Greg Laughlin, a leading scientist of the doomsday, the real doomsday, as predicted by physics
and not apocalyptic New Agers, suggests we should begin packing our bags to
leave for Mars, in, say, about a billion years, after we survive a number of
ice ages and at least 10 meteors of the End Cretaceous Extinction Event size
(the one that did-in the dinosaurs). This would be necessary, since our sun
would be 10% more energetic, and “the oceans will boil away and the atmosphere
will dry out as water vapor leaks into space, and temperatures will soar past
700 degrees Fahrenheit, all of which will transform our planet into a Venusian
hell-scape choked with thick clouds of sulfur and carbon dioxide.” Pleasant, eh?
But, by that time, Mars will be a balmy place just waiting for our
inhabitation, particularly if a few adventuresome of us arrive there ahead of
time, and get the atmosphere jump-started with a heady mix of perfluorocarbons
and other greenhouse gases. After the sun gets too hot and big as a Red Giant
and fries Mars after another 4.5 billion years, we can head on over to Jupiter’s
moon Europa, and then to Saturn’s moon Titan for the next 130 million years,
just enough time to get the matter-antimatter-annihilation powered spaceship
ready for the voyage to Proxima Centauri.
‘Cause
that’s the likely place we’d be headed. It’s a red dwarf star, only 4.2 light
years away from us, and more stable than our sun. If not Proxima Centauri, then
some other red dwarf, because they’re the most common stars, and have been
found to have probable inhabitable planets. We can live for trillions of years
near these red dwarf stars. Alas, the red dwarfs will die out, and then we can
start using the energy from brown dwarfs, possibly by creating our own stars.
For another 10 billion billion years.
Sadly,
the last days of humanity in this universe will come at that point. It could be
that the anti-gravity of dark energy will push all remaining resources too far
away for humans to see or reach – the
Big Chill. Then there’s the Big Rip, where dark energy really gets going and
starts yanking the contents of the universe to pieces, all the way down to ripping
atoms apart. But, some enterprising humans might have found a wormhole to
another universe to escape through. Anything’s possible.
article: link
other: article on the big crunch, the big chill and the big rip.
This article is awesome. I must say, as far fetched at the whole thing sounds, I'm pleasantly surprised that someone finally has a plan. Every other article just explains how terrible it is that the world is coming to an end this year and we should all fear for our lives. Really, we should all just start building space crafts if we're really so concerned about the state of our planet. I mean, it's not like any other planet's inhabitants are currently scheming their apocalypse. It just goes to show how much of our media and personal enjoyment comes from the thrill in the potential of an event, and differing opinions about such an event or cause, but there is little attention to the cause itself, only the commotion it creates.
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