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Red Dwarfs Will Be Humanity’s Last Home Before the Universe Dies
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- x3n0ph3n3 5y agoThe number of doomers here is quite depressing. I guess most of the techno-optimism has left the culture.
- tr4389 5y agoScience is now used as a stick, to beat people with.
- Udo 5y agoAs a techno-optimist myself, I understand where the doomerism is coming from. Civilization-ending wars and disasters are still very much in the cards today, and collectively human behavior shows at best a fluctuating will to live. So far we have detected no hint of alien activity out among the stars, or found any of the remnants we would expect a galaxy-spanning civilization to leave behind in our own neighborhood - leading us ever closer to the conclusion that long-lived interstellar civilizations are either unattainable or that we're the first intelligent life form to arise within billions of light years. So far we don't seem to show any large scale willingness to spread out to other worlds or to even consider the developments necessary for a sustainable long term future. Expected advances have not materialized, especially in medicine and physics. We're hostile to ideas like radical life extension, improving overall quality of life globally, getting rid of systemic injustices and suffering, using technology and foresight to dig ourselves out of environmental disasters. Finally, instead of steadily gaining public support for science and technology, we seem to have left even more people behind whom we may not be getting back for generations, if ever. It is fully possible that humanity may split into several completely incompatible factions, and that may be the optimistic perspective! The growing fissures dividing us are very visible even on a technology-centered medium like HN. Outliers notwithstanding, as a civilization the last two decades feel like we have given up on radical improvements. However, I believe outliers could still fulfill some of the promises of optimistic futurism, even though it may take longer and we may not get to a high enough level in time to master the challenges ahead. It's still worth trying, and it's still worth building momentum towards a better public acceptance.
- nootropicat 5y agoI think that's because Moore's law is dead since about 2005 (?) and all optimistic predictions (Kurzweil etc) pretty much assumed it lasting decades longer. As a consequence we live in an age of technological stagnation since roughly 2008. Better smartphones but that's mostly it - no significant changes in daily life except for taxi apps. Show any nerd from 2008 life in 2022 - and they would get depressed. Hopefully this decade is better - ubiquitous satellite internet, self driving cars, brain implants, maybe even fusion power plants (ARC)? Self driving cars and brain implants would be truly revolutionary for daily life.
- raxxorrax 5y agoIf the habitable zone isn't too close to the star that any planetary body wouldn't be tidally locked and if they don't send out regular radioactive flares that would pose a challenge to life, they might indeed prove to be a longer lasting home than larger stars like our sun. But with that the life span of a class M-K sun can easily extend the age of the current universe several times.
- rbanffy 5y agoIt’s somewhat surprising if there aren’t already very old civilisations there.
- raxxorrax 5y agoEither they too just don't have means for communication on an astronomical scale or maybe nobody wants to have anything to do with these strange ape-like bipedal primitives and humanity is on an intergalactic ban list which prohibits any contact. With exception of those that get abducted from time to time to undergo alien experiments of course.
- lqet 5y ago> The day will come when the last star dies and the universe plunges into eternal darkness. [...] The last star in the cosmos will very likely be a red dwarf. Alien life forms may live around such a star, and it could be humanity’s final home before the universe becomes inhospitable. Call me a pessimist, but I would be extremely surprised if humans are still around then.
- ithkuil 5y agoThe time scale is so vast that whatever happens, with whatever definition of "optimism", it's hard to imagine our descendents to recognize themselves into us. There is un circumstance: that a group of humans today (or in the near future) just time "travels in the future" (e.g. by moving at relativistic speeds, etc, while in cryogenic sleep or whatever) and just happen to witness the late universe without the time actually ticking for them. In that (unlikely) case the same effect that would prevent the species from diverging is the same that would prevent them from getting extinct (not enough time)
- rbanffy 5y ago> moving at relativistic speeds, etc, while in cryogenic sleep or whatever There’s an interesting way to get to relativistic speeds - to get close enough to a supermassive black hole, steal enough momentum so you get very close to c, then, a subjective week later, you do the same around another black hole in a different galactic core to shed your momentum and get back to a manageable speed. An intergalactic civilisation would use supermassive black holes as train stations.
- adastra22 5y agoYou're a pessimist. If we can survive long enough to have sustainable settlements away from this planet and moving out to the stars, there will be no stamping out humanity.
- rbanffy 5y agoThe time scales are so vast that’s hard to answer that. We also need to be able to expand do other systems as well. At that stage, I wonder what the appeal of being a planet-hugger is - if we can live in city ships in deep space, why would we want to go into a gravity well just to see a planetary surface from up close?
- artemonster 5y agoAssuming humanity will manage to exist that long. On the topic: how do you keep yourself positive? How do you keep your hope for the humanity? I have lost mine and find it hard to keep going, since lots of things become pointless
- christkv 5y agoEnjoy the little things in life. The breeze, a cup of coffee/tea. Read The Tao of Pooh. There is certain comfort in knowing that you can't control everything so try to enjoy whats infront of you today. And turn off the news and social networks.
- rbanffy 5y ago> And turn off the news and social networks. Surprisingly enough, this social network is quite inhabitable. Even when we disagree, we do so in civilised ways.
- unicornmama 5y agoThe world has always always been a scary and uncertain place. Dealing with that is part of adulthood.
- rbanffy 5y agoLearning not to need or want what you don’t need is liberating.
- pure_simplicity 5y agoJesus. It is easy to dismiss religion as pre-scientific superstition or opiate for the people, but hear me out for a second. I find that Jesus gets two things fundamentally right: - humanity's brokenness - the moral values that underpin human flourishing It may seem counterintuitive, but recognizing humanity's brokenness as a whole and on an individual level is actually necessary to have hope. You can't fix a problem you don't see. Seeing the problem is not enough, though. You also need to avail yourself of a solution. Jesus is that solution. He has transformed the lives of people, but it is a deeply personal experience that you have to choose for yourself (if you want it). I think humanity needs religion (without a religious worldview your cognitive framework is incomplete), and i think Christianity is the most rational, most plausibly effective, and most likely to be true religion we have. Having said that, i'm not here to argue, though there are myriads of arguments to be had. This is just an invitation in response to a question. To anyone reading this who has been burnt by Christians who may feel the need to vent their frustration: I am sorry for your negative experiences. There is no perfect system in this world. Even among so called humanitarian aid workers there are rapists who go to foreign lands and leave struggling females pregnant and alone. Yet we all recognize the tremendous good done by charities despite the despicable evil. Let's not throw out the baby with the bathwater.
- theodric 5y agoWe'll be long dead before that, but it's a cool thought experiment
- lmilcin 5y agoYou can also drop matter into black holes and this way recover energy necessary to sustain civilisation long after red dwarves are all dead cold. Compared to stars, this process is much more efficient and allows converting something like 40% of mass of dropped object into energy. And so with this mechanism we have much more energy available than all stars in the universe have and will ever have produced. Not only that, we can do it at any rate we want. Rather than radiate 99.999999999999999999999999999999999999999999% of it uselessly, we can make sure that most of it is used to power our civilisation. The problems: 1) The visible universe shrinks, so much less matter will be available to us in trillions of years. 2) Before you drop matter into black hole you need to store it somewhere. The issue here is that over long periods of time orbits decay as gravitational energy is radiated away and so keeping mass in storage actually requires energy to be added. 3) Not gonna save us from Big Rip.
- db48x 5y agoOnly ~20% iirc. Still better than all of the alternatives, if you can build the infrastructure.
- lmilcin 5y agoWell, I decided to check the number. 20% is for uncharged, non-rotating BH. 42% (maximum) is for rotating black hole. I have to agree with 20%. 42% assumes that you are robbing the black hole of its momentum and that cannot be sustained infinitely, as you are throwing more and more stuff into it your best possible efficiency will drop asymptotically to 20%.
- db48x 5y agoThe real long–term plan is to live in orbit of a black hole, the larger the better. You can use the Penrose process to extract energy from one for very long time. Forget about a few paltry trillions of years, a supermassive black hole can last longer than 10¹⁰⁰ years. That’s 10⁹¹ trillion years.
- simonh 5y agoThanks, I’d not come across that process before. You need a reaction mass reserve that won’t run out in that amount of time though. That’s a lot of reaction mass if you have any significant energy needs.
- mlatu 5y agolot's of burnt out stars flinging around
- rbanffy 5y agoAlso lots of smaller black holes as well… At the very end we may use proton decay to power virtual world running on computers composed of folded spacetime. Subjective time within the simulation can continue no matter how slow the computation looks from the outside.
- tablespoon 5y ago> At the very end we may use proton decay to power virtual world running on computers composed of folded spacetime. Subjective time within the simulation can continue no matter how slow the computation looks from the outside. That sounds like pure science fiction. Is there even any theoretical basis for the construction of "computers composed of folded spacetime"?
- rbanffy 5y agoGive me a couple trillion trillion years to figure that one out ;-)
- sideshowb 5y agoIt's cold outside, there's no kind of atmosphere
- kingcharles 5y ago# I'm all alone, more or less Smoke me a kipper, I'll be back for breakfast...
- raesene9 5y agowe're all alone, more or less
- Simon_O_Rourke 5y agoI'll worry about what happens in 20 billion years in 19 billion years time. In the interim it's all about enjoying the party
- chmod775 5y agoIf humanity was advanced enough to move to any star they wished, humanity won't need stars for anything in particular anymore. Lots of other possible energy sources will still be around.
- rbanffy 5y agoThose damn planet-huggers and their sentimental attachment to rocky surfaces…
- AndyPa32 5y ago> Red Dwarfs Will Be Humanity’s Last Home Before the Universe Dies Earth Will Be Humanity’s Last Home Before Humanity Dies Here, I fixed that for you.
- rbanffy 5y agoThat’s a very pessimistic take. We are on the verge of having Lunar and Martian settlements. Before the end of this century, those may even be self sufficient. We’ll be a lot more difficult to eradicate after that.
- OrderlyTiamat 5y ago> We’ll be a lot more difficult to eradicate after that I think our chief existential risk is nuclear war, which is a political issie that doesn't seem to be going away soon. But perhaps by the end of the century we'll have moved beyond it.
- paraiuspau 5y agoI found myself reading the very first sentence in Brian Cox's voice - anyone else?
- chheplo 5y ago“No human ever steps in the same universe twice. For it's not the same universe and he's not the same human.” Now extend this to billions of years. Do we still call it humanity, or use English, or same Homo Sapiens?
- mlatu 5y agoif we survive the next couple of decades that is
- rbanffy 5y agoThe next couple dozen Big Filters… The odds are against intelligent life, it seems.
- sliken 5y agoBased on what? Might well be that humanity has an entry in the universe's database says we have nukes, go to war for irrational reasons, and kills each other for random reasons. Why would any intelligent life contact us?
- yreg 5y agoIsaac Arthur explores ideas like these in his videos / podcasts, I enjoy listening to it. Actually he has a whole series on Civilizations at the End of Time.[0] [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pld8wTa16Jk&list=PLIIOUpOge0LvHsTP5fm8oxB1qPS54sTMk&index=3 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pld8wTa16Jk&list=PLIIOUpOge0...
- ageofwant 5y ago
- rbanffy 5y agoWell… that’s what makes settling the Moon and Mars kind of urgent. Also pointing a couple big mass drivers to Earth so to incentivise humans down here behave.
- nootropicat 5y agoIf humanity is still around stars won't exist anymore. It's a horrific waste of resources. Any advanced civilization would deconstruct all stars with active fusion to prevent them from losing energy to fusion - and keep that mass for black hole power plants.
- sfe22 5y agoHow can you turn off a star? Or just throw in in a black hole?
- nootropicat 5y agoTake enough mass away to stop fusion.
- sfe22 5y agoIt would take a lot of mass taking for most stars i would think.
- foxyv 5y agoThere is absolutely zero chance that humanity will last long enough to use Red Dwarfs as a home. Barring some sort of ultra conservation efforts, constant mutations will have created an entirely new species. Humanity will have less relation to the red dwarf inhabitants than Eutherians from the cretaceous era have to us.
- more_corn 5y agolol if humanity survives the next thousand years I’d be really surprised. There’s a nonzero chance we’ll all live to (briefly) see the end of our species. I don’t think we need to worry about exceeding the lifespan of our own sun let alone all others.