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If you think on a large scale, humanity has a limited number of years left until the heat death of the sun... so this planet..and us..arent going to be here for

If you think on a large scale, humanity has a limited number of years left until the heat death of the sun... so this planet..and us..arent going to be here forever. And that's if we don't nuke each other first. Humans are very minimally removed from violent monkeys evolutionarily. It's not far-fetched to imagine a nuclear war being started simply by an insult to a mentally unstable world leader. It took humans 100,000 years to go from spears and caves to developing portable phones to surf cat videos. So we have a lot of work to do to get to interstellar travel.

staticman2 6y ago
Your genes might compel you to try to leave the planet and keep mating after our sun dies, but our species will inevitably be dead once entropy kicks in at the heat death of the universe. Ultimately we are going to go extinct and there is no point to the colonization scheme other than delusions of grandeur.
- apocalypstyx 6y ago
  Well, to be fair, we're still within the margin of error for a Big Crunch or a Big Rip, as well. (Maybe we'll even get lucky and not get to see a Vacuum Decay coming.)
- wizzwizz4 6y ago
  By this logic, there's no point to anything.
  - apocalypstyx 6y ago
    There is either existential nihilism or there is God. And God may be the more horrific of the two. (Or the unknown unknown third option may yet still be worse, who knows? The calculation of it being better just leads back to God, so the construction collapses back into two poles.)
  - lom888 6y ago
    The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man's heart.
  - nickthemagicman 6y ago
    Existentialist like Sartre would agree with you! They also propose a solution, that meaning is created not inherent.
- nickthemagicman 6y ago
  Yeah but we have 200 billion years until the universe ends and 5 ish until the heat death of the sun. Let's focus on one thing at a time!!! (*All numbers are estimates)
  - capitainenemo 6y ago
    Closer to 1 billion before the increasing heat of the sun kills life on earth. Unless we boost the planet to a higher orbit. Or I guess use a lot of sun shields which would be an easier short term solution...
    - nickthemagicman 6y ago
      That's not a lot of time then in the big picture considering it took us 100,000 to where we are now where we think handheld phones are amazing. We still have to develop fusion, some sort of way to shield our ships from space debris, faster travel, etc. Or maybe develop physics so advanced that we can wormhole to places. Who the hell knows. But that's only a few million generations to create enough Einstein's to get us off this planet. Meanwhile smart people are having fewer kids than the average people an education for the masses is worsening. So it's kind of a race against time.
godshatter 6y ago
I think we'd be better off working incrementally on larger and more sophisticated space habitats. Work our way up to O'Neill cylinders and the like. Much easier to harden a space habitat against radiation and to provide air, water, and power to it than it is to terraform an entire planet. Still not easy, though. Edit: Much easier to move out of the way when the Sun expands into a red giant, as well. Not that we have to worry about that for a while yet.

staticman2 6y ago

Your genes might compel you to try to leave the planet and keep mating after our sun dies, but our species will inevitably be dead once entropy kicks in at the heat death of the universe. Ultimately we are going to go extinct and there is no point to the colonization scheme other than delusions of grandeur.

apocalypstyx 6y ago
Well, to be fair, we're still within the margin of error for a Big Crunch or a Big Rip, as well. (Maybe we'll even get lucky and not get to see a Vacuum Decay coming.)
wizzwizz4 6y ago
By this logic, there's no point to anything.
- apocalypstyx 6y ago
  There is either existential nihilism or there is God. And God may be the more horrific of the two. (Or the unknown unknown third option may yet still be worse, who knows? The calculation of it being better just leads back to God, so the construction collapses back into two poles.)
- lom888 6y ago
  The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man's heart.
- nickthemagicman 6y ago
  Existentialist like Sartre would agree with you! They also propose a solution, that meaning is created not inherent.
nickthemagicman 6y ago
Yeah but we have 200 billion years until the universe ends and 5 ish until the heat death of the sun. Let's focus on one thing at a time!!! (*All numbers are estimates)
- capitainenemo 6y ago
  Closer to 1 billion before the increasing heat of the sun kills life on earth. Unless we boost the planet to a higher orbit. Or I guess use a lot of sun shields which would be an easier short term solution...
  - nickthemagicman 6y ago
    That's not a lot of time then in the big picture considering it took us 100,000 to where we are now where we think handheld phones are amazing. We still have to develop fusion, some sort of way to shield our ships from space debris, faster travel, etc. Or maybe develop physics so advanced that we can wormhole to places. Who the hell knows. But that's only a few million generations to create enough Einstein's to get us off this planet. Meanwhile smart people are having fewer kids than the average people an education for the masses is worsening. So it's kind of a race against time.

godshatter 6y ago

I think we'd be better off working incrementally on larger and more sophisticated space habitats. Work our way up to O'Neill cylinders and the like. Much easier to harden a space habitat against radiation and to provide air, water, and power to it than it is to terraform an entire planet. Still not easy, though. Edit: Much easier to move out of the way when the Sun expands into a red giant, as well. Not that we have to worry about that for a while yet.