THERE GOES THE NEIGHBORHOOD

I don't think it will help us to move to Mars. Maybe Peoria.

I imagine the rates of intergalactic movers would be astronomical!

Galactic-scale mergers seldom result in collisions. The biggest problem is that solar systems can be flung into the core of the galaxy or ejected from the galaxy completely.

The core of the galaxy will see the formation of a large quantity of huge short-lived stars in a big collision, and then supernovas when they all expire. If our solar system is flung into the core we'll definitely want to move somewhere else.

Being ejected from the galaxy poses no short-term dangers. But it would make for a rather long trek when our sun dies and we need to find a new home. So we should also depart our solar system if it is being ejected from the galaxy.

I doubt that the Magellanic Clouds have enough mass relative to our galaxy to cause this much disruption when they merge with us however. The big disruption will come when our galaxy merges with Andromeda.

Of course, being ejected from our galaxy is inevitable in the long run. Over extremely long time periods an occasional star gets ejected from the galaxy now and then. There are a lot of stars and planets in our galaxy, but it is still a finite number. Running the clock forward a massive number of eons will see galaxies dwindle to nothing as more and more bodies are ejected from them.

I expect that our descendants will survive on generated power when the universe runs out of gas to form new stars. When we use up one source of fuel we can move on to another. But when the day comes that there are no longer any new fuel sources nearby for us to move to because everything has been ejected from the galaxy, we'll probably face extinction.

The Magellanic Cloud is retreating from theMilky Way now. The models prediction states that the LMC will come to a halt and then be drawn back at a high rate of speed as the gravity differential between the two is entirely different than that between MW and Andromeda. So the intrusion into the MW will apparently be deeper as it is incorporated into the terminal mass . Gamma bursts and reanimation of a supermassive will pose a problem to the core of the MW , since we reside on the "outskirts" the model predicts less of a problem for our Solar System. (With the exception of becoming a flingee recipient).

I think sets more, close-in concern, that of our sun's ratio of H to He fuel is one that should concern us as a species . We can actually measure these ratios using multispectral MS, and can predict th date (+/- 45 years) when the He lights off and the sun heats up the inner planets out to about MArs. We(or a reasonable facsimile thereof) will probably then need to advance to one of the warming moons of Saturn or Uranus to temporarily colonize till the really big move. It appears to me that these moves will occur in stages allowing us , as a species, to learn to break some laws of physics to make really long journeys

But Trump says everything is great 👍. He guaranteed it! His wall will protect us all .

but its a black hole and theres nothing to hit the wall with in a black hole, Its just blackness. You need to understand how cosmetology works.

An idea for a sci fi book is like a twist on the plot of "landing on a new wprld". It would be, a the Sun begins to heat up a billion or so down the line, the earth will be known as a dying plnet and plans for emigration will be made so that itd b a generational thing. There would, hoqever, be several billion people whod have to remain on arth an who knows how many generations of these "terminal populations" (call em "Termies") would exist. Life would change from on of aplanning for the future to a realization and a guessing for who will be the last people on the planet and what would they do?


I dont know, maybe it could be interesting.

Grrrrooooooaaaaaaannnnnnnn . . .

I'm not sure why anyone would stay past the point where they would not survive.

Although I could possibly see a scenario where our descendants could try to use advanced technology to save the earth -- perhaps by shifting the orbit outward by some futuristic means and by putting something in place to block a large portion of the sunlight.

Personally I think that so long as there are still stars in the universe we would be better off moving to a new star whenever our current one becomes unusable. But it also might be nice to save the earth if doing so is within the capability of future generations.

would you want to be part of the generations whose lives may revolve around being in a huge form of intergalactic transportation (Assuming the laws of Physics are immutable)

I think an interstellar voyage is more likely than an intergalactic one. Presumably we will examine a new star/planet remotely before we send anyone there. And there will probably be waves of dedicated explorers before we start sending the general population.

There is no need to violate the laws of physics, and I'm pretty sure that we won't be able to violate the laws of physics anyway. Time dilation will make the passage bearable.

But to answer your question, given a choice between "traveling to a new home" and "staying and dying" I think I'd choose to move.

I might wish that I was living in a different, happier, era. But I would be stuck in the era that I was born in, and would be forced to live with the realities of that time.

perhaps, At present, based on known physics, I understand that 1.01 c is predictably possible, thus the needed "relativity rockets" are still ,today, only Newtonian, SO, time dilation, as a tool, till requires some breaks in Physics to attain.

I was never a student of it all anyway, Maybe the discoveries about "gently rotating black holes" can be part of the solution. Right now they are just mathematical possibilities but should they be discovered and mapped, such "cosmic pipelines" could be turnpikes to interstellar coordinates. Sorta like the old sci-fi "Jump Spots". Its almost as the sci-fi writers make it up, it is soluble as possible reality.

Every time in which we are born is really just like our species life , considering our galaxy as an organism with a terminal energy budget. So, really, when we are born (Your "happier era" , may actually merely be possible due to our ignorance of the galaxies prognosis down the line.

Still, outside of "genome packaging and shipping, many folks will probably remain and generations will occur as the "termies" Ive mentioned. (Either by choice or as last minute passengers out of a dying Milky Way)

I doubt that the speed of light can be exceeded, or that wormholes will be viable. I think the answer will be to travel at .99 c and use time dilation.

All other galaxies are growing old at the same rate that the Milky Way is aging. I don't see any advantage to fleeing the Milky Way. When the Milky Way finally dies, all the rest of the universe will be dead too.


But the Milky Way (or whatever it will be called after it merges with Andromeda) has a very long life ahead of it. There will come a point when all the galaxies in the universe run out of fuel for new stars and the universe goes dark, but our descendants will be able to survive on generated power in a dark universe.

The real death of the Milky Way will come as the result of occasional stars and planets being ejected from the galaxy. It is a very slow process, and there are a lot of stars in the galaxy. But if you run the clock forward countless eons into the future, all the galaxies will slowly boil away as their stars (dark husks at this point) get ejected into the void.

But this is on a massively long timescale. This isn't going to be any kind of a short term problem. We're looking at 100 trillion years before the universe goes dark. After the universe goes dark, we'll have a million times longer than that (100 million trillion years) before all the galaxies boil away.


One further thought: While I don't think there will be any point to fleeing the Milky Way, if we do need to leave we might want to do it sooner rather than later. The accelerating expansion of the universe means that someday all the other galaxies will be receding from us at faster than the speed of light.

But like I said, I'm not sure that there is any point to fleeing the Milky Way. All the other galaxies are aging at the same rate that the Milky Way is.

there was a note in Science in the week around Xmas about the discovery of slow rotating BH's .Mathematically, they are a sizable minority of all known black holes and serve as a tunnel to somewhere-time.

Hold any opinions made of "I dont think that..."

, At this time relatavistic "rockets" ARE a tweak in the aws of phyics due to lambda functions and the graph of mass at increasing v/c~>(1). (IM not saying itll never happen (see above), but its gonna take an entirely diff energy budget .The ones Id seen were based an increase of v^2 until .9 c .
Thats going to take as much heavy work as anything we can imagine.

It would take a ton of energy, yes. But it would not require violating the laws of physics, so it's actually possible.

I am confident that the universe is not going to allow us to ever violate the speed of light.

I could be wrong. But that's my gut instinct. I think all of the supposed shortcuts around physics are going to turn out to be unworkable for one reason or another.

I think we're going to find that black holes are most useful as a power source:
https://able2know.org/topic/435886-1

Not for reasons of efficiency (although efficiency is good). But rather for fuel diversity.

Once all the stars go out, our descendants are going to have to rely on generated power. If they use fission reactors, they will need to keep finding sources of uranium or thorium. If they use fusion reactors, they'll need to have a ready source of deuterium. Maybe there is a lot of deuterium available in gas giants, but fusion fuel will still be limited to one specific substance.

If they can get power by dumping any substance whatsoever into a small black hole, the fuel options expand dramatically. Silicone and iron could be used as fuel if that's what's handy.

If they could find a way to mine material from stellar remnants (perhaps by remote-controlled machines) a single dead star could supply fuel for black hole generators for a very long time.

"when all the stars go out" I dont think making a megawatt stove is gonna be our biggest problem.

Our descendants will need an energy source when there is no longer any more sunlight or they will go extinct.