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There's this perception of Earth itself as a beautiful and perpetual utopia, because we live such absurdly brief lives. But this planet is brutal, and has kille

There's this perception of Earth itself as a beautiful and perpetual utopia, because we live such absurdly brief lives. But this planet is brutal, and has killed most of everything living on it - repeatedly. [1] This will continue to happen endlessly in the future until the Sun itself extinguishes all life on the planet, permanently. Earth is essentially a bunch of short term 'surprise' death traps, and one very long term final death trap which we can at least see coming. And there is no escape, except through intelligence of a certain sort, which happens to be the exact sort humans have developed, which will enable our species to eventually spread beyond just this one planet. The awesome thing about human intelligence though is not only will we ultimately use our intelligence to ensure our own perpetuation, but I suspect there's no doubt we'll have a "Noah's Ark" working to perpetuate the lives of many of our cohabitants who will literally all go extinct, permanently, without us - or without some unbelievably revolutionary change in their own intelligences. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extinction_event#The_%22Big_Five%22_mass_extinctions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extinction_event#The_%22Big_Fi...

mandmandam 3y ago
> this planet is brutal There isn't a nicer spot around for untold light years. Earth is a beautiful utopia, without measure or equal. Shatner saw that clearly, on his trip off planet. > ... when I looked in the opposite direction, into space, there was no mystery, no majestic awe to behold . . . all I saw was death. > I saw a cold, dark, black emptiness. It was unlike any blackness you can see or feel on Earth. It was deep, enveloping, all-encompassing. I turned back toward the light of home. I could see the curvature of Earth, the beige of the desert, the white of the clouds and the blue of the sky. It was life. Nurturing, sustaining, life. Mother Earth. Gaia. And I was leaving her. > Everything I had thought was wrong. Everything I had expected to see was wrong. > I had thought that going into space would be the ultimate catharsis of that connection I had been looking for between all living things—that being up there would be the next beautiful step to understanding the harmony of the universe. In the film “Contact,” when Jodie Foster’s character goes to space and looks out into the heavens, she lets out an astonished whisper, “They should’ve sent a poet.” I had a different experience, because I discovered that the beauty isn’t out there, it’s down here, with all of us. Leaving that behind made my connection to our tiny planet even more profound. - https://variety.com/2022/tv/news/william-shatner-space-boldly-go-excerpt-1235395113/ https://variety.com/2022/tv/news/william-shatner-space-boldl... We're the worst thing to happen to this planet in 65 million years. On that list of extinctions you posted, the only one caused by an 'intelligent' agent is the one we're in now; the one caused by us. And we're still doing it. If ever a Noah's ark is sent into space, it's vastly more likely to be because we fucked up the planet somehow.
godelski 3y ago
> Earth itself as a beautiful ̶a̶n̶d̶ ̶p̶e̶r̶p̶e̶t̶u̶a̶l̶ ̶u̶t̶o̶p̶i̶a̶, ... But this planet is brutal, and has killed most of everything living on it Why do these have to be in contention? I honestly find our world beautiful, same with space and the universe. Same with blackholes and quasars. But a grizzly bear can be majestic and beautiful while still capable, and likely, to rip you to shreds. Awe is probably a more apt word. Maybe the more archaic definition of awful or awesome.
- StingyJelly 3y ago
  beautiful utopia not
sgu999 3y ago
Humans as a necessary evil to make a small Noah's ark of some of what's on earth_ That's a very positive view, thanks for sharing.
- melagonster 3y ago
  If we can. most of endeavors which try to build a smaller ecosystem has failed.
cookiengineer 3y ago
> which happens to be the exact sort humans have developed I disagree. Climate crisis, pure ignorance for destruction of nature, and not even a backup colony of our moon. If we really were that intelligent as a species, we would value the survival of our own much more than a fictive self-invented imaginary value called "money" which actually has no meaning at all in the universe.
- ben_w 3y ago
  We are absolutely not perfect, and the climate (and biosphere, and non-renewable resource depletion) are all indicators of our imperfections. Nevertheless, no other life has made it to the moon (let alone "and back") by its own design. I would love for us to have a backup colony on the moon; but until Starship (or equivalent) actually gets rolled out enough to make that affordable — or, better yet, a launch loop etc. — we have to make do with the Terran backups in the form of having settlements in every continent from Tamanrasset in the Sahara to Yakutsk in Siberia. Money is indeed fictional, but it's a very useful fiction that helps us make deals with each other and with ourselves at different times in our own lives. Just so long as we don't make the mistake of, for example, thinking we can feed people just by taking money from the rich without any extra thought given to where food comes from in the first place — as the saying attributed to some Native American tribal chief goes, you can't eat money.
mcmoor 3y ago
Everything is relative. We have seen thousands of other planets (And millions of other stellar objects) and this planet is a hell of a heaven compared to every single one of them. According to our observations so far anyway (to the chagrin of ufo lovers).
eru 3y ago
> This will continue to happen endlessly in the future until the Sun itself extinguishes all life on the planet, permanently. Btw, we can conceivable move the earth or keep the sun from going red giant. The means for these two are currently beyond our technology, but not beyond our science. (Basically, for the latter you need to remove non-hydrogen elements from the sun. Red dwarf stars can last trillion of years, and they are smaller than the sun. So removing the right material from the sun should get us there. The project would be a gigantic undertaking, but we'd also have tens or even hundreds of millions of years to do it.) If humanity survives long enough, we are bound to become extremely powerful as science and technology march on.
- SketchySeaBeast 3y ago
  If humanity becomes capable of either of those feats Earth would be an item of notalgia, not vital to our survival. We will be well and truly on to different challenges by then.
- whoknowsidont 3y ago
  >Btw, we can conceivable move the earth or keep the sun from going red giant. I think you are seriously underestimating or misconceptualizing how much energy that would take. Even in a very ideal timeline where we get FTL or near FTL travel technology there is no way conceivable way to do what you are talking about: both moving the earth or engineering the sun. Just visually look at the size of the sun in comparison to Earth: https://www.universetoday.com/65356/how-many-earths-can-fit-in-the-sun/ https://www.universetoday.com/65356/how-many-earths-can-fit-... And if we COULD (which again, very very unlikely) do those things we simply just wouldn't -- living on earth or in this solar system would be irrelevant.
  - eru 3y ago
    > I think you are seriously underestimating or misconceptualizing how much energy that would take. No, I am not underestimating that. Yes, it takes a prodigious amount of energy to move the earth, but hundred million years is a long time, too; and the sun gives off a lot of energy. Today, most of the energy that the sun gives off is wasted. We are not too far off the technology needed to build a swarm of satellites that catch an appreciable fraction of that energy. (It's called a Dyson swarm.) We could sacrifice eg Mercury to get the mass for that; the sun itself will deliver the energy needed to run the fabrication process. Ideally we figure out how to build self-replicating machines. But even if the process of building the swarm takes a few million years, that's fine for our purposes. You could use the energy to eg run a crazy amount of ion drives on our moon's surface. You'd use the moon as a gravitational tuck to very slowly move the earth. About engineering the sun, have a look at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cw20VbX1XCc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cw20VbX1XCc My sketch for how to move the earth is also inspired by videos from that YouTube channel. He has all the math that I didn't put in here. He also has some videos about how to move the sun. See also https://www.popularmechanics.com/space/deep-space/a10885/the-shkadov-thruster-or-how-to-move-an-entire-solar-system-17000392/ https://www.popularmechanics.com/space/deep-space/a10885/the... if you want to read rather than listen to a video. Or https://www.gregschool.org/gregschoollessons/2017/9/21/shkadov-thruster-ljar4-xp8c5 https://www.gregschool.org/gregschoollessons/2017/9/21/shkad...

mandmandam 3y ago

> this planet is brutal There isn't a nicer spot around for untold light years. Earth is a beautiful utopia, without measure or equal. Shatner saw that clearly, on his trip off planet. > ... when I looked in the opposite direction, into space, there was no mystery, no majestic awe to behold . . . all I saw was death. > I saw a cold, dark, black emptiness. It was unlike any blackness you can see or feel on Earth. It was deep, enveloping, all-encompassing. I turned back toward the light of home. I could see the curvature of Earth, the beige of the desert, the white of the clouds and the blue of the sky. It was life. Nurturing, sustaining, life. Mother Earth. Gaia. And I was leaving her. > Everything I had thought was wrong. Everything I had expected to see was wrong. > I had thought that going into space would be the ultimate catharsis of that connection I had been looking for between all living things—that being up there would be the next beautiful step to understanding the harmony of the universe. In the film “Contact,” when Jodie Foster’s character goes to space and looks out into the heavens, she lets out an astonished whisper, “They should’ve sent a poet.” I had a different experience, because I discovered that the beauty isn’t out there, it’s down here, with all of us. Leaving that behind made my connection to our tiny planet even more profound. - https://variety.com/2022/tv/news/william-shatner-space-boldly-go-excerpt-1235395113/ https://variety.com/2022/tv/news/william-shatner-space-boldl... We're the worst thing to happen to this planet in 65 million years. On that list of extinctions you posted, the only one caused by an 'intelligent' agent is the one we're in now; the one caused by us. And we're still doing it. If ever a Noah's ark is sent into space, it's vastly more likely to be because we fucked up the planet somehow.

godelski 3y ago

> Earth itself as a beautiful ̶a̶n̶d̶ ̶p̶e̶r̶p̶e̶t̶u̶a̶l̶ ̶u̶t̶o̶p̶i̶a̶, ... But this planet is brutal, and has killed most of everything living on it Why do these have to be in contention? I honestly find our world beautiful, same with space and the universe. Same with blackholes and quasars. But a grizzly bear can be majestic and beautiful while still capable, and likely, to rip you to shreds. Awe is probably a more apt word. Maybe the more archaic definition of awful or awesome.

StingyJelly 3y ago
beautiful utopia not

sgu999 3y ago

Humans as a necessary evil to make a small Noah's ark of some of what's on earth_ That's a very positive view, thanks for sharing.

melagonster 3y ago
If we can. most of endeavors which try to build a smaller ecosystem has failed.

cookiengineer 3y ago

> which happens to be the exact sort humans have developed I disagree. Climate crisis, pure ignorance for destruction of nature, and not even a backup colony of our moon. If we really were that intelligent as a species, we would value the survival of our own much more than a fictive self-invented imaginary value called "money" which actually has no meaning at all in the universe.

ben_w 3y ago
We are absolutely not perfect, and the climate (and biosphere, and non-renewable resource depletion) are all indicators of our imperfections. Nevertheless, no other life has made it to the moon (let alone "and back") by its own design. I would love for us to have a backup colony on the moon; but until Starship (or equivalent) actually gets rolled out enough to make that affordable — or, better yet, a launch loop etc. — we have to make do with the Terran backups in the form of having settlements in every continent from Tamanrasset in the Sahara to Yakutsk in Siberia. Money is indeed fictional, but it's a very useful fiction that helps us make deals with each other and with ourselves at different times in our own lives. Just so long as we don't make the mistake of, for example, thinking we can feed people just by taking money from the rich without any extra thought given to where food comes from in the first place — as the saying attributed to some Native American tribal chief goes, you can't eat money.

mcmoor 3y ago

Everything is relative. We have seen thousands of other planets (And millions of other stellar objects) and this planet is a hell of a heaven compared to every single one of them. According to our observations so far anyway (to the chagrin of ufo lovers).

eru 3y ago

> This will continue to happen endlessly in the future until the Sun itself extinguishes all life on the planet, permanently. Btw, we can conceivable move the earth or keep the sun from going red giant. The means for these two are currently beyond our technology, but not beyond our science. (Basically, for the latter you need to remove non-hydrogen elements from the sun. Red dwarf stars can last trillion of years, and they are smaller than the sun. So removing the right material from the sun should get us there. The project would be a gigantic undertaking, but we'd also have tens or even hundreds of millions of years to do it.) If humanity survives long enough, we are bound to become extremely powerful as science and technology march on.

SketchySeaBeast 3y ago
If humanity becomes capable of either of those feats Earth would be an item of notalgia, not vital to our survival. We will be well and truly on to different challenges by then.
whoknowsidont 3y ago
>Btw, we can conceivable move the earth or keep the sun from going red giant. I think you are seriously underestimating or misconceptualizing how much energy that would take. Even in a very ideal timeline where we get FTL or near FTL travel technology there is no way conceivable way to do what you are talking about: both moving the earth or engineering the sun. Just visually look at the size of the sun in comparison to Earth: https://www.universetoday.com/65356/how-many-earths-can-fit-in-the-sun/ https://www.universetoday.com/65356/how-many-earths-can-fit-... And if we COULD (which again, very very unlikely) do those things we simply just wouldn't -- living on earth or in this solar system would be irrelevant.
- eru 3y ago
  > I think you are seriously underestimating or misconceptualizing how much energy that would take. No, I am not underestimating that. Yes, it takes a prodigious amount of energy to move the earth, but hundred million years is a long time, too; and the sun gives off a lot of energy. Today, most of the energy that the sun gives off is wasted. We are not too far off the technology needed to build a swarm of satellites that catch an appreciable fraction of that energy. (It's called a Dyson swarm.) We could sacrifice eg Mercury to get the mass for that; the sun itself will deliver the energy needed to run the fabrication process. Ideally we figure out how to build self-replicating machines. But even if the process of building the swarm takes a few million years, that's fine for our purposes. You could use the energy to eg run a crazy amount of ion drives on our moon's surface. You'd use the moon as a gravitational tuck to very slowly move the earth. About engineering the sun, have a look at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cw20VbX1XCc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cw20VbX1XCc My sketch for how to move the earth is also inspired by videos from that YouTube channel. He has all the math that I didn't put in here. He also has some videos about how to move the sun. See also https://www.popularmechanics.com/space/deep-space/a10885/the-shkadov-thruster-or-how-to-move-an-entire-solar-system-17000392/ https://www.popularmechanics.com/space/deep-space/a10885/the... if you want to read rather than listen to a video. Or https://www.gregschool.org/gregschoollessons/2017/9/21/shkadov-thruster-ljar4-xp8c5 https://www.gregschool.org/gregschoollessons/2017/9/21/shkad...