Its the end of the World as we know it Thread

Inspired by the great REM song, i have a new Cosmos topic for you all.

What will happen in the future when earth finally ceases to exist? How will the earth cease to exist?

Will humans still exist on Earth when it stops existing? So will we be walking along the street and then BAM! The Earth implodes...?

Will humans have already past away a long time before this? Will we have died out long before? I believe that we will have gone longer before the Earth is destroyed.

Will humans have left the planet and inhabited another one ala Star Trek style? I don't think that we will find a way to inhabit another planet. There are so many factors to consider. One we don't know what damage living in space for extended periods of time has on humans. Even the prospect of relocating several million people into space is a daunting task, and you have to wonder whether there are enough resources on Earth to do that.
Relocating to another planet also requires that a suitable planet exists. There's no point relocating to a planet appears suitable only to have it explode while we live on it.

Matt

Not to mention the considerable distance everybody would have to travel to get there. I wouldn't be surprised if in the next century the space people MADE a planet and kind of did a Noah's Ark to bring stuff over there...

Aaah, the good old 'end of the world' subject, it's always a winner. One thing that is for sure is that the earth as we know it will cease to exist one day. It may be in the far distant future, but it will happen. Whether we will witness it, as M@t stated, is unknown.

What I believe, however, is that us humans will be long gone by that stage. I don't think we will be eliminated due to our own wars or misfortunes - such as blowing ourselves up trying to discover something new. I think we will get wiped out completely by a massive asteroid. When this happens, we will not be advanced enough to prevent it, hence, any efforts that we make to preserve life will fail. If we send some people out to space, they may live past the collision, but will not be able to keep alive the human race, as they will die and the end for us will come.

That is, mind you, only what I think will happen. I'm not limitted to that, it's just one possibility out of many, but I think it'll probably be most likely to happen. Nobody really knows. No one can really predict. It's just a matter of what is likely to happen...but, as we know, what is likely to happen doesn't necessarily happen (as I can tell you with gambling...but that's another issue).

What if an asteroid never hit and we actually do see the end of the earth? I don't think that's even possible. Earth's end will come (most probably again) when the sun expands and consumes it. By that time, all us humans would have long gone due to the extreme heat that this expanding sun will emit. This, however, is millions and millions of years away, so by that time, we may have indeed discovered other planets to live on and even other galaxies. We may have discovered how to travel at the speed of light...maybe even at several times the speed of light - you never know.

E = mc^2

That famous equation states that you cannot travel faster then the speed of light...or does it?

Prot wrote:
Prot: You humans...sometimes it’s hard to imagine how you’ve made it this far.
- -
Mark: What if I were to tell you that according to a man who lived on our planet, named Einstein, that nothing can travel faster than the speed of light?

Prot: I would say that you misread Einstein, Dr. Powell. May I call you Mark? You see Mark, what Einstein actually said was that nothing can accelerate to the speed of light because its mass would become infinite. Einstein said nothing about entities already traveling at the speed of light or faster - at Tachyon speed.

Things that have not yet been proven cannot be said to not exist or to never happen. It might just be that when this planet we call Earth finally dies, we humans will be so far that we would have already forgotten about it. Our race could be all over the universe, inhabiting many hundreds of different planets.

The distant future...so unpredictable and mysterious...it's a wonderful thing isn't it? The entire universe - it's existance is just amazing. It never seizes to amaze and fascinate me.

liquid

Greg

When earth ends thats it, all knowledge and survival turns out to be a waste. There is probably various other planets that will just go through the cycle : go through millions of years of evolution, struggling and persistance only to have it end in an instant, why bother?

That's true mate, why bother with anything? Why are we doing anything that we are doing in our little, meaningless lives? Why did you even post that last post? What will it all mean when the whole universe collapses on itself and starts to expand again?

NOTHING!! It's all nothing. We are just living life cos we mean something to each other. It doesn't matter what other life forms on other planets that are non-contactible by us are doing...all that really matters is what effects us and that's what life is about. We do stuff cos it effects us and the people around us - that gives us joy, happiness, freedom...whatever.

But, if we look at the greater scale - the universe - it all means absolutely nothing.

Austin wrote:
But what does it all mean Venessa?

Greg

liquid wrote: What I believe, however, is that us humans will be long gone by that stage. I don't think we will be eliminated due to our own wars or misfortunes - such as blowing ourselves up trying to discover something new. I think we will get wiped out completely by a massive asteroid. When this happens, we will not be advanced enough to prevent it, hence, any efforts that we make to preserve life will fail. If we send some people out to space, they may live past the collision, but will not be able to keep alive the human race, as they will die and the end for us will come.

That's an interesting thought...if humans were to kill each other off in wars. It would be the worst way to go, but its quite possible. I'll leave the odds to Greg.

Just a thought, when the earth implodes, would it be instantaneous, or would it be a gradual process where the crust breaks apart and lives just dies off?

And you sure love your asteroids don't you? Asteroids -> haemmorroids...i'm almost encouraged to write a poem