When is the End really?

[obscura]

The shuttles were very hi tech and man carriers, margin for error was minute. However, let's keep all the spent nuclear fuel and old bombs here on planet earth. But where????? Earthquakes. Tsunamis. Who wants them?? Chernobyl. Would one throw water into the oceans? It was but a suggestion and quite viable. I'd vote for it.

[rfdesigner]

How do we know this isnt happening? Oh today on Moscow news rocket-X blows up after 1month of its trip to Saturn. They wont tell you its to dump nuclear waste would they?

But send it to the sun, Man isnt that daft lol

Ok we don't KNOW that they aren't doing it, but economics and safety suggest they're not.

The Russians can dig as many holes as they like and just dump stuff. The Americans I'm sure will do their best to dump it doing as little as they can get away with. Why spend good money on rockets that achieve so little, isn't it better to get some science or spy satellites up there?

[Mr TamiyaCowboy]

when i do not know.

who by : Mankind (us)

we have already messed up this planet, we are sucking it dry to we are hell bend on cheap free energy once it has gone (oil) where do we look next. it is to late to turn back the clocks, no matter what we do be it technological or just us doing what we should have done.

when it does happen we will not see the event but our kinfolk will have to live with our mistakes

[umadog]

Even if you forget about extinctions, ice ages, climate change, asteroids, etc, which are things that might not happen or might not kill us, the expanding sun will have boiled all the water off the planet in about another billion years (IIRC, I read that in "The Sun's Heartbeat" last year). This is billions of years before the sun itself dies. Life started on earth about 4 billion years ago, meaning that Earth is now about 4/5 of its way through its life-bearing period. Scary, huh?

[JamesF]

Suggestions that man might destroy the planet miss the point, I think. Wiping ourselves out, perhaps by rendering it uninhabitable, would appear to be far more likely. The planet stands every chance of survival. To quote someone smarter than me: "We don't need to save the planet. It can look after itself. We need to save ourselves."

James

[russ.will]

im going with nuclear war

I suspect it will take more than you alone.

Russell

[obscura]

1by? That would sound about right to me. I guess I don't have to worry too much then.

But that brings another thought. Why is there still water on Mars? Gets very hot there (and cold too I admit) and lost its atmosphere. Should it have lost all water by now?

[obscura]

Suggestions that man might destroy the planet miss the point, I think. Wiping ourselves out, perhaps by rendering it uninhabitable, would appear to be far more likely. The planet stands every chance of survival. To quote someone smarter than me: "We don't need to save the planet. It can look after itself. We need to save ourselves."

James

I totally agree. As a species we are far too arrogant.

[rfdesigner]

1by? That would sound about right to me. I guess I don't have to worry too much then.

But that brings another thought. Why is there still water on Mars? Gets very hot there (and cold too I admit) and lost its atmosphere. Should it have lost all water by now?

I thought it was all in permafrost.

Quick check on Mars max temp.... 32C WOW, that's hot!

Quick check on Mars surface pressure.... about 0.01 atmospheres.

Quick check on boiling point of water at 0.01 atmoshperes... 25C

yes water is capable of boiling, and the lack of a magnetic field will mean if any gets to the top of Mars's atmosphere then the solar wind will be off with it in a jiffy!

Derek

[Frank the Troll]

Man is just like a plague, and good old mother earth will sort us out long before we have to worry abouth the sun.

Either that, or we will wipe ourselfs out, with some escaped mutated virus, probably courtesy of the USA

[Black Knight]

Suggestions that man might destroy the planet miss the point, I think. Wiping ourselves out, perhaps by rendering it uninhabitable, would appear to be far more likely. The planet stands every chance of survival. To quote someone smarter than me: "We don't need to save the planet. It can look after itself. We need to save ourselves."

James

This.

[Islander]

The planet has survived worse disasters than mankind could ever inflict in its past and recovered. Something like 99.9% of every species that ever existed is extinct but still life is abundant on the planet. Nuclear war, asteroid impact, climate change etc. may affect things for a while but life will bounce back in one form or another - it just might not include mankind that's all.

The end for the Earth itself will come when the Sun begins to expand.

If you want to dispose of nuclear and other dangerous waste in a radical and expensive way, why risk launching it into orbit? Just drop it deep into a subduction zone and let tectonics take care of it.

[Codmate]

I know they say the Earth could very easily become unstable if we didn't have the moon, but if that is the case how come both Mars and Venus have much the same tilt and length of day as the Earth, with no large moon to maintain wobble stability?

But yes, I go with either/both a large body hitting the Earth or a human made problem that will sort us out.

Where did you hear that?

Mars and Venus have very different seasons and days to the Earth.

Mars has seasons that are twice as long as the Earth's due to its long year.

Venus has a very strange rotation, making it pretty much a type of hell for life!

All the planets of the Solar System orbit in a counter-clockwise direction as viewed from above the Sun's north pole. Most planets also rotate counter-clockwise, but Venus rotates clockwise (called "retrograde" rotation) once every 243 Earth days—by far the slowest rotation period of any major planet. The equator of the Venusian surface rotates at 6.5 km/h, while on Earth rotation speed at the equator is about 1,670 km/h.[64] A Venusian sidereal day thus lasts longer than a Venusian year (243 versus 224.7 Earth days). Because of the retrograde rotation, the length of a solar day on Venus is significantly shorter than the sidereal day. As a result of Venus's relatively long solar day, one Venusian year is about 1.92 Venusian days long.[11] To an observer on the surface of Venus, the Sun would appear to rise in the west and set in the east and the time from one sunrise to the next would be 116.75 Earth days (making the Venusian solar day shorter than Mercury's 176 Earth days).[11]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venus#Orbit_and_rotation

Anybody interested in the 'End Of The World' , should check out Martin Rees' book - "Our Final Century".

[obscura]

What sucks into a subduction zone can be spewed up through magma into the atmosphere. I think that's right. So, nuclear waste down there?? Not so sure.

[Ganymede12]

I once saw a documentary that said an asteroid that nearly hit us in 2002 is going to come back and hit us in either 2015 or 2019 and different areas will be effected in different way's. The whole world will go dark and my area will flood!

This had me scared for a while (I was young when I saw it) but I missed that start of it and was too afraid to watch the end so I probably missed the part where it said that the odds of this happening are slim!

[ObscuredbyClouds]

I once saw a documentary that said an asteroid that nearly hit us in 2002 is going to come back and hit us in either 2015 or 2019 and different areas will be effected in different way's. The whole world will go dark and my area will flood!

This had me scared for a while (I was young when I saw it) but I missed that start of it and was too afraid to watch the end so I probably missed the part where it said that the odds of this happening are slim!

Thought there was one that came between the moon and earth that you should of been more worried about that wasnt so long ago?

[todd8137]

Well I should think us humans will pu a end to it all in the next 500 years to be fair ,the black gold (oil) will soon run out and that will cause big problems .

Pat

[sologuitarist61]

Seems more likely that we will be the cause of our own end. Either through depleting the earth of finite resources or by nuclear war.

I have to say that this seems the more likely scenario.

Until we can all learn to live together in some sort of harmony there is always the possibility that we will be the cause of our own end. We narrowly escaped it back in the H bomb days (which thankfully now seem to be under some sort of control), but you can almost guarantee that a new weapon will come along and there will be some despot to use it

Underneath it all, human beings are the same warlike savages we were at the beginning and a veneer of civilisation doesn't cover it up very well.

Just stand outside a pub at chucking out time to see what I mean.

[ObscuredbyClouds]

Thought there was one that came between the moon and earth that you should of been more worried about that wasnt so long ago?

And you should try watching the end of FILMS lol :D

dammit i hate putas lol

[sologuitarist61]

As has already been said, whatever mankind does, the earth will remain in orbit until swallowed by the sun, but whether mankind will still be there is very doubtful (see my previous post).

Nature has ways of healing itself and with mankind gone the planet will continue and, in time, will heal itself of whatever we do it.

[ollypenrice]

Humans have been around for no time at all on an astronomical scale. I doubt that we'll be around in our present form for any significant period of time to come either, sticking to the same astronomical scales. The history of life on earth is a history of fairly rapid change. Projecting human life onto a timescale measured in millions of years seems to me to optimistic (or pessimistic if you prefer!) We are very specific creatures who need very specific environmental conditions.

Will our technology save us? I doubt it. The thing about high technology is that it needs one thing above all else; it needs supporting high technology. It depends entirely on itself which means that the chain is easily broken. Once broken by catastrophe it will melt down. This makes it a poor safeguard against catastrophe...

Olly

[Black Knight]

Will our technology save us? I doubt it. The thing about high technology is that it needs one thing above all else; it needs supporting high technology. It depends entirely on itself which means that the chain is easily broken. Once broken by catastrophe it will melt down. This makes it a poor safeguard against catastrophe...

Olly

Very true. I can well remember a James Burke TV prog from many (many) years ago which ably demonstrated that very point.

[Islander]

What sucks into a subduction zone can be spewed up through magma into the atmosphere. I think that's right. So, nuclear waste down there?? Not so sure.

That takes a long time geologically speaking. Besides, what do you think produces the heat that's kept everything moving for the past 4.5 billion years? There's an abundance of thorium 232, potassium 40, uranium 238 and to a lesser degree uranium 235 present in the mantle rocks

[sologuitarist61]

When you think of it, there are so many possibilities to what will happen in the future, catastrophe, world wide war, famine, disease, sudden lack of power (solar mass ejection), the list goes on and on.

There is always a possibility that mankind will survive all or any of these disasters, but if it does, we will probably be back in the trees again, from whence we came.

[JamesF]

Very true. I can well remember a James Burke TV prog from many (many) years ago which ably demonstrated that very point.

Sounds like the first programme of the first "Connections" series. Brilliant television. I'd love to see a modern version. My son still watches the old ones.

James