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Our Sun as a red giant and the approaching Andromeda Galaxy


paulo leeds

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When you hear about the impending collision of the Andromeda Galaxy with our own, scientists often refer to how (if still around) humans would be witness to an amazing light show.

However, will this event not coincide with Our Sun becoming a red giant, rendering the whole thing void in terms of Earth's view of it?

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22 minutes ago, Joe12345 said:

Anyway, judging by the rate at which our technology is improving......well who knows where we'll be in 5 billion years - earth might even be orbiting a different star!

In the Andromeda galaxy.

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Yes thats how i understand it. Although the big red phase is 4-5 billion years off reactions in the Sun itself mean that in around a billion things will be uncomfortable enough that we would really want to have vacated the planet by then.

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16 minutes ago, symesie04 said:

Yes thats how i understand it. Although the big red phase is 4-5 billion years off reactions in the Sun itself mean that in around a billion things will be uncomfortable enough that we would really want to have vacated the planet by then.

Or moved it to a wider orbit. That would require a lot of energy, and I am not sure of the orbital stability given the resonances in our solar system (Titius-Bode law)

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Interesting topic. I though foresee the extinction of the human race not by the sun consuming us or the collision of another galaxy but more so by our own self destructive nature. We may be the only life in a vast expanse of space defying all odds in our very existence yet we invent ever efficient ways to kill each other. I just do not know what people were thinking when they invented the hydrogen bomb ??

We should forget about exploring the outer reaches of space for new settlements and instead concentrate on getting on with each other on the current ball of rock first.

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As far as we know upright walking apes have been around 7 millions years and modern humans (Homo sapiens sapiens) for between 400,000 and 250,000 years.   I think it would a case of extreme hubris to expect us to still be around 20 million years, let alone 2 billion years!

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No other animal has displayed the intelligence that we have; that's good and bad.

                   Bad:

We are smart enough to be greedy. We can make our life's easier while ruining our future generations lives. 

                   Good:

The dinosaurs couldn't calculate the trajectory of the asteroid and prepare for it. We can.

We are certainly smart enough to keep the species alive. So it's just a matter of whether we kill ourselves before we realize what we are doing wrong.

As for astronomy, I have a bad feeling that it will die off in the coming years. Thousands of people sell their scopes because it's too light polluted to do anything. :( 

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5 hours ago, Herzy said:

No other animal has displayed the intelligence that we have; that's good and bad.

                   Bad:

We are smart enough to be greedy. We can make our life's easier while ruining our future generations lives. 

                   Good:

The dinosaurs couldn't calculate the trajectory of the asteroid and prepare for it. We can.

We are certainly smart enough to keep the species alive. So it's just a matter of whether we kill ourselves before we realize what we are doing wrong.

As for astronomy, I have a bad feeling that it will die off in the coming years. Thousands of people sell their scopes because it's too light polluted to do anything. :( 

So you think the asteroid did for the dinosaurs? I think this is a bit too easy. The Chicxulub impact was almost certainly a massive contributer to that extinction but doesn't seem like an adequate explanation in itself. The timescale of the extinction is too protracted. Hypervulcanism around the same time also played a part according to my reading, though I'm no kind of expert.

Calculating asteroid trajectoiries will, perhaps, tell us when our extinction will occur. Great. Hollywood actors will not help us.

Intelligence and long term survival. What is the relationship between the two? I strongly suspect that it is an inverse relationship and that microbes buried in rocks will long outlive top predators. They may even seed a second generation.

In a long term survival contest I wonder how the bookies would rate Donald Trump against a rock-bound microbe? My mind is clear on the subject.

Olly

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Yes it seems the latest analysis is that the dinosaur population was already in decline long before impact 65 million years ago. The Sauropods were heavily in decline and only the predators of the day seemed to be resisting. Study suggests the decline was brought about by rapid (on the big scale of things) climate  fluctuations (vulcanism a definite possibility) which the large animals found hard to adapt to. So although they were still the dominant species on the planet at the time of the great impact mammals may have stole that crown anyway given time.

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"The Cretaceous-Tertiary extinction event, or the K-T event, is the name given to the die-off of the dinosaurs and other species that took place some 65.5 million years ago. For many years, paleontologists believed this event was caused by climate and geological changes that interrupted the dinosaurs' food supply." 
Your right. I don't know why the school textbooks say the extinction was a direct result of the asteroid.  The asteroid certainly had to do with it, but it wasn't the only reason.
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