At the end of the suns lifespan

[I]

When it goes super nova and wipes out earth..what comes next? Will the earth just become a giant floating Dust rock?. Or will it restart it self?

[Panzer]

well it will most likely just be blown to bits. but humans will live, by the sun ends we will be shaking hands with yet another alien species

[I]

Or maybe Humans will all die out with the end of the sun..OR even before that by a Super virus..We are due for a few E.L.E's before the sun dies out.

[Ants!]

The sun won't explode, it's going to expand to a red giant and then eventually become a dwarf. The earth is predicted to still be around, though it will have become unlivable long before that happens.

[canadaguy]

Yeah the sun is not large enough to supernova when its life span ends.

[Typhon]

Actually most theorist predict the Earth and Mars will be engulfed by the Sun when it emerges as a red dwarf... so it will be vaporized... meaning no Earth, dirt, dust, or molecules left behind...


And I seriously doubt modern humans will remain unchanged in 10,000,000,000 years... whatever we will evolve into, I don't think it'd be considered Homo sapien...

red dwarf


Red giant---> white dwaf---> black dwarf...

[Mr. DNA]

And I seriously doubt modern humans will remain unchanged in 10,000,000,000 years... whatever we will evolve into, I don't think it'd be considered Homo sapien...


Some evolutionary biologists contend that as there is no longer any real selection pressure on humans these days, our species might not be destined to evolve any further. With all of our fancy culture and civilisation, any old degenerate can and will reproduce, and so there is no longer an "elite" group of genes being selected for survival into the futurte.

The fittest shall survive. The unfit may live.

[Typhon]

The fittest shall survive. The unfit may live.


Exactly, I'm envisioning some Jabba the Hutt looking humans in the year 10 billion...

[Mr. DNA]

Exactly, I'm envisioning some Jabba the Hutt looking humans in the year 10 billion...

Quite, but what I was saying is that some authorities reckon that humans will not evolve in any appreciable manner from now on, because there are no longer humans dying out due to their possessing unfavourable traits. Any old diseased reprobate can and will spawn children, at the same rate as anybody else. So no Jabbe the Hutt descendants, unfortunately.

Of course, I'm sort of pulling this out of my arse, having heard the biologist Steve Jones (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Jones_(biologist)) talking about it on TV a few years ago.

The_Mess... what's the score?

[Typhon]

Quite, but what I was saying is that some authorities reckon that humans will not evolve in any appreciable manner from now on, because there are no longer humans dying out due to their possessing unfavourable traits. Any old diseased reprobate can and will spawn children, at the same rate as anybody else. So no Jabbe the Hutt descendants, unfortunately.

Of course, I'm sort of pulling this out of my arse, having heard the biologist Steve Jones (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Jones_(biologist)) talking about it on TV a few years ago.

The_Mess... what's the score?


No, I understand what your position is... I'm on that train actually, but I do like to imagine another leap in human evolution... I just think by either extinction or evolution, humans will no longer exist in our current form... I mean, modern humans can't exist forever!

[Mr. DNA]

No, I understand what your position is... I'm on that train actually, but I do like to imagine another leap in human evolution... I just think by either extinction or evolution, humans will no longer exist in our current form... I mean, modern humans can't exist forever!

We certainly won't exist for too much longer if our exponential population growth isn't dealt with, and we allow nut-case Islamic regimes like Iran to produce nuclear weapons. As a Star Trek geek, I'd like to imagine that our species will reach for the stars and inhabit strange, new worlds and meet exotic alien species... but I think it's likely that we'll just end up ****ing things up here on Earth and die out within the next few centuries. The Astronomer Royal, Martin Rees (http://www.ast.cam.ac.uk/IoA/staff/mjr/rees_portrait.jpg) (just look at that quiff- dude knows what he's talking about), thinks that we have a 50/50 chance of making it until the end of the century. I'd put our odds of surviving a little higher than that, but for me, the future looks grim.

[Typhon]

I suppose we may be doomed to self destruction... pffffff... stupid human nature...

[Ants!]

People have always been trying to find reasons to say that the end of the world is near, but it hasn't happened yet. Your overestimating our violent ways and underestimating our will to save ourselves. We're far more likely to go extinct through natural or stellar calamities than through our own hands.

[Typhon]

Well, this planet has always been ruled by a few privileged dimwits... but just within the last half century as worldly destruction been at the push of a button... I'm not going to underestimate the power of the idiocy of our world rulers...

[SegaDragon]

Well, on a simpler note, how I was taught it - if the sun goes out, the earth will go cold and the galaxy solar system (my bad) will freeze over. We'll just be ice planets. No life anywhere... unless it can live without heat.

[Typhon]

Well, on a simpler note, how I was taught it - if the sun goes out, the earth will go cold and the galaxy will freeze over.


Mmm... no, the galaxy won't be affected in any manner by our Sun dying out... our solar system will come to its end however... but as I explained, the Earth will more than likely be consumed in the inferno of the red giant our Sun will become...

[canadaguy]

Mmm... no, the galaxy won't be affected in any manner by our Sun dying out... our solar system will come to its end however... but as I explained, the Earth will more than likely be consumed in the inferno of the red giant our Sun will become...


And I would imagine it would be business as usual for the gas giants anyways

[Dark Sage]

Wouldn't the remaining planets just fling away from the lack of a gravitational force? Also, from what I read it's going to consume up to Venus and perhaps Earth, and Mars will be about venus' distance from the Sun.

[Typhon]

It depends on who's theory about planetary trajectory you follow... some say the remaining planets will degrade into the void of space, some say the plants will orbit the white/neuron dwarf in an irregular manner that's somewhat of a predictable orbit...

I don't know... I can't say how the effects of the Sun expanding and contracting will affect the gravitational pull on the remaining planets...

[Ants!]

Wouldn't the remaining planets just fling away from the lack of a gravitational force? Also, from what I read it's going to consume up to Venus and perhaps Earth, and Mars will be about venus' distance from the Sun.
I don't think the suns gravity will become less until it becomes a dwarf. It's a main sequence star.

[canadaguy]

The gravity will pretty much remain the same, until the sun loses an appreciable amount of mass. When it expands to a red giant, it is still composed of pretty much the same mass (I believe), so anything outside its radius is going to continue orbiting as if nothing has happened.


I am unsure whether there is some type of mass ejection during the transformation from red giant to white dwarf, so I can't say for sure what will happen in that case.

[soulcalibur2007]

A white dwarf has about the same mass as the star that it was. Its just a LOT more dense. The remaining planets would still orbit the dwarf.

[Migraine.]

We could survive, we could not.

If it were not the comet/volcanoes/earthquake (whatever you choose to believe), Dinosaurs would still likely be the most dominant species on Earth. Just because we lead now, doesn't mean we lead forever. The Earth will die in the supernova approx. 5 1/2 billion years from now, but the dominant species at that time will most likely escape Earth.

[Typhon]

The Earth will die in the supernova approx. 5 1/2 billion years from now


I think you missed the earlier posts... the Sun will not supernova...

[WTF d00ds?]

We certainly won't exist for too much longer if our exponential population growth isn't dealt with, and we allow nut-case Islamic regimes like Iran to produce nuclear weapons. As a Star Trek geek, I'd like to imagine that our species will reach for the stars and inhabit strange, new worlds and meet exotic alien species... but I think it's likely that we'll just end up ****ing things up here on Earth and die out within the next few centuries. The Astronomer Royal, Martin Rees (just look at that quiff- dude knows what he's talking about), thinks that we have a 50/50 chance of making it until the end of the century. I'd put our odds of surviving a little higher than that, but for me, the future looks grim.

I hope you realize that if we meet any that resemble us close enough, some horny weirdo is going to try to bang the females, if they have any.

[BlueMinx]

Hey, I remember hearing somewhere way back about men becoming obsolete in the future, or something? I think they said that with the dropping fertility in men and that baby they made in china from two women's eggs had something to do with that 'prediction', or theory or whatever......pretty wild thought though...:omg:


By the way....

Did anybody catch that episode of 'The Universe' on the History Channel about different ways the universe could end. The theories involved everything from a reverse-big-bang explosion, to a massive loss of heat and gravitational forces from out-of-control expansion, and simply a look at how things might look if all the stars died down to black dwarfs(which given trillions of years, and the formation of no new stars is a possibility) leaving the universe looking like a bunch of spread out galaxies that amount to no more than burnt-out lightbulbs in the dark expanse of nothingness.

Man, I love those Universe specials on the science and history channels...the visual effects are so......cool.

~sigh~:love:
I just love cosmology, don't you??

....though it kinda makes you wonder when that next asteriod/meteor'll hit:paranoid: