[Home]  [Headlines]  [Latest Articles]  [Latest Comments]  [Post]  [Sign-in]  [Mail]  [Setup]  [Help] 

Status: Not Logged In; Sign In

Nicotine and Fish

Genocide Summer Camp, And Other Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix

This Can Create Endless Green Energy WITHOUT Electricity

Geoengineering: Who’s Behind It and How We Stop It

Pam Bondi Ordered Prosecution of Dr. Kirk Moore After Refusing to Dismiss Case

California woman bombarded with Amazon packages for over a year

CVS ordered to pay $949 MILLION in Medicaid fraud case.

Starmer has signed up to the UNs agreement to raise taxes in the UK

Magic mushrooms may hold the secret to longevity: Psilocybin extends lifespan by 57% in groundbreaking study

Cops favorite AI tool automatically deletes evidence of when AI was used

Leftist Anti ICE Extremist OPENS FIRE On Cops, $50,000 REWARD For Shooter

With great power comes no accountability.

Auto loan debt hits $1.63T. 20% of buyers now pay $1,000+ monthly. Texas delinquency hits 7.92%.

Quotable Quotes from the Chosenites

Tokara Islands NOW crashing into the Ocean ! Mysterious Swarm continues with OVER 1700 Quakes !

Why Austria Is Suddenly Declaring War on Immigration

Rep. Greene Wants To Remove $500 Million in Military Aid for Nuclear-Armed Israel From NDAA

Netanyahu Lays Groundwork for Additional Strikes on Iran: 'We Didn't Deal With The Enriched Uranium'

Sweden Cracks Down On OnlyFans - Will U.S. Follow Suit?

Joe Rogan CALLS OUT Israel's Media CONTROL

Communist Billionaire Accused Of Funding Anti-ICE Riots Mysteriously Vanishes

6 Factors That Describe China's Current State

Trump Thteatens to Bomb Moscow and Beijing

Little Bitty

Vertiv Drops After Amazon Unveils In-House Liquid Cooling System, Marking Pivot To Liquid

17 Out-Of-Place Artifacts That Suggest High-Tech Civilizations Existed Thousands (Or Millions) Of Years Ago

Hamas Still Killing IDF Soldiers After 642 Days

Copper underpins every part of the economy. If you want to destroy the U.S. economy this is how you would do it.

Egyptian Pres. Gamal Abdel Nassers Chilling Decades-Old Prediction About Israel-Palstine Conflict.

Debt jumps $366B in one day.


Science/Tech
See other Science/Tech Articles

Title: Earth's Final Sunset Predicted [it's not too late but time's running out]
Source: SPACE.com
URL Source: http://news.yahoo.com/s/space/20080 ... finalsunsetpredicted&printer=1
Published: Feb 26, 2008
Author: Clara Moskowitz
Post Date: 2008-02-26 17:20:59 by a vast rightwing conspirator
Keywords: None
Views: 146
Comments: 4

Earth's Final Sunset Predicted Clara Moskowitz
Staff Writer
SPACE.com
Tue Feb 26, 6:45 AM ET

"Some say the world will end in fire, Some say in ice," wrote the poet Robert Frost. Astronomers, it turns out, are in the former camp.

A new calculation predicts that Earth will be swallowed up by the sun in 7.6 billion years, capping off a longstanding debate over whether the sun's gravitational pull will have weakened enough for Earth to escape final destruction or not.

Other theorists have predicted that our planet will fry as the sun expands in its old age. But the time estimates have varied by a couple billion years.

"Although people have looked at these problems before, we would claim this is the best attempt that's been made to date, and probably the most reliable," said astronomer Robert Smith, emeritus reader at the U.K.'s University of Sussex, who made the new calculations with astronomer Klaus-Peter Schroeder of the University of Guanajuato in Mexico. "What we've done is to refine existing models and to put the best calculations we can at each point in the model."

If 7.6 billion years doesn't sound like an urgent death sentence, don't relax yet. Regardless of whether Earth will ultimately be vaporized, as the sun heats up, our planet will become too hot to live on before then.

"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," Smith told SPACE.com. "The Earth will become dry basically. It will become completely impossible for life of any kind to exist. It's a pretty gloomy forecast."

Nonetheless, scientists are curious about the ultimate fate of our planet after we are gone (like all previous hominids and more than 99 percent of all species that have lived on Earth, humans will probably go extinct, and it will likely happen sooner than a billion years).

Smith's earlier studies found that Earth would narrowly escape being engorged. As the sun ages and expands into a red giant star, it will shed its outer gaseous layers, thus losing mass and weakening its gravitational pull. Previous calculations found that this let-up would allow the Earth's orbit to shift outward, enabling the planet to slip free of the smoldering sun.

But this scenario doesn't account for tidal forces, and the drag of the sun's outer layers. As the Earth orbits the sun, its smaller gravitational pull isn't completely negligible — it actually causes the side of the sun closest to our planet to hoard more mass and bulge out toward us.

"Just as the Earth is pulling on the sun's bulge, it's pulling on the Earth, and that causes the Earth to slow in its orbit," Smith said. "It will spiral back and finally end up inside the sun."

In addition, the gas that the sun expels will also drag Earth inward toward its demise.

Smith's previous calculations had ignored these effects.

"We didn't think it mattered, but it turns out it does," he said. "You might say our previous models had a gap."

There may even be hope for Earth. Some scientists have proposed a scheme for down the road to use the gravity of a passing asteroid to budge Earth out of the way of the sun toward cooler territory, assuming there is life around at the time that is intelligent enough to engineer this solution.

"It sounds like science fiction, but there's a group of people who have quite seriously suggested that it might be possible," Smith said. "If it's done right, that would just keep the Earth moving fast enough to keep it out of harm's way. Maybe life could go on for as much as 7 billion years."

Smith's findings have been accepted for publication in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

Top 10 Ways to Destroy Earth Timeline: The Frightening Future of Earth Image Gallery: The Many Faces of the Sun Original Story: Earth's Final Sunset Predicted

Visit SPACE.com and explore our huge collection of Space Pictures, Space Videos, Space Image of the Day, Hot Topics, Top 10s, Multimedia, Trivia, Voting and Amazing Images. Follow the latest developments in the search for life in our universe in our SETI: Search for Life section. Join the community, sign up for our free daily email newsletter, listen to our Podcasts, check out our RSS feeds and other Reader Favorites today!

Post Comment   Private Reply   Ignore Thread  


TopPage UpFull ThreadPage DownBottom/Latest

Begin Trace Mode for Comment # 2.

#2. To: a vast rightwing conspirator (#0)

"Whenever life gets you down, Mrs. Brown..."

Tauzero  posted on  2008-02-26   17:47:59 ET  Reply   Untrace   Trace   Private Reply  


Replies to Comment # 2.

        There are no replies to Comment # 2.


End Trace Mode for Comment # 2.

TopPage UpFull ThreadPage DownBottom/Latest


[Home]  [Headlines]  [Latest Articles]  [Latest Comments]  [Post]  [Sign-in]  [Mail]  [Setup]  [Help]