badastro ,
@badastro@mastodon.social avatar

One day, the Sun will expand into a red giant and vaporize Mercury, Venus, and Earth.

But astronomers have found what may be planets orbiting dead stars, showing that some planets can survive that fate. Words by me:

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/planets-orbiting-dead-stars-foretell-the-solar-systems-far-future-fate/

WolfgangFeist ,
@WolfgangFeist@hessen.social avatar

@badastro

Now, now, Phil...

in the piece you say it at the very beginning (but not in this clickbait): That "one day" is at least 5 billion (= 5,000,000,000 years). So at this point, I just don't care. And so should you.

wikicliff ,
@wikicliff@fosstodon.org avatar

@WolfgangFeist @badastro
Yeah, anything past 2.7 billion years is just too far out. 😜

WolfgangFeist ,
@WolfgangFeist@hessen.social avatar

@wikicliff @badastro

Agreed.

See: If we can survive that far (oh my dear...), we'd have a lot of time to think how we can also survive the suns red-giant-phase. We'll have ~100 Mio yeras to prepare, thats 3 Million times the time, we have now,

'to save us from ourselves'

as Carl Sagan put it.

Within 33 yrs we need to reduce CO2-emissions to almost zero. We can do this, and should do it - otherwise speculation about our fate in 2.7 billion years is just - futile.

  • All
  • Subscribed
  • Moderated
  • Favorites
  • random
  • test
  • worldmews
  • mews
  • All magazines