Preparing for the "BIG MOVE" off the planet Earth

@rosborne979,

where do you read all that??? OR is you just makin a little CRSPR joke?

Realizing that I'm opening myself up to criticism and possibly physical injury I'd make the case that what happens on Planet Earth stays on Planet Earth. Scientific probes within and without the solar system are perfectly fine, but intentionally seeding the universe with terrestrial spawn strikes me as geo-chauvinism and highly irresponsible. As someone who is in a perpetual war with invasive species I don't see any positives here and many potential negatives. When it comes to a cosmic Do-list I think a universal happy euthanasia plan would be a good beginning. Exit with a smile.

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@hightor,

Here on Earth, life seems to move into every available cranny. It appears to me the impulse to move beyond this planet is only natural.

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@farmerman,

farmerman wrote:

where do you read all that??? OR is you just makin a little CRSPR joke?

Podcasts discussions with MIT and Cornell Geneticists mostly, with just a little bit of logical extrapolation.

But seriously, CRISPR is no joke, far far from it.

Besides, your thread implied a huge timeframe, so I could pretty much go crazy Smile

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@rosborne979,

I never said CRSPR is a joke. Im more concerned re: ethics and post CRSPR'rd descendents. USUALLY evolution that adapts TO a specific environment, prevents adaptation to many other environments)
Did you read ,A CRACK IN CREATION? ( by the principle investigators of CRSPR Jennifer Doudna and Samuel Sternberg) its one of those short books that stirs the little grey cells

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@farmerman,

Who would have guess you were a preper eh?
Of all the reasons to move out you chose to debate the worst possible one?
Let me tell ya if we get past the next century I will be surprised, go guess half a billion years onward...
Besides this is really old news even for pop culture information standards.

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@farmerman,

farmerman wrote:

apparently our own galaxy has already munched on a part of Sagittarius and it was fairly gentle.

The collision of galaxies the size of Milky Way and Andromeda is going to be "not gentle".

Although it is going to be in very slow motion. From the perspective of any individual human lifespan, the galaxies and stars will not even change their positions.

Still, if we're in a star system that is headed to a bad end, it would be best to move before that end comes.

Another thing to consider is that this galactic merger will be so damaging that the new combined galaxy will be an elliptical with no star-forming regions. There'll be one last burst of star formation prompted by the collision, and then that'll be pretty much it for new stars.

Although even if we'd been in an area with continued star formation, eventually we'd run out of star-forming material anyway. So I guess the transition from a light-filled universe to a dark universe is inevitable. But unfortunately for us, the galactic collision is going to make it happen a lot sooner than it otherwise would.

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@hightor,

hightor wrote:

Realizing that I'm opening myself up to criticism and possibly physical injury I'd make the case that what happens on Planet Earth stays on Planet Earth. Scientific probes within and without the solar system are perfectly fine, but intentionally seeding the universe with terrestrial spawn strikes me as geo-chauvinism and highly irresponsible. As someone who is in a perpetual war with invasive species I don't see any positives here and many potential negatives. When it comes to a cosmic Do-list I think a universal happy euthanasia plan would be a good beginning. Exit with a smile.

There is a difference between taking over an inhabited star system and taking over a vacant one.

Also, unless we find a way to exceed the speed of light (which is unlikely) we will probably not want to populate "everywhere", but instead just live in one star system at a time. Humans in separate star systems, where travel between them would take hundreds or thousands of years, will quickly evolve into two different species.

If we just inhabit one star system at a time, we can stay as one species, and it should be a nice ecologically-responsible use of the galaxy.

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@oralloy,

Quote:

The collision of galaxies the size of Milky Way and Andromeda is going to be "not gentle"

Apparently opinions about the "severity" of the meet-up vary among Cosmologists. Im sure that several sun /planet systems will be negatively affected and others will just enjoy their weekends unimpaired.
Are you a cosmologist building models of this event?

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@farmerman,

farmerman wrote:

I never said CRSPR is a joke. Im more concerned re: ethics and post CRSPR'rd descendents. USUALLY evolution that adapts TO a specific environment, prevents adaptation to many other environments)

Ethics are a huge concern, but I don't think they are going to stop it from happening. It didn't take China long to clone primates even with the restrictions.

I'll have to see if I can get the Audiobook for A Crack in Creation. Have you listened to Change Agent by Daniel Suarez?

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@farmerman,

farmerman wrote:

Apparently opinions about the "severity" of the meet-up vary among Cosmologists.

I'm unaware of any serious opinion that the disruption will be minor.

farmerman wrote:

Im sure that several sun /planet systems will be negatively affected and others will just enjoy their weekends unimpaired.

A very large number of systems will be thrown to the center of the galaxy and subjected to non-stop supernovas.

A very large number of systems will be ejected from the galaxy completely.

The resulting combined galaxy will be an elliptical without any star-forming region.

farmerman wrote:

Are you a cosmologist building models of this event?

No, but I'm aware of what the models have predicted.

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@oralloy,

The Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics has another model in which theyve introduced the satellite derived transverse velocity of Andromeda .Their model is one of several that display a 50/50 shot even whether the two will collide.

AND BESIDES, the MILKDROMEDA galaxy, (even if the collision happens) will happen 2.5 BILLION YEARS after the earth goes hydrothermal. Itll be a matter for "morning coffee talk" wherever our grand b'airn be living (en route or planted). We must keep the timeline in mind. Most ALL models are nothing but fancy schmancy computer calcs of T,R, and D. Most chemical models are T,R, and [M]

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@farmerman,

farmerman wrote:

The Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics has another model in which theyve introduced the satellite derived transverse velocity of Andromeda .Their model is one of several that display a 50/50 shot even whether the two will collide.

My understanding is that it is inevitable that the entire Local Group will eventually merge into a single galaxy.

farmerman wrote:

AND BESIDES, the MILKDROMEDA galaxy, (even if the collision happens) will happen 2.5 BILLION YEARS after the earth goes hydrothermal.

But if we were to merely move outward in the solar system to survive the red giant, and then start generating our own power when the sun cooled, we could still be tied to the same star system that we are in now.

That's a dead end for our species if this star system is one of the ones destined to be thrown into the galactic core.

But I think we will have the foresight to survive the galactic collision. What I'm most concerned about is what our descendants will do when all the stars go out.

We'll be able to live openly on the surface of a planet as we do today for as long as there are still orange stars (30 billion year lifespan). When the last of the orange stars burn out and there are only small red stars (10 trillion year lifespan) left in the universe, our descendants could probably manage to find a tidally locked planet in a close orbit around a red star, put solar collectors on the sun side for energy, and build domed cities on the night side. But once all the small red stars burn out, if humanity wants to survive we'll have to generate all of our own power from that point on. If we ever fail to generate power after all the stars have burnt out, we'll hit absolute zero pretty quickly.

If we're lucky, over trillions of years of engineering advancements we'll be able to master black hole power generation as described in this thread:
http://able2know.org/topic/435886-1

Not just because of the proposed energy efficiency, but also because of the ease of fuel selection. We wouldn't be limited to deuterium for fusion or uranium/thorium for fission, but could fuel such a generator with whatever matter was most convenient.

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@oralloy,

I think you are seeing the overall problem and a serieis of steps that may be needed. Ultimately our species (or, with CRSPR) the several species will become transients all over the Universe and we will have to take on a role as a Universal Traveler.
Each stop will be but a few hundred million to a billion year way station. Just enough time to assess our forward needs and materiel and energy budgets.
I think in our maturation process we should begin realizing this now and, while we enjoy this brief interlude with Sol on the Third Rock from the Sun, we must be developing intraplanetary working relationships and mutual respect as our very first technological "Tools". Without this we will be just another bunch of monkeys engaged in periodic wars. All the rest that we can do will only be possible if we can just get along like the "Federation".

I think we will be making evr increasingly more complex steps to occupy planets and moons within our solar system as our sun is on its post helium fusion journey to "red dwarfness".

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@farmerman,

By the time all this takes place, we may be integrated with machines in ways we can only imagine.

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Ultimately we'll need to think our way out of this universe, prior to its demise, to the next, (causing new wave creationist voltaireans to rejoice, "if god did not exist we would have to invent him"), or die.

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@edgarblythe,

Quote:

By the time all this takes place, we may be integrated with machines in ways we can only imagine.

Perhaps, or we may be reduced to a few kilograms of crystals to which someone only needs to add water . When I still was a practicing Catholic, I used to imagine what a soul was. I concluded, in a kids world, that souls had to be squared off like small cigar boxes so they could be packed tightly as they hung around Purgatory Hall and they would be moved on a belt conveyor as their numbers were approaching their release to heaven date.

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I think it is being too optimistic that humans will be around that long to see the demise of our solar system. Human genetics will probably fail sometime in the next few thousand years and we will become extinct. If space travel becomes a realistic option to send masses of people to the outer planets, good for us, for the time being.

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@seac,

And if there are still people around by then, they will be smart enough to figure it out for themselves - or they've become a bunch of degenerate savages.

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@roger,

True. But it's fun to think about future challenges to humanity and devise potential solutions. Or at least I think it's fun.

1 Reply

Preparing for the "BIG MOVE" off the planet Earth

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