The Future Of Earth And The Universe In General

[The Simpleton 2]

Let us not talk about the creation of the universe. It's a touchy topic! Let us talk about the future - how will the universe be in the future? As we know, the universe is constantly expanding.Slowly, yes, but constantly. It is possible that by the time the present generation dies, there may not be any change in the universe, but there will be a time when changes can be noticeable, isn't it?

 

There is a belief that the Earth may not live to see the final changes occuring to the universe. This is because before that happens, our good friend, the Sun will die, releasing an enormous amount of heat power into the solar system, and this is bound to wipe out all the eight planets.Even if we survive this blast of energy, we cannot survive without the sun, can we? There is a small chance that the answer may be yes!

 

Back in the 80's and 90's there were many sci-fi films which predicted how the Earth would be in the twenty-first century. The best example is the movie Back to the Future 2. You may wonder why I've chosen this particular movie. In this film, the hero travels to the year 2015, and he sees flying cars, hover boards (instead of skateboards), police who can get your identity and address just by a simple on-the-spot scan, hi-tech restaurants...well the list goes on. We are just six years away from touching the year 2015. Are we any near to the world which was shown in this movie?!!! Not even close.

 

Not just the movies, but there have been many books written about the future. Enthusiastic authors, putting their imagination to the test, created memorable glimpses of the future. But how long will it be before we finally get to see it? How long will it be before we can finally tap the true potentials of space travel? How long before we exceed the speed of light?!!!

 

So we can safely assume that it will be a long time before these dreams are achieved. After they are achieved, how long will it take us to find an alternative way to survive without the sun? Or, how long will it take before we finally move to Mars?

 

Yes these are a lot of questions and their answers, if any, are bound to be very interesting. I'll hang around here and wait to see if some of you can find out a few answers...

Edited June 13, 2009 by OpaQue (see edit history)

[Veradesigns 0]

i say, we wont live to see the future, earth is being overpopulated, over heated, natural resources running out, viruses, Natural Deserters. But then again, the worlds technology is increasing way way faster in the last 20 years than ever before in human life. So we might just find a way to save ourselves from the worlds en. But then again these desasters have always happend and always will continue happening. You can never know what the future holds for you. Its you who decides.

[The Simpleton 2]

Optimists always say that disaster will strike in the future, but we will be ready to face it.

 

While it is true that we do not know how much our technology will improve by the time disaster strikes, being hopeful will help! We have numerous scientists trying to improve our technology - some of them are trying to foresee any disasters in the near future, while others are perfecting techniques to use in varied situations. Who knows, we could be moving to Mars tomorrow!

[k_nitin_r 8]

Hi!@kasperooney:I think when the sun goes out like a light-bulb, it will be due to a shortage of Hydrogen - no, I don't think there won't be explosions or anything. Don't quote me on this though - I'm not an astronomist... I'm a web developer :-P@Veradesigns:Do you think the carbon credits thing is really an effort to combat pollution and global warming? It's more of a statement saying, "We don't want to say we're against it." If they really were serious about it, we'd be seeing more hybrid vehicles all over the world, but I still don't see any hybrid vehicles at any of the car stores in my geographical location.Regards

[Saint_Michael 3]

Well these are the popular theories of the apocalypse:-God will the same down with his/her Armageddon-The universe will expand so much that it will create a giant rip in the known space continium and destroy the universe-In about 2 million or 2 billion years Milk Way (Our Galaxy) and Andromeda Galaxy will collide, but the destruction and chaos that will be created is unknown-In 3.5 Billion years Venus and earth will collide-5-10 Billion Years the sun will explodes and that is pretty much a given and so that is when Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars and possibly Jupiter and Saturn will be destroyed-Then of course there is Meteors, Comets, aliens, time paradoxes, time travel, interdmentional warfare, borg(lol) -And finally, Earth giving up on us humans for destroying her and finishing off us herself.

[HDuffRules 0]

We will never exceed the speed of light in this universe. This is impossible. Aliens are not necessarily bad. Maybe if they are mean, but there is a good chance that they are not. When you think about it, in order for sentient life to reach a stage where they are making contact with other, populated worlds, there ideally needs to be stability on their homeworld, in order for such vast amounts of resources to be spent on exploring. This stability is theoretically difficult to achieve with belligerent predispositions. Back to the issue of earth. It probably won't last very long, at least not with us on it. We've put so much strain on the environment (and note that there is a time lag between cause and effect, so what we're seeing is just the beginning and the situation is definitely going to get worse before it gets better) and we've done so little to compensate. And we're still fighting wars for oil. The fact that a non-renewable resource is so important that we are fighting for it does not bode too well, IMO. As for the Universe itself, it will keep expanding, and darkmatter/darkenergy forces will continue to speed up this expansion. Slowly, over aeons, the stars will all die out, and the Universe will grow cold and dark. Then the big bang happens again and replaces this Universe with a new one. Rinse, repeat.

[The Simpleton 2]

The repeat theory is good but it gives rise to another silly question - how many "universes" existed before ours if this rinse repeat theory is true? The religious theory is also good but I prefer not to go into that because we do not want religious debates on this matter coz everyone will have something different to say and that will become heated. Still, it was good to know the various responses.

[Baniboy 3]

Finally a topic which even I can spam on! It's afternoon here and very hot, so here it goes!

 

when we will exceed the speed of light?

Answer: never, get over it, I know many people would like to wish so, but don't bother. It's as stupid as people believing in so called "white holes", which are the exact opposite of black holes. Why those dreams are equally stupid? They both are mathematically impossible. Another thing is that going into a black hole will get you in a new dimension, this is also stupid, maybe it will, but "normal" people have very weird definitions of the word "dimension". When something enters a black hole, it becomes the mass of the black hole, and therefore it doesn't go anywhere, it just gets ripped into quarks and joins the mass rolling in the statosfere (might have spelled that word wrong... :angel: ), anyway, it doesn't go anywhere, it becomes a part of the black hole.

 

I know Sci-fi is cool and all, but it's just BS and fake, so why believe in it. Sure there are some things (no offence)

 

in 5-10 billion years, the sun will explode...

NO, for a star to end it's life with a supernova, it needs the mass of our sun multiplied by 15. Our sun will just expand into a big "red giant"(happens when it runs out of hydrogen, after that the nuclear reactions start again now using heavier atoms, like carbon, oxygen and nytrogen, this will expand it into a red giant). After every atom is used, it'll turn into a small white ball. Even if a gigantic star explodes, it explodes inside and out, so if the remaining mass is over than 3x our sun's mass, it'll become a black hole. If most of the mass explodes out, and the inner part remains with less than the mass required, it'll become a neutron star thingy and spin like hell...

 

Here's how it will really end (for us):

 

For every single specie, there is an ecological locker on this planet. Now this ecological locker has a maximum limit for the size of the population of that specie in one location. After a specie goes over the limit, problems start to develop for that specie. Problems like this:

 

The food runs out

Deseases

The lack of space

Lot's of predators since there's lots of food.(doesn't much affect human race, but think about it, mosquitos and those crazy worms inside people's stomach!!!!

With those cleared out, now I'll go on.

After all those things start to affect that population, the population will come down, only a few will survive. Then after all the species they almost destroyed have lots of space, they'll grow large in numbers creating the ideal enviroment for the almost dead population, which will start growing again.

 

As for the "technology developing blah blah...", the best scientists right now are developing weapons, so forget it lol... The chanses are small, get over it. We'll never make it out of our solar system if we don't start to limit the population, so that the number of people born is the exact number of people dying. Sounds cruel but believe me, it'll happen.

 

I sound like a pessimist, but don't forget that pessimists are almost always right

 

The actual universe will end like this:

 

It'll expand so much that it starts to shrink, therefore being the exact opposite of explosion, and it'll just disappear. Nobody knows what will happen after that, maybe another big bang.

[The Simpleton 2]

Well it is the general opinion that no matter how technologically advanced we are, we will ultimately become extinct. I liked Baniboy's argument that the scientists are too busy developing weapons so they don't have time for planning defence! Well one might argue that in some cases offence is the best defence - who knows: we could be attacked by a shower of asteroids and at that time hiding under an umbrella wouldn't work! We would definitely need some counter-attack.

I don't mean that we should be developing more and more weapons for our protection...I mean we should be in a position where we can suitably defend ourselves (with weapons) and should know where to draw the line. If we cross the line and keep on developing more and more weapons, we would be destroying ourselves and nothing else.

I know many people would like to wish so, but don't bother. It's as stupid as people believing in so called "white holes", which are the exact opposite of black holes. Why those dreams are equally stupid? They both are mathematically impossible. Another thing is that going into a black hole will get you in a new dimension, this is also stupid, maybe it will, but "normal" people have very weird definitions of the word "dimension". When something enters a black hole, it becomes the mass of the black hole, and therefore it doesn't go anywhere, it just gets ripped into quarks and joins the mass rolling in the statosfere (might have spelled that word wrong... tongue.gif ), anyway, it doesn't go anywhere, it becomes a part of the black hole.
I know Sci-fi is cool and all, but it's just BS and fake, so why believe in it. Sure there are some things (no offence)

I second the notion that there aren't any white holes or such. Once you become a part of the black hole, it's the end for you! The only good thing is that there won't be any pain in that - you would just cease to exist, that's all! And sci-fi really does a good job of making the black-holes appear very vicious and evil - they're just doing their job that's all! :angel:

NO, for a star to end it's life with a supernova, it needs the mass of our sun multiplied by 15. Our sun will just expand into a big "red giant"(happens when it runs out of hydrogen, after that the nuclear reactions start again now using heavier atoms, like carbon, oxygen and nytrogen, this will expand it into a red giant). After every atom is used, it'll turn into a small white ball. Even if a gigantic star explodes, it explodes inside and out, so if the remaining mass is over than 3x our sun's mass, it'll become a black hole. If most of the mass explodes out, and the inner part remains with less than the mass required, it'll become a neutron star thingy and spin like hell...

That's a really interesting theory and there are many things which could happen - we can't really predict which form our sun will take once it decides to retire. But whatever the form, it won't allow us to live, that's for sure!

The actual universe will end like this:
It'll expand so much that it starts to shrink, therefore being the exact opposite of explosion, and it'll just disappear. Nobody knows what will happen after that, maybe another big bang.

We won't live to see that day - maybe our later generations will be scratching their heads thinking what hit them so suddenly! But to tell the truth, we live in a really lucky age - having everything at hand and knowing that no matter how many resources we waste now, they won't be extinguished till we die...that's really selfish of us!

[fermin25 3]

The destination of the human race is the extintion. Someday the world population will be a great number and the food will not be enough to all the human race and the people will start to figth for food and that will be bring the extintion.

And the wheater warming that is the 21 century problem: Someday the sea levels will growth killing all the people that lives in low zones like Central America.

We won't live to see that day - maybe our later generations will be scratching their heads thinking what hit them so suddenly! But to tell the truth, we live in a really lucky age - having everything at hand and knowing that no matter how many resources we waste now, they won't be extinguished till we die...that's really selfish of us!

It is truth we are not going to see that terrible days, so maybe we have to give thanks to God.

Regards
Edited June 16, 2009 by fermin25 (see edit history)

[Baniboy 3]

It is truth we are not going to see that terrible days, so maybe we have to give thanks to God.

Actually the only one we'll have to thank for extinction is ourselves, not god.

we can't really predict which form our sun will take once it decides to retire

Yes we can, by calculations. I did a research on these, some schoolstuff, and all that info is from a valuable source. The sun's mass just isn't enough. A lot of mass is recuired to have enough force when the star explodes. If the explosion is strong enough, it'll push the inner part of the star making it even more dense, therefore making it a black hole. If our sun was to be a black hole, it would have to have a diameter of 1 km.
Edited June 16, 2009 by Baniboy (see edit history)

[The Simpleton 2]

That's a very good research! I didn't do any research in my school days but I do remember reading a vague description of what would happen when the sun dies out...it said that the sun would release some kind of energy wave which would slowly wipe out all the planets in the way and then eventually it would become a black hole.I know that sounds stupid but that's the best I could remember!

[Baniboy 3]

Thanks, I forget things easily. Actually I had to look those numbers from the papers I had printed when I did that research since I couldn't remember the exact numbers I'm guilty :angel:Well it also depends on what the time when you went to school, a few decades ago they didn't even believe in black hole's existence. After they believed, they didn't know much about them anyway, and so came another "UFO-Wave" when all people were talking about was if they could travel through black holes and stuff like that. Even today's calculations may be wrong, because we can't actually get direct info about a black hole, only indirect ones.

[dropmyprice 0]

Honestly, i think this world is going to end with nuclear weapons. Greed is what has hurt people in the past, and even today. The United States makes conscious effort to subsidize U.S. goods in smaller countries keeping their economy below TRASH.I am typing this while listening to the news about North Korea pointing Missiles towards Hawaii. The treaty of Versailles eliminated "Secret treaties", but who is really going to regulate this? The UN? The UN is a joke, just another name for a defenseless United States.

[The Simpleton 2]

Nuclear weapons are always terrifying and pose a serious danger to the whole world but I somehow believe that these weapons won't be the end of our race - at some point in the future the governments will have to realise the risk these weapons pose and dispose of them immediately. Of course there won't be world peace and everyone singing around () but in the face of danger from outer space, I think these intercontinental fighting will cease to be.