Does it matter when the world ends?

[StrangerInAStrangeLand]

If we could & do find that 2 planets in this galaxy with billions of "people" collided, would the loss mean anything to us?
Would it mean any more or any less if they were advanced civilizations or primitive? Would it matter whether it happened yesterday or a billion years ago? (For this, let's forget we can't see yesterday very far away.)

 

[Fraggle Rocker]

If we could & do find that 2 planets in this galaxy with billions of "people" collided, would the loss mean anything to us?

It certainly would, although I admit quite a few people wouldn't understand why. Diversity is a resource within our own species. Civilization is enhanced immensely by our ability to compare our philosophies, legends, arts, social structures, languages... our entire worldview, with those of other peoples. Imagine what we could learn from "people" with a silicon-based biochemistry who had to learn to make tools out of different materials than ours, who subsist on other kinds of nutrition, who reproduce differently, organize into a totally different kind of socieity, and have entirely unrecognizable ways of educating and entertaining each other.

Would it mean any more or any less if they were advanced civilizations or primitive?

Both types have their attractions. A species in a primitive state would probably have more diversity so there'd be a huge catalog of languages, legends, artistic motifs, etc. We'd also get a first-had glimpse into the way (at least one way) primitive societies function. An advanced species would of course have more advanced technology and if their environment isn't very similar to ours it might be based on quite different materials and energy science. Our own sciences might get a real boost from people who can see a different spectrum, feel microwaves and hear gravity. Or whose metabolism is several orders of magnitude slower or faster.

Scientist and sci-fi writer Robert L. Forward hypothesized a people who lived on a neutron star so everything in their lives was tiny and fast and they could feel magnetism. They evolved from the stone age to rocketry in one human lifetime. When our radio waves reached them they looked like puffs of smoke signals from their perspective, so they sent some back. Our scientists were baffled when they noticed that the amplitude and frequency were right but each wave looked like it was crafted by hand instead of being a regular repeating pattern.

Would it matter whether it happened yesterday or a billion years ago?

If it happened yesterday we might find some artifacts floating around nearby. If it happened a billion years ago they'll be harder to track down.

Remember the story about the aliens who intercepted one of our deep-space probes that was jammed full of samples of human culture including photos, science, math, art... and music? One day we received a one-line message from them: "Please send more Chuck Berry."

 

[swarm]

Culture is the only possible interstellar export.

 

[nietzschefan]

Suppose Earth will be destroyed sometime within 1000 years.
Does it matter whether it's 1000 years or 500 years from now or 200 or 100 years or 50 years, 5 years or 3 months or whatever?
Not only does it matter to you personally but does it matter overall?
Does it matter whether science continues to advance and/or whether life becomes better 1st or whether there's a collapse of civilization 1st?
Does it matter whether Earth is destroyed accidently by humans, intentionally by humans, by aliens, by something natural we could've prevented or by something natural we couldn't prevent?
1111

They are good questions. I believe they are questions answered only by the Great Conspiracy of Life. Life Vs Death. A species, a society, which can acknowledges it's own possible, nay, PROBABLE demise can become fearlessly motivated to the Great Conspiracy of Life.

Imagine the truth of a coldly aberrant, dead, universe. Give it even the most generous amount of sentient or even barely sentient forms of life - moving deterministic in even the most smallest way. What does a colliding asteroid, a local supernova, an unforeseen(or even forseen) completely extincting, event, care for "life"?

We do not have enough people to spread, one to each star in our Galaxy. We do not have enough individual, barely sentient, life forms on our planet to be given each to every object in the known universe...quasar to neutron star.

That the earth was a spark to this conspiracy or even if it merely added to it, with an unknown number of worlds, should be it's eternal glory. That it might pass, along with us, into completely forgotten oblivion, neither a plus nor even a minus, is complete ignominious defeat, against death.

 

[John Connellan]

A planet the size of Jupiter could come hurtling through our solar system and hit us dead-on, driving both straight into the sun. That might do it.

I think the collision between Jupiter and earth would do the trick without hurtling towards the sun

 

[Dynamo28]

There is a distinct possibility that the question..."does it matter when the world ends?" is entirely irrelevant. What if WE are God and are consciously creating our reality? Then could we not make this existence into absolutely whatever we desired? We very well could be the engines of creation. Maybe we just haven't quite figured out how to harness our collective power. Quantum mechanics really supports this idea that we are the creators, IMO. So, the end of the universe could come IF and WHEN we choose.

 

[Mickmeister]

The world most certainly will end, no later than about five billion years from now. Our sun is halfway through its life cycle and when it finally enters its Red Dwarf stage it will slowly expand to a diameter that will swallow everything inside the orbit of Mars.

However, the sun's temperature will rise slowly. So much sooner than that, about one billion years in the future, the earth will become so hot that all of its water will boil off. At that point the prospects for life are pretty dim. Perhaps a group of humans will manage to build a dome with refrigeration and a supply of water so they and an ecosystem with some representative species can survive considerably longer. But I can't imagine a technology being possible that will allow them to live inside the sun. Besides, even if they migrate to one of the outer planets or moons, that will be a pretty tough life. I'm not sure how much energy a red dwarf emits; there might not be enough solar radiation to build and power an ecosystem in one of those places.

So... at some point they will have to invent interstellar travel. Assuming relativity is valid and the lightspeed limitation is real, and a voyage across our galaxy will take more than a hundred thousand years, they'll need generation starships to go exploring, so they will pretty much have to invent that same technology they would use to survive on a boiling earth: a fully contained ecosystem that will keep operating indefinitely on omnivorous nuclear fusion reactors, refueling at every solar system.

If humanity dies off, I could be content with the hope that some day someone else will land here and discover the carefully preserved and recorded artifacts of our civilization. In the short run that will require establishing an archive on the moon because the weather and tectonic activity on earth will destroy anything we could build in no more than a few million years. For safety I suppose we should actually put it on one of the moons of the outer planets, so that Red Giant sun doesn't swallow it up, in case it takes the aliens more than five billion years to discover it. And of course a few backup copies in other places.

Better yet, send it out in a fleet of starships, manned or unmanned. Let it find the aliens instead of vice versa.

If you're talking about the planet literally being destroyed so there's no trace of our existence, then my answer is no, I would not like that at all. It's time to send those archive capsules to Europa and Titan! Or better yet, let's build those generation starships and get a few tribes of humans out there in the rest of the galaxy where whatever happens to earth won't affect them.

Or perhaps download ourselves into the computers of the future, so we won't be so fragile.

It seems like there are a variety of ways to beat the "end of the world" problem, as long as we have maybe one more century of technological progress before it happens. Oh yeah, and as long as we can get the world's governments to participate. The same guys who are ignoring global warming.

You forgot two things. Andromeda is headed toward the Milky Way and will collide with it in about a billion years. Just take a look at the mice galaxies. Second, even if we transplant to another system or Galaxy, someday, all of the hydrogen in the universe will be consumed and all stars will cease to exist, thereby negating the possibilities of life per Neil deGrasse Tyson.

 

[Fraggle Rocker]

You forgot two things. Andromeda is headed toward the Milky Way and will collide with it in about a billion years.

Okay. So instead of having one billion years to leave earth and three more to find a new solar system, we only have one billion years to find a whole new galaxy. Got it. Who's going to send that white paper to NASA?

Just how will we feel the effect of that, anyway? Galaxies are mostly emply space so it's doubtful there will be a lot of collisions. Will the sky just become a lot brighter and we'll have to learn to recognize new constellations?

If we have to leave, a billion years will probably be enough time for a generation starship to reach the next galaxy that isn't scheduled for a disaster. That will be a challenge of course since it's got nowhere to stop and will have to carry a lot of fuel and other supplies. Not even any solar energy between the galaxies.

Second, even if we transplant to another system or Galaxy, someday, all of the hydrogen in the universe will be consumed and all stars will cease to exist, thereby negating the possibilities of life per Neil deGrasse Tyson.

That will happen slowly by attrition, not all at once in an implosion. It's been suggested that as the energy supply in the universe dwindles, we simply have to upload or genetically modify ourselves into forms with slower metabolisms. This will make the universe appear to move faster which will probably be a more interesting life anyway.

Yes since everything in the universe apparently comes in discrete quanta (except space and time? that question just came up on another thread) there will come the day when the very last hydrogen atom is combusted and entropy wins. We--and all the other species who have discovered the same survival technology--will be able to extend that schedule by slowing our life processes down even further, so we don't use up the hydrogen frivolously the way we're using up the petroleum now. No interplanetary SUVs, no making people come into the office in the next star system instead of working at home, etc.

I guess we should do the math and figure out how long we've got, so we can make the most of it.

Or our cosmological model could be wrong, and the universe will stop expanding and come crashing in on itself to repeat the Big Bang, as one of the older theories hypothesized. If that happens we get to do it all over again. Well not exactly we, but the discontinous community of sentient lifeforms, the DCSLF. Who wants to set up the DCSLF homepage?

 

[swivel]

If we have to leave, a billion years will probably be enough time for a generation starship to reach the next galaxy that isn't scheduled for a disaster. That will be a challenge of course since it's got nowhere to stop and will have to carry a lot of fuel and other supplies.

Let's not send people, let's send robots that are programmed to create new people.

Better yet, lets build two types of probes: One is full of all of our knowledge and art and a progressive primer to instruct any intelligent life on how to begin translating it all. The other probe is full of basic chemical reproducers, lifeforms, seeds, cellular building blocks, etc...

Start churning these probes out like iPods and fire them in every direction possible at the highest possible speeds. Done.

 

[Enmos]

Let's not send people, let's send robots that are programmed to create new people.

Better yet, lets build two types of probes: One is full of all of our knowledge and art and a progressive primer to instruct any intelligent life on how to begin translating it all. The other probe is full of basic chemical reproducers, lifeforms, seeds, cellular building blocks, etc...

Start churning these probes out like iPods and fire them in every direction possible at the highest possible speeds. Done.

Yea, but lets not send any hint of humanity other than the ships themselves.

 

[swivel]

Yea, but lets not send any hint of humanity other than the ships themselves.

Your self-loathing is a downer.

 

[StrangerInAStrangeLand]

You can't handle the truth.

 

[Enmos]

Your self-loathing is a downer.

It's not self-loathing, it's loathing of humanity in general.

 

[swivel]

It's not self-loathing, it's loathing of humanity in general.

That's a pretty unenlightened view, my friend.

The entire planet is going to turn to magma in about 7.5 billion years. 99.99% of all organisms which have evolved on Earth have gone extinct. Most of them spend their time trying to rob some other organism of their ATP for energy. Nature is sex, violence, and drugs. Rape, murder, and toxins. One massive impactor has more power than our entire combined nuclear arsenal. The universe has waged Armageddon on our planet several times in the past. And there are dangers within, as well... every feature on the surface of the planet is temporary. The Grand Canyon will one day be pushed under another plate and be absorbed into magma. Ocean floors will gradually rise to the surface again. All is destroyed.

Your anger at our petty pollution and our smaller incidences of rape and murder are out of proportion to their horror, but that anger proves my point: What other organism mourns this process that they are all a part of? What other organism seeks to mitigate the damages? We have pockets of our species that protect the lives of insects!

Where I live, far more humans retch at the sight of litter than actually litter. Every generation becomes more humane, more gentle, more aware of others and of their environment. More live in freedom and choose to use those freedoms to live decent lives. As this progress rages forward, knowing that we are a short blip in the grand scheme of things, why would you choose to fight this progress and wish for our extinction? Why would you not want to see how good we can become, and what possibilities this movement might create for nature on a larger scale?

What if our planet is doomed and it is one of the few in the galaxy with life on it? What if, over the next million years, we were able to build space elevators, mine asteroids, and built interstellar arks that would allow nature and life to spread out into a lifeless galaxy? What if we are an accidental tool that nature will be able to harness to escape the destruction of this planet?

To dream of this and to want this seems to be the only rational choice. I don't understand how anyone can prefer the idea of lifeless balls of rock locked in orbit with one another. Is the preference subjective? Of course it is. This entire argument is about hating something versus loving something. It is all opinion. But some opinions are easier to rationalize than others. And some just don't make any sense once you start digging past the first layer.

 

[Enmos]

That's a pretty unenlightened view, my friend.

I fear it's not.

The entire planet is going to turn to magma in about 7.5 billion years. 99.99% of all organisms which have evolved on Earth have gone extinct. Most of them spend their time trying to rob some other organism of their ATP for energy. Nature is sex, violence, and drugs. Rape, murder, and toxins. One massive impactor has more power than our entire combined nuclear arsenal. The universe has waged Armageddon on our planet several times in the past. And there are dangers within, as well... every feature on the surface of the planet is temporary. The Grand Canyon will one day be pushed under another plate and be absorbed into magma. Ocean floors will gradually rise to the surface again. All is destroyed.

That's akin to saying that opposing a serial killer is unenlightened. After all, in the grand scheme of things, what does it matter that a few people have died ?
You see, humanity is inherently arrogant, perhaps with the best of intentions, but that doesn't change the fact.
One would think that, with our intellect, we'd know better..

Your anger at our petty pollution and our smaller incidences of rape and murder are out of proportion to their horror, but that anger proves my point: What other organism mourns this process that they are all a part of? What other organism seeks to mitigate the damages? We have pockets of our species that protect the lives of insects!

I'm not angry but, rather, sad.

Where I live, far more humans retch at the sight of litter than actually litter. Every generation becomes more humane, more gentle, more aware of others and of their environment. More live in freedom and choose to use those freedoms to live decent lives. As this progress rages forward, knowing that we are a short blip in the grand scheme of things, why would you choose to fight this progress and wish for our extinction? Why would you not want to see how good we can become, and what possibilities this movement might create for nature on a larger scale?

Err.. I do not wish for our extinction.. although I wouldn't care either. I wish for a more sustainable population size. One that doesn't by default destroys its environment.

What if our planet is doomed and it is one of the few in the galaxy with life on it? What if, over the next million years, we were able to build space elevators, mine asteroids, and built interstellar arks that would allow nature and life to spread out into a lifeless galaxy? What if we are an accidental tool that nature will be able to harness to escape the destruction of this planet?

What if.. what if..
The way I see it there won't be much of nature left in a million years. I think anyone on this site would have a huge scare if they were to have a glimpse into the future, even as close as a few hundred years from now.

To dream of this and to want this seems to be the only rational choice. I don't understand how anyone can prefer the idea of lifeless balls of rock locked in orbit with one another. Is the preference subjective? Of course it is. This entire argument is about hating something versus loving something. It is all opinion. But some opinions are easier to rationalize than others. And some just don't make any sense once you start digging past the first layer.

It isn't quite as simple as 'hating something versus loving something'.
I love nature and the biological diversity I see everywhere that is a part of it. But I also see it get destroyed by this cancer that is spreading ever further.
I realize that I am part of this cancer and that I am, sadly, doing my part to destroy the beauty of this world.
It is not anybody's fault in particular, it's just the way it is.. humanity suffocates the Earth.
If given the hypothetical chance I would indeed choose the many over the few. I'm sorry, but that's just how it is.

 

[swivel]

We aren't destroying the Earth, Enmos. We couldn't do that if we tried.

The Yucatan impactor was more powerful than all of our bombs, nuclear and conventional, combined. The Earth (from a nature point-of-view) flourished afterward.

Over the past 100 years, our environment has gotten cleaner in more ways than it has gotten dirtier. Harbors and rivers you couldn't swim in are now pristine. Factories scrub more of their output. Increased farm productivity has led to the closing of many farms, which return to woodlands. More habitats and environments are protected today than ever before.

100 years ago nobody cared about "saving the planet". Today, the majority of people I know care very much. And population fears have turned out to be over-blown. The rates of increase are leveling off, which is what happens when an organism achieves balance in an ecological niche. We are leveling off at a biomass much smaller than other organisms which pervade the planet, like trees and some insects, and many bacteria.

Speaking of trees, do you realize that these are a toxin-spewing cancer on the face of the planet? Oxygen is an atrocious by-product. It is caustic. It was poison for almost all forms of life back in the day. It was hard to convert into energy, unlike the easier method of converting natural, safe CO2 into downhill energy using the sun.

What did mother nature do with a planet overcome with this horrible poison? Did it wilt and die? No. Thanks to diversity in the gene pool, it gradually worked out defenses for this toxin and managed to sort out ways to extract energy from the ATP cycle using O2 instead of CO2. Expand your thinking, friend, because this bizarre-sounding tale is historical fact. And modern research into extremophiles leads me (and many others) to believe that making the Earth inhospitable to Life is a feat beyond our means.

So what you are left with is the fear that we will effect change on a planet that has never known stasis. These are some of the reasons that I think your view is an unenlightened one.

 

[cosmictraveler]

Over the past 100 years, our environment has gotten cleaner in more ways than it has gotten dirtier

But before humans had technology there was NO pollution anywhere. Now , with technology, humans have been polluting the Earth everywhere for pollution can travel on the wind for thousands of miles or be dispersed in the oceans all around the world. The reefs are dying still, 50 percent are already dead and more are dying daily. Pollution from China, India America is still at over 60 billion tons per year that spews into the atmosphere. Another 50 billion tons of raw sewage spews into the oceans as well yearly and you think we are actually cleaning things up...???? I really don't think you have researched your findings about pollution at all for it seems you are ill informed about what is really happening as opposed to what you would like to have happen.

 

[Enmos]

We aren't destroying the Earth, Enmos. We couldn't do that if we tried.

The Yucatan impactor was more powerful than all of our bombs, nuclear and conventional, combined. The Earth (from a nature point-of-view) flourished afterward.

Over the past 100 years, our environment has gotten cleaner in more ways than it has gotten dirtier. Harbors and rivers you couldn't swim in are now pristine. Factories scrub more of their output. Increased farm productivity has led to the closing of many farms, which return to woodlands. More habitats and environments are protected today than ever before.

100 years ago nobody cared about "saving the planet". Today, the majority of people I know care very much. And population fears have turned out to be over-blown. The rates of increase are leveling off, which is what happens when an organism achieves balance in an ecological niche. We are leveling off at a biomass much smaller than other organisms which pervade the planet, like trees and some insects, and many bacteria.

Speaking of trees, do you realize that these are a toxin-spewing cancer on the face of the planet? Oxygen is an atrocious by-product. It is caustic. It was poison for almost all forms of life back in the day. It was hard to convert into energy, unlike the easier method of converting natural, safe CO2 into downhill energy using the sun.

What did mother nature do with a planet overcome with this horrible poison? Did it wilt and die? No. Thanks to diversity in the gene pool, it gradually worked out defenses for this toxin and managed to sort out ways to extract energy from the ATP cycle using O2 instead of CO2. Expand your thinking, friend, because this bizarre-sounding tale is historical fact. And modern research into extremophiles leads me (and many others) to believe that making the Earth inhospitable to Life is a feat beyond our means.

So what you are left with is the fear that we will effect change on a planet that has never known stasis. These are some of the reasons that I think your view is an unenlightened one.

Come on man, where did I say humans were going to crack the planet ?
You know what I meant.
I like you, but you are being ignorant on this one.

 

[Enmos]

But before humans had technology there was NO pollution anywhere. Now , with technology, humans have been polluting the Earth everywhere for pollution can travel on the wind for thousands of miles or be dispersed in the oceans all around the world. The reefs are dying still, 50 percent are already dead and more are dying daily. Pollution from China, India America is still at over 60 billion tons per year that spews into the atmosphere. Another 50 billion tons of raw sewage spews into the oceans as well yearly and you think we are actually cleaning things up...???? I really don't think you have researched your findings about pollution at all for it seems you are ill informed about what is really happening as opposed to what you would like to have happen.

Lets not forget the bees..

 

[swivel]

Come on man, where did I say humans were going to crack the planet ?
You know what I meant.
I like you, but you are being ignorant on this one.

I never said "crack".

You imply with your posts that we are a cancer, which is an analogy for something that kills an organism. We can not possibly make the Earth uninhabitable for other life. Not even if we devoted every ounce of our energy to that outcome.

You grant humans special status in making them an abomination. I grant them special status for gaining awareness of their place in the universe and for creating wonderful art. We are both making the mistake of granting the species too much credit, but I wonder which of us is doing so for good an decent reasons and which of us is being a Negative Nancy...