We all know the story:

The Sun is about 4.5 billion years old. it has used up about half of its nuclear fuel (hydrogen). In about 5 billion years from now, the sun will begin to die.

As the Sun grows old, it will expand. As the core runs out of hydrogen and then helium, the core will contact and the outer layers will expand, cool, and become less bright. It will become a red giant star

I realize "WE" don't have to worry about it, but it seems to be a pretty large and important problem for the future of mankind. Why not start working on a solution now, afterall a problem of this magnitude could very well take 5 billion years to find a solution.

anyone?

We are talking about a five billion year time frame. First, more immediate concerns (that are within our grasp of dealing with) such as aggression by our fellow man, ecological damage, securing resources for the future, and asteroid impacts need to take precedence. Second we have nothing even close to the ability to deal with this.

If this is something that concerns you (which is somewhat noble, considering that humanity will either be gone or unrecognizable in five billion years) is to encourage the development of science and technology, as well as act to preserve the civilizations and liberties that make progress possible. The kind of technological need you are talking about are extreme, but five billion years of exponential technological advancement could accomplish much.

Thats the same thing Jesus said about digital music....didn't stop Apple from eventually making the Ipod now did it? And it didn't take 5 Billion years...

I'm kidding of course but you get the point, we have come so far in such a short period of time...I see no reason we can't take care of this problem with plenty of time to spare...

The task (if possible at all) is way beyond what we're currently capable of. To begin focusing on it would be a waste of time, money and other resources; there are problems which face us today which require our attention.

Do you understand how large one billion is?

i want to know who performed the carbon nine test on the sun and gathered the evidence to prove what it is consuming for natural resources.

5 billion years is a very very very long time most likely people will have died off long before then and i mean long long long before then

We could hang a giant curtain in space to shade us from all those helium fused elements while the sun is expanding into a red giant.

5 billion years of sewing will make a wholesome and grand curtain indeed .

Yes! Let's make it a crazy quilt! With some fancy crochet borders -some radiation has to get through, right? Quite a few UM members know how to crochet. I say, let's start now!

I wonder if there is a way to keep heating our planet by using our own planets core....or perhaps we could dig deep into the earth near the core, keep warm that way....

You're jumping the gun there a bit, skippy!

Is that a joke? Mankind might not even be around in the next hundred years.

If we're around in 5 billion years I certainly hope we'll have advanced technology. Such advanced technology will hold the key to the solution.

What's the solution you ask? Move. Yep, just pick up and move.

uh doesnt the planet need Light, Sunlight? ya know in order for trees, grass, and ppl to grow? honestly I dont think we gotta worry bout keeping the planet warm...Id have to say thats notta problem.

Do you not understand we and everything on the planet would freeze to death? clearly you don't.

freeze to death? No sir. To Moe's understanding, a dying sun is very much different than a dying camp fire. A red giant will swell and expand, then devour us, burning at 30X than its current state. Toward the end of the red giant phase the sun will grow more than 1,000 times brighter.

Source

That is what my son keeps telling me ..now I can say his info is correct!

Cause crazy moe says so.

Crazy? Now name calling isn't very nice Primeval is it? Nor is it permitted. Moe kindly provided his source Universe Today in which the article also provided its source, Astrobiology Magazine

Please read the source of "crazy Moe's info" before dismissing it so. Upon brushing up on your science, you may also discover that the earth is not flat, and that Alfred the Great is no longer the king of England.

OK..change of plan then...so the problem will be how to survive the giant red giant which engulfs the earth and basically burns us all to death....I dont really see any other option than jumping ship and heading towards...well....not really anywhere else to go huh....oh well mankind is screwed...lets party...

Lilly thinks that Moe is anything but crazy. Moe's information was completely valid.

I still think the easiest option will be to pick up and move...gonna be one heck of a move though!

there's that question that runs into my mind... can human kind exist up to 5billion years, it seems that we are enjoying to destroy ouselves now. aint it?

There is a simpler solution, just keep knocking the earth into an orbit far enough out of the path of the expanding giant for it not to be consumed.

I think there is another problem which will effectively fry us long before the sun runs out of fuel and thats the earths core cools down enough to cause the van allen belt to collapse..... how do we dodge that bullet ?

oh my gosh! i totally forgot that the core is now cooling down since the creation of the earth. with the core cooled down the magnetic field that protects us will be gone.

the sun just dieing out isn't the problem the problem is the sun will start to expand grow to a big red sun then BAM!!! are solar system becomes nothing but dust and not even that since theres a chance a black hole will be made. Any ways you're jumping the gun the suns going to be my great great great great great great great great great great great great grane kids problem.

planets won't turn into dust. they would just fry up and burned to it's mantle. hahaha. yeah. that's not my problem now. it's my great x 20 kids problem.

No where else to go? Just look up!

If we live 5 billion years (not putting any money on that one) then I think we'll already be somewhere else long before then.


Gonna need quite a few U-Hauls....


This thread reminds me of the saying "Ignorance is bliss."

sorry bout that i'm not that worried though because i'm long dead when the core will cool down and the sun expanding and killing us all.

heh, no reason to appoligize

it's very interesting...

something tells me we'll save the core and the sun the trouble of killing us off.

like the movie " The Core " ? if thats the case then countries should develop the metal used in the movie.

ok, if we are alive by then, then I agree with Lilly, the best solution is to leave the planet and find another planet. The core is also a problem but I think that by the time the core has cooled of, I think we will have sufficient technology to create somehow with the use of machines an artificial magnetic field to protect the Earth from the solar radiation.

But with the sun problem, we can't manipiulate the sun to leave longer, no matter what technoogy level we have, it just has to die, maybe in 5 billion years we will have enough technology to change the Earth's orbital path and create somehow with the help of machines an artificial star and sostein it. I truly can't think of another solution........ ahh yes, we could move to Pluto, BUT the dwarf planet or planetoid or whatever they call it is just to small to sostein the human civilisation and by the time we would mange to build a civilisation there, the sun would have already shrunk to a dwarf star making Pluto a true ice land. What could we do then? Well then we could go back to the inner solar system, to little Mercury, but it presents the same problem as Pluto, it is just too small to sostein the 5 billions years older human civilisation wich in that time, if it is still there, will be huge.

So back to the planets core, we could also , somehow and againg with the use of machines revive and reheat the planets core. This can be easily done with a huge atomic bomb wich will leave a huge heat wave trapped in the Earth's inner core. If not, I suggest the artificial magnetic field saving Earth from becoming a crisp......

But againg I suggest that the best solution, as Lilly said is leaving the planet.......

like i said earlier, how can the humanrace survive? look into the present environment does it look healthy? we are killing the planet at a fast pace. and we are speeding up the global warming.

That movie had the most ridiculous lack of science knowledge in recent memory. It sucked precisely because it was so ridiculous. They bank on the fact that people are generally stupid.

Most people really don't know how long 5 million years is in human terms. If you take one accepted definition of a generation of 22 years, then it will be your great X 227, 272 grandkids. Not nearly enough greats in your example. That's more generations than we've been in existence.

Many scientists believe human beings will be extinct by then.

Well with that attitude you can almost guarantee it...

I was reading where scientist are trying to ignite Saturn to make a "mini-sun", perhaps they plan on moving mankind to one of saturns moons in the near future...

I'm sorry but I do have to ask... How exactly do you see mankind "fixing" the sun? Do you envision a long needle made of a new type of metal that can with stand the sun's masive heat and just inject it with hydrogen and helium? Seriously now... do you realize what you're saying? World peace is more likely than "fixing" the sun. That in itself could take 5 billion years. Although, mankind probably will have been extinct for billions of years already so it's really a non-issue, right?

Let me ask you... do you get along with your neighbors and everyone you are in contact with on a daily basis? Maybe you should be trying to find a solution to that problem rather than worrying about how to fix the sun that will be dying in the next 5 billion years.

If after 5 billions years we haven't attained the status of a Type III civilization then we don't deserve to survive.

5 billion years...let me just pencil that into my schedule. Ok, done. When I'm 4.8 billion years old I'll start to panic. Till then who gives a stuff?

In the movie " The Core" they didnt have the same problem, in that movie the core of the earth stopped rotating for simply no reason, wich is insane because the is actually no reason for the core of the earth to stop rotating. But oh well..... it is just another one of those holywood movies, wich make no sense......... just look at star wars.... there is no fricken sound in space! but no, the explosions make sounds, the lasers too....... it is a total baluna.

Don't tell the govt. They will come up with an 'anti-sun-burn-out' tax and start making us pay for the research now.

im still waiting did a satelite with super heat shields gather the info.

It's hard for me to imagine this thread not being a joke. More pressing concerns in a broad galactic and planetary time frame would be the arrival of the Crab Nebula, Andromeda colliding with The Milky Way forming an elliptical galaxy, or the Moon escaping orbit and rendering Earth too wobbly to sustain life.

I predict a new thread suggesting a lunar lasso.

the sun dieing is natrual. we should except it. i mean who are we to meadal with the natrual order. ..scratch that we're normally first in line, so we'll probably do something about it

By that logic we shouldn't give medicine to people who are ill.

It's not really about attitude. It's about physics. It's about evolution. It's about nature. It's about time. You can almost guarantee it.

Neither Saturn nor Jupiter (in the movie 2010) have sufficient mass to ignite. You're reading science fiction. The operative word being fiction = not true. It's fun to imagine. I'm a sci-fi nut. But reality - not.

well yes. it's sci-fi stuff. but during in the early days. they also thought that making it to the moon was also sci-fi. having a plane was also sci-fi.

Uh oh, I think the Sun in about a billion years is going to start getting hotter--its a gradual heating-up phase leading to its final blow-up. That's still a while off...if you had a million $ and you spent $1000 a day it would take 3 years to spend it. But if you had a billion $ and did the same, it would take 3 thousand years to deplete your bank account.

Moving to another planet doesnt seem impossible, maybe 60yrs ago ppl would say that is a crazy impossible idea but really how close is it for mankind to dwell in space? probably not that far off in the near future.so Id have to agree with you guys on the moving bit..

Methinks someone is rather toying with us here, but... stars are supposed to die. Their deaths send shock waves that ignite new generations and stardeath also enables the existance of heavier elements which we need. We'll be able to move along with plenty of time to spare, I suspect.

It doesnt really matter to us. In 5 billion years humanity will either have become extinct, or evolved to have the technology to travel elsewhere.