Sun will swallow Earth: Official

[reorg]

No escape from star's clutches
By Lester Haines

Two scientists from the University of Sussex and Mexico's University of Guanajuato appear to have confirmed that if we're still around in 7.6 billion years, global warming will be the least of our worries, since our beloved Mother Earth will be drawn inexorably towards the Sun and snuffed from existence.

Sussex Uni's Robert Smith and Guanajuato's Klaus-Peter Schroeder got out their calculators to determine once and for all whether Earth would escape a blazing death by spinning into a more distant orbit around the Sun, or whether it's ultimately curtains.

The former theory suggests that, as the Sun expands into a red giant, it will eject its outer gaseous layers, thereby losing mass and weakening its gravitational grip on the Blue Marble. However, this get-out clause doesn't factor in tidal forces or the drag of the Sun's outer layer, according to the doomsday boffins. The Earth actually exerts its own (modest) gravitational pull on the Sun, causing the face closest to us to bulge out - an extrusion which constitutes bad long-term news.

...

Of course, while it's interesting to ponder our planet's distant fate, we'll actually be long gone before the fireworks. Smith predicted: "After a billion years or so you've got an Earth with no atmosphere, no water and a surface temperature of hundreds of degrees, way above the boiling point of water. The Earth will become dry basically. It will become completely impossible for life of any kind to exist. It's a pretty gloomy forecast."

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/02/27/sun_swallow_earth/

[kirby]

1. You lost me at 'if we're still around in 7.6 billion years' n/t

[LisaM]

2. Well, I guess that makes a pretty good case for space travel

since we'll all have to leave and find another place.

[melody]

3. Damn! There's goes my plans for Earth Day that year

I love how they announce this stuff -- as if we won't be all part of the carbon mystery of the universe by then

[David Zephyr]

4. Our "revolving" around the sun is actually a spiraling into the sun: gravity.

What keeps the earth from spiraling immediately into the sun is the countering force to gravity which is the expansion of the universe.

[lapfog_1]

5. All pales to insignificance when compared with the impending entropic heat death of the universe!

[MADem]

6. We'll have to use the "Tractor Beam" to move the earth to a brand-new star.

Yeah, that's the ticket!!!!!!

[Demeter]

7. Just Not Soon Enough

So we're gonna hafta impeach, dammit!

[UndertheOcean]

8. NOOOOOOOOO OOOOOO OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

~sobs uncontrollably~

[tridim]

9. Next week is good for me..

I can't wait 7.6 billion years.

Just put us out of our misery Ra.

[DFW]

10. That does it for me. In 6 billion years or so, I'm going off my diet.

I'm gonna eat nothing but junk food for the last billion.

[angstlessk]

11. hell, then, why worry about global warming..we will all be dead in 7.6 billion years anyway

forgedaboudit!

[reorg]

17. not necessarily, plans have been made to avoid this

The Nation: Weird Science; A Cool Idea to Save Earth
By ANTHONY RAMIREZ
Published: June 17, 2001

" ...

In a recent issue of the professional journal Astrophysics and Space Science, Don Korycansky, Greg Laughlin and Fred Adams playfully propose finding an asteroid about 60 miles long -- about half the length of Long Island -- to be used in a ''gravitational sling shot.''

A rocket could be strapped to the asteroid, they say, and the asteroid maneuvered into an immense orbit more than seven times wider than the radius of the solar system. The asteroid would then pass close enough to Earth to tug it gently away from the Sun. (One hitch, the authors acknowledge, would be a collision, which would ''sterilize the biosphere most effectively, at least to the level of bacteria.'')

While the solution may seem outsized, the three scientists are actually eyeing a larger-scale version of global warming. As the Sun burns through its hydrogen, it gets bigger and brighter, leading to hotter temperatures on Earth. In a billion years, the Sun will be 10 percent brighter, killing off many forms of life on Earth.

Moving the planet away from the Sun, in this view, is simply shoving it away from a red-hot stove.

... "

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C00E6D81431F934A25755C0A9679C8B63&sec=&spon=


I find that reassuring, so maybe we are not doomed to be extinguished altogether, at least not so soon!

[patrice]

12. Will that be before, during or after the next Ice Age on Earth? nt

[frog92969]

14. After the next couple hundred.

[katty]

13. and none too soon

[shain from kane]

15. Swallow? Don't let the sun go down on me ...

[awoke_in_2003]

19. Oh

I always that it was "don't let the SON go down on me" :)

[shain from kane]

20. No, that was "Daniel" that went down ... in the plane, to Spain. n/t

[damntexdem]

16. And it'll be about time, too!

Of course, this has long been known. When the sun becomes a red giant, its radius will be greater than the earth's distance from the sun -- i.e., the sun will swallow the earth.

[Forrest Greene]

18. Cool!

I'll make sure I have some film in my camera!

[Jack Rabbit]

21. Maybe it's the Paxil talking, but . . .

. . . I'm really not worried about it.

[LibertyorDeath]

22. Gives me a Warm Feeling.....