this post was submitted on 08 Feb 2024
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[–] [email protected] 34 points 8 months ago (6 children)

We will have the collision with Andromeda Galaxy a few billion years before, so don't worry :)

[–] [email protected] 31 points 8 months ago (4 children)

Colliding with andromeda won’t do anything. Galaxies are almost all empty space.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 8 months ago (3 children)
[–] [email protected] 11 points 8 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 3 points 8 months ago

You won't mortal

[–] [email protected] 5 points 8 months ago (2 children)

What if some alien civilization is watching the whole thing and taking bets

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 8 months ago

Imagine if the last thing we saw before colliding with another planet was another alien race on that planet looking hopelessly right back at us.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 8 months ago

It could set if a wave of supernovas, though, which would be bad for anything living in either galaxy. AFAIK our understanding of the process isn't good enough to know.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 8 months ago (2 children)

Can't it mess up our nice solar system if other large objects come even remotely close?

[–] [email protected] 5 points 8 months ago

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andromeda%E2%80%93Milky_Way_collision#Fate_of_the_Solar_System

Based on current calculations they predict a 50% chance that in a merged galaxy, the Solar System will be swept out three times farther from the galactic core than its current distance. They also predict a 12% chance that the Solar System will be ejected from the new galaxy sometime during the collision. Such an event would have no adverse effect on the system and the chances of any sort of disturbance to the Sun or planets themselves may be remote.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago

There are actually a bunch of stars that will pass by very close to the solar system in the far future (tens of thousands of years) and they could possibly increase the number of asteroid and comet impacts drastically.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 8 months ago

But it will be beautiful to watch!!

[–] [email protected] 3 points 8 months ago
[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

Nah, we will build a stellar engine prior and move ourselves wherever we want. We will have colonized all the Milky Way and most of Andromeda. It'll be like a brother and sister finally meeting near the washer.

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[–] [email protected] 28 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (10 children)

Have no fear, the sun will not explode. You need about 8 times the mass of the sun in order for a star to explode in a supernova. The sun will expand into a red giant when it finishes fusing hydrogen into helium. When this happens the earth might be swallowed up in the expansion. After the sun finishes burning helium and continues up the fusion chain to iron the fusion in the core will fail and the outer layers of the sun will puff off into a planetary nebula. This won't be a particularly violent event. The naked core leftover will be a white dwarf which is effectively just a molten ball of mostly carbon and oxygen gradually cooling off. It will take trillions of years to cool off.

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[–] [email protected] 26 points 8 months ago (3 children)

Tbh I think this shared experience kinda shows to me how we grow selfish as we grow up, we were quite aware that it will not affect us, but the thought of the world where we see so many people living ending one day like this haunted us, now we don’t care, we don’t care about anything that doesn’t affect us or people we know…

[–] [email protected] 11 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Maybe, when we are young, the world (and the universe at large) are part of our identity of self, but as we grow older we reduce our sense of "self" to just our own physical body and mind.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 8 months ago

I have seen some people having the inverse transition, blending with their environment and communities as they got older. Perhaps it's more like a cultural thing than a personal process. It's hard not to become selfish in our society model.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 8 months ago (1 children)

And that's the reason why we fuck our planet for profit. Climate change? Not our problem, the future generations can deal with it.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Tbh climate change has started to affect all of us who don’t have the luxury to always remain in a climate controlled environment, i am not looking forward to coming home at 2pm when the (feels like) temperature is 50C, and god knows what we will hit this year

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

Yes, me too. But sadly most people love it. "Oh it's so warm, spring is finally coming", there wasn't even winter yet, bitch. "Aw it's really bad weather outside", it's the first rain in 4 months, you should be happy you dense fuckwit.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 8 months ago

Personally I've always been into space exploration stories (I mean, Star Wars isn't always exploration (I read the books, and some are about uncharted stuff a bit, like Outbound flight, and I do like Star Trek too) and kinda hope we're at that tech by then. I also really enjoy stuff like Schlock Mercenary and videos like https://youtu.be/ulCdoCfw-bY which while showing a bomb, also talks about a way to use black holes to outlive Red and White Dwarves, which normally should be the last source of light and heat in the universe. A colony properly using the energy black holes would still contain could potentially last trillion of years longer than all stars.

[–] [email protected] 26 points 8 months ago

What's scary is that was already a few years ago, so it's a EVEN CLOSER now!

[–] [email protected] 25 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (2 children)

There is a certain sort of ennui that comes with the realization that the heat death of the universe is inevitable, and no matter what you do, no matter how much you manage to make your mark on the world/solar system/galaxy/universe or how successful and prosperous your descendants may be, it will all eventually be lost to eternal entropic stasis.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Come join the last vibration

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

Whoa what do you call this crazy noodle haha you guys know how to party

[–] [email protected] 5 points 8 months ago

"As a child, I once considered such unknowns sinister. Now, though, I understand they bear no ill will. The universe is, and we are." - Solanum, Outer Wilds

[–] [email protected] 14 points 8 months ago

too late. i hear the sun has already started exploding and that it’s allowing humanity to exist.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 8 months ago (3 children)

I read somewhere that the sun might expand a bit and become too hot for Earth in just 500 million years time, so it might be a shorter window than you'd think

[–] [email protected] 10 points 8 months ago (2 children)

You're missing a zero. The sun will expand into the red giant phase in about 5 billion years.

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago

The sun will get brighter in 500 to 600 million years to the extent that many plants won't be able to survive due to disruption to the carbon cycle. Expansion comes later.

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 8 months ago (1 children)

There is nothing we can do... Yet!

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 months ago (3 children)

And there never will be. Then again, we won't stay around long enough to have to worry about it.

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 8 months ago

Not to worry. Before it explodes, our sun will expand into a red giant much larger than the orbit of the Earth.
No one on Earth will be around to witness the explosion. So we have that going for us, which is nice.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 8 months ago

Humanity will either be long dead or colonizing other planets by then.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 8 months ago

Bad news captain, earth will have surface temperature of 100°C in 1 billion years already.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 8 months ago (2 children)

Star lifting. Mine the metals and shit out of that star and it'll potentially live trillions of years.

And no need to worry about political will. Thar's gold in that thar sun!

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[–] [email protected] 6 points 8 months ago (1 children)

let's feed it more hydrogen!

[–] [email protected] 5 points 8 months ago (1 children)

That'll make it worse, unless we combine it with removing heavier elements. Basically if we figure out how to strip-mine the sun one day we'll make it last much longer

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Is this a universal experience.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 8 months ago

I think it might be. I still remember it happening to me and that was decades ago.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 8 months ago

DON'T PANIC!

[–] [email protected] 3 points 8 months ago (1 children)

10 year old me: get me some science books what can we do to speed it up

[–] [email protected] 3 points 8 months ago

Throw iron into it.

A lot of iron.

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