Posted on 09/20/2013 1:45:59 AM PDT by LibWhacker
Earth will be able to host life for just another 1.75 billion years or so, according to a study published on 18 September in Astrobiology1. The method used to make the calculation can also identify planets outside the Solar System with long ‘habitable periods’, which might be the best places to look for life.
The habitable zone around a star is the area in which an orbiting planet can support liquid water, the perfect solvent for the chemical reactions at the heart of life. Too far from a star and a planet’s water turns to permanent ice and its carbon dioxide condenses; too close, and the heat turns water into vapour that escapes into space.
Habitable zones are not static. The luminosity of a typical star increases as its composition and chemical reactions evolve over billions of years, pushing the habitable zone outward. Researchers reported in March that Earth is closer to the inner edge of the Sun’s habitable zone than previously thought2.
(Excerpt) Read more at nature.com ...
Bottom line? We need to eventually leave this planet, period. There’s no if’s about this.
The positive is that we’ve got a couple thousand years as a minimum to get smart, explore, and find other places.
For those big into big fancy buildings or statues for the future....you might as well prepare for the day that it won’t really matter anymore.
Humans leaving the planet could be extremely difficult. Far easier to move the Earth out a ways to keep it in the habitable zone.
I’m sure Obongo has a solution, if you just raise the debt ceiling...
Must be Bush’s fault.
So Earth is like 55 in human years?
For one thing all our lives are in the hands of the lord. And to worry about something 1.5 billion years down the road pretty silly...
...don’t allow yourselves to be agitated into a call for action so we can pay a transportation tax to another democratic party trash, fear mongering grifter.
No, the Earth will be around long after it is no longer habitable by humans or by macro lifeforms. The Earth may migrate outwards in the Solar System as the Sun’s mass decreases as the result of radiation of the energy produced by its nuclear fusion and mass ejections. It becomes a matter of which expands outwards into the outer Solar System faster, the Earth’s orbit or the Sun’s expanding diameter. In either case, the Earth’s atmosphere, hydrosphere, and upper lithosphere will have long before become vaporised and stripped away from the Earth into the outer reaches of the Solar System. Human life, however, will have long ago become extinct upon the Earth due to an assortment of earlier extinction level events.
The movement of the Earth to a more distant orbit from the Sun by natural or artificial means will not alter this outcome. The only hope for human survival is for the community to migrate its surviving societies to asteroidal and space habitats in the outer Solar system, interstellar dark planetery systems, and other stellar systems.
The much-heralded Information Age is full of itself.
Well, that’s an eye-opener :)
The meek shall inherit the earth. The rest of us are going to the stars.
— Robert A. Heinlein
Carbon is being converted to non-usable forms at a steady rate such that the level of atmospheric carbon is orders of magnitude lower than in the past. Life will go extinct long before the earth becomes otherwise uninhabitable because of the lack of carbon.
We can thank anthropogenic warming enthusiasts for their schemes to sequester even more carbon to keep it out of the atmosphere, thereby hastening the end of life on earth. Who knows, maybe they *want* the destruction of all life.
So, does this mean I have time to enjoy a few good steaks?
I guess I better cancel our trip next weekend to our trailer, eh?
“The inner edge of the Sun’s habitable zone is moving outwards at a rate of about 1 metre per year.”
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So that means that at some point part the Earth could be in the habitable zone but a tiny portion of it could be too close to the Sun so you could survive the night but not the following day? Yeah, right, got it. One meter one way or the other makes all the difference, yep.
Exactly!!!
Yep, we’re all going to die UNLESS we pay more taxes to these political ‘experts’ who will ‘fix’ this! -making our lives crummier and theirs more cushy.
The eventual cooling of the earth’s interior will cost us our magnetic field and our continents as they erode below sea level.
Our moon is also drifting away which causes other problems.
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