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The planet won't be inhabitable for 5 billion years. I forget where I read this, but as solar radiation increases over the millenias, the planet will get less and less habitable. The projections were that the planet would stop being habitable within the next billion years, on a timescale that's well beyond the lifespan of our civilization but pretty soon, in galactic terms. I think that you guys are seriously overestimating just how plastic human civilization may be. It took humans almost 200,000 years to get to the point where we are, right now. An ultra-destructive nuclear war(something which we're perfectly capable of, considering the massive stockpile of nukes we have) might set us back far more than just a couple hundred years. While sure, isolated pockets of humanity would continue to live on because they happen to live in the middle of loving nowhere, the kind of environmental havoc setting off so many nukes would reek would be a serious challenge to live with. Radiation isn't just something that we as a species could just adapt to. We're not fungus, though human ingenuity is very impressive. There are simply some challenges that are impossible to mount, and a full-scale MAD style nuclear war might be one of them. Ultimately, and on really big timescales, we also have to worry about getting zapped by a pulsar (which would be the end of life on this planet, no questions asked), or getting nailed by a slightly more than average sized rock. The FOOF thread in PYF even had a discussion about the kind of damage a postage stamp accelerated to a couple of percentage of the speed of light could do. Imagine if some well meaning race out there amongst the stars wanted to find other life, and accidentally obliterated us in a galactic case of comical relativistic baseball.
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Aug 25, 2016 12:23
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| # ¿ May 17, 2024 14:10 |
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