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 wed 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 Suns 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 Suns transition to a red giant, based on observations of six nearby red giant stars. Sure enough, they found that Earths orbit will widen at first. But Earth will also induce a tidal bulge on the Suns 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 Earths orbit could be tweaked by arranging the fly-by of a nearby asteroid to tug at it. This method could potentially maintain Earths 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 ...
Bumping for the fun of it...
Ask the Democrats - They will have a solution for this and ALL other celestial matters..They can fix anything..
Billyuuuuns and biilllyunns of miles away.
(Sorry, couldn’t resist.)
These things used to fill my young heart with despair. People would joke about them sometimes, but I would get filled with angst about our eventual demise as the race of men.
Not any more - I know the end of the world will come, and that God is in charge. Interestingly, the Bible says God is going to make a new heavens and a new earth. So I guess, if this one gets burned up or what have you, it’s all good.
...and Bushs fault.
Darn you to HECK Bush!
I don’t think any of us are gonna survive 7 billion years anyway... but if I do, I’ve got seven billion years to travel 4 light years... I think I can make it.
Carl Sagan does not exist.
Signed,
God
I appreciate your dedication to the art.
If Uranus had a surface, it would have a fairly comfortable surface gravity. With the Sun entering a red giant phase, Uranus could make a possible new home for us.
And we wouldn't have to move it.
When you talk about people, they should be included in the conversation.
If "billions and billions of years ago," the sun was a much bigger star with more mass, why didn't Earth get pulled into the sun then?Hey, nobody claimed that it makes sense. Here, have a Corona...
Duh.
Who are these people?!!!!!!! Haven't we been taught for years that at the stage the sun becomes a red giant the earth will be swallowed up?!
“Whatll they worship when the moon and that meteor are gone?”
The ‘meteorite’ they worship is almost gone.
It broke years ago, and they had to put some metal screws into it to keep it in one piece.
See, the wise men followed a ‘star’ in the sky, to find the prophet. When they found him, they worshipped him.
Others followed the star as well. But they ended up worshipping the ‘star’ after it fell to the ground.
After Christianity rose from the blood of Christ, the Islamic worshippers were sure they were right.
First off, the eventual Christians lost their prophet to crucifixion.
Second, they came up with religion songs such as “ROCK of AGES” , and statements such as “Peter is the ROCK”.
Subtle hints that to the Islams, meant they were right all along. There religion would persevere.
They can always get another ‘rock’.
“Why the sudden surge in news stories about the earths end billions of years from now?”
The writer’s strike ended, and they quit their parttime news jobs and went back to Hollywood.
So reporters are rerunning stories from the ‘50s.
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