doomsday and think about how a post-apocalyptic Earth may recover and humanity will flourish again.
As computer experts, you are familiar with backup plans. What should we do to backup human survival ?
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Wednesday June 14 2017, @03:27AM (8 children)
No it won't: The Earth is doomed. In about 5 billion years, the sun going into its red giant phase will utterly destroy it, assuming nothing else has wrecked it by that point.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Wednesday June 14 2017, @03:51AM
By then it's likely someone figured out how to move a planet using gravity traction (Asteroid + EMdrive + nuclear reactor?).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 14 2017, @06:27AM (1 child)
Whew. For a moment, I thought you said 5 -million-. [google.com]
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by JNCF on Wednesday June 14 2017, @03:08PM
Yeah, the octopuses have plenty of time to nuke each other to death before the sun devours them. They might even get to nuke each other on Mars!
(Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday June 14 2017, @01:27PM (4 children)
Aren't we out of the habitable zone in less than a billion? There were boring colonies before 500M years ago but "serious complex multicellular" is only 500M years old so we're about 1/3 of the way thru the party. Roughly 100% of species including ours will be extinct in a billion years unless something interesting happens so worrying about a few here and there now isn't a big deal.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Wednesday June 14 2017, @02:05PM (3 children)
We might be out of the habitable zone, but I'm talking about the survival of the rock itself, not the life forms on it. The rock is doomed. As is the entire universe, actually.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 14 2017, @03:03PM (1 child)
No, from current observations, the universe doesn't seem doomed. Rather it seems it will expand forever. Sure, it will be a boring universe, with even the atoms ripped apart, but the universe as such will still exist.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 14 2017, @06:26PM
You're referring to what is commonly called The heat death of the universe. [google.com]
Another hypothesis, which has fallen out of favor (they aren't finding enough cosmic mass to fuel the coalescing), is called The Big Crunch, with an outward-then-inward endlessly repeating tide even postulated by some.
Neither ends up with something that would be recognizable as "Our Universe".
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 1) by toddestan on Saturday June 17 2017, @02:00AM
We could save the rock and keep the Earth within the habitable with a level of technology not much more advanced than we already have now. We just need to direct asteroids on flybys near the Earth to slowly and gently nudge the Earth's orbit away from the Sun. Yes, an asteroid flyby will only impart a tiny amount of energy on the Earth, but we have hundreds of millions of years to do. Besides, a sudden large change in orbit would be disruptive so it's better to do many, many practically unnoticeable changes. So with millions of asteroid flybys later the Earth could be habitable until the Sun goes into its red giant stage which will still roast the planet. But if we get it far enough away the burnt hulk of a planet will survive the Sun's death and will continue to orbit its solar remnants for a very, very long time.