Posted on 02/26/2008 7:44:39 PM PST by Libloather
Hope dims that Earth will survive Sun's death
19:09 22 February 2008
NewScientist.com news service
Jason Palmer
The future looks bright for the Earth – but not in the way we’d hoped. The slim chance our planet will survive when the Sun begins its death throes has been ruled out.
In a few billion years, the Sun will fuse the last of its hydrogen into helium, turn into a red giant and expand to 250 times its current size. At first, the Sun’s loss of mass will loosen its gravitational pull on Earth, which will allow the planet to migrate to a wider orbit about 7.6 billion years from now.
This process has led some to speculate that the Earth might escape destruction – but survival now seems impossible, says Peter Schröder of the University of Guanajuato in Mexico and Robert Smith of the University of Sussex in the UK.
They created the most detailed model to date of the Sun’s transition to a red giant, based on observations of six nearby red giant stars. Sure enough, they found that Earth’s orbit will widen at first. But Earth will also induce a “tidal bulge” on the Sun’s surface, with its own gravitational pull. The bulge will lag just behind the Earth in its orbit, slowing it down enough to drag it to a fiery demise.
There is one last hope for anybody still living on Earth, the researchers say. In the past, some have suggested that Earth’s orbit could be tweaked by arranging the fly-by of a nearby asteroid to tug at it. This method could potentially maintain Earth’s speed enough to keep it in a widening orbit, they say.
Journal reference: Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society (DOI: 10.1111/j.1365-2966.2008.13022.x)
(Excerpt) Read more at space.newscientist.com ...
Thanks for the ping!
He lied about nuclear "Winter", so what good would he be now, er, in the future, when a "Winter", nuclear war induced or not, will be needed?
I bet you learned about the Carbon Cycle too, didn't you?
We've forgotten all that stuff. Carbon is going to kill us, don'tcha know?
I’ll put it on my calendar - I intend to be out of town that day .....
We'll park the asteroid/spaceship in a stationary point relative to Earth, supported by photon pressure.
The photon pressure will balance the gravitational attraction of the Earth and the Sun, but the gravitational pull of the asteroid on the Earth will not be balanced by anything.
Slowly, as slowly or quickly as needed, Earth can be moved to a higher orbit.
This is a modification of the "gravity tug" idea recently suggested to handle errant asteroids.
got more estrogen?
God will not be mocked, control your tongue. You own nothing, you are given a certain amount of years. You have no deed upon any star.
You can have a star named after you, in the "International Star Registry".
Why would I want a star named "Bob"?
Then again, a deed upon a star wouldn't be worth the paper it was written on. Not for more than a nanosecond, anyway.
Giant Rocket Engines?
Portable Heaters?
Mr. Jeeves, I love the technology, but how can we afford the Gore-McCain Carbon Credits?
The sun is not supposed to die for another 350 million years (our real-time years) or so. Can I possibly hold my interest for that long?
Oh, and just so’s you might know, the earth we are sitting on, is spinning at a rate of some 900 miles per hour (our real-time), and it’d be wise to hope the center of our earth maintains its gravity in good form for awhile.
now, that comment was really bright...sheesh!
It's not a good idea to put a Dyson Sphere around a red giant star.
Probably much more efficient to pick a nice, stable white dwarf. You could get by with a lot less material that way.
Hmmmm ..?? Guess they haven’t seen the article which says there is more snow and ice on the northern hemisphere then has been there SINCE 1966!!
GLOBAL COOLING IS HERE - the HOAX OF GLOBAL WARMING IS JUST THAT .. A HOAX .. and it always was.
Speak for yourself! This is only 7.5 billion years from now.
Uhhhhhhhhhh...been known for years that this would happen. Anybody whose hope has "dimmed" is pretty dim to begin with.
And who has "hopes" going out to billions of years? A better headline would be "Hope Dims that "Journalists" Finally Get a Clue".
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