Put it into perspective.

[Ste]

How long have Humans Exsisted? As evidence suggests maybe 50,000 years at the minimum...

How much longer do you thanks Humans will be able to exsist on this Planet? This Varies greatly, I believe at the rate human kind is consumming natural resources and how we treat the enviroment, maybe another 500 or a 1000 years. Maybe.

Lets now compare those thoughts to how old the universe is thought to be. The average amount is around 13-15 Billion years old. So As you can See Humans have exsisted for a Small Fraction of the universes Age and Humans will continue exsisting for alot less then a fraction of that.

Now Lets talk about our Sun. Our Sun whether you think of it as a Main Sequence Star or not, thats what it is. It is theorized that in about 5 Billion years Nuclear Fusion at its core Will cease and it will evolve into a Red Giant. During this transition Phase The Suns Diameter will extend to engulf Mercury, Venus and prehaps Even Earth. It is also theorized that By this time the Suns Mass may decrease enough to allow the planet Earths orbit to be extended and Not be engulfed.. In any case Humans will most likely not exsist long enough to see this Happen. If the Planet Is not engulfed and Humans somehow manage to exsist after that, It is theorized that Our sun will shed its outer most layers of Gas and form A Planetary Nebula, At Such time the Expanding Gases and Material from the sun will Cause all life on earth to cease if still present. It will Then Cool to a White Dwarf then A Black Dwarf. Currently No Black Dwarfs are thought to exsist.

Currently the light Earth Detects from the Andromeda Galaxy Is Blue Shifted, Therefore it is thought That Our Two Galaxies will Collide in around 3 Billion years.
Again, Humans will most likely not exsist long enough to see such an event.

I thought this would be an interesting thread, Lets hear some thought provoking responses now.
Please Forgive Any grammatical or Spelling Mistakes I have made, I did my best to correct them. I also abuse the use of capital letters.


Sources:
My High Schools Advanced Space Science Class
http://csep10.phys.utk.edu/astr162/lect/ga.../colliding.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planetary_nebula
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_dwarf
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Dwarf

This is an Exact copy of a Post I made on another forum.

 

[Nubius]

well.......the way I see it it seems that there is a cycle of ruling species and then being wiped out.

Of course I only base this off of dinosaurs being around then being wiped out....soooooo it's just a matter of time before our reign is up...whether that be from our own hands or just some crazy natural disaster who knows.

One thing that I'm fairly certain of is we wont come close to 3 billion years lol.

not unless we make contact with aliens and basically do like star trek or star wars

 

[Ste]

I regret that I won't live long enough to See our sun Die. That would be awesome.

 

[Nubius]

Funny though that your sources say 5 billion years for the sun......I remember reading this book when I was a kid that they estimated it had approx 429 million left.....of course this was probably in the third grade so that's like.....12 years ago, WHO KNOWS.

I wonder what would happen though if you were alive to see the sun die. I'm sure it would infact be some crazy crap to see before you all just died instantly lol.

Of course everything you'd see would be delayed by 8 minutes.......believe that's how long it takes for the suns light to reach us

 

[Ste]

Funny though that your sources say 5 billion years for the sun......I remember reading this book when I was a kid that they estimated it had approx 429 million left.....of course this was probably in the third grade so that's like.....12 years ago, WHO KNOWS.

I wonder what would happen though if you were alive to see the sun die. I'm sure it would infact be some crazy crap to see before you all just died instantly lol.

Of course everything you'd see would be delayed by 8 minutes.......believe that's how long it takes for the suns light to reach us

Well, Our sun isn't massive enough to go supernova but After The Red Giant Stage it will blow off its outer layers and form a planetary Nubula, at that time its likely that the hot Gases will destroy whatever is left of life on Earth.

It is possible for Gases to recombine near the Core and a Secondary explosion will be caused which would be a supernova.

Whats the more interesting fact about supernovas is that, it is thought all the heavier Elements, Heavier then iron, are formed from the subsequent explosion.

 

[Nubius]

I take it you like a lot of carl sagans books? (maybe it's sagen...I forget)

That stuff melts my brain. It just gets into some pretty amazing things. I still can't believe some of the pictures of the eagle eye nebula I think it is.....how can something that amazing just be out in space...it's mind boggling.

it is thought all the heavier Elements, Heavier then iron, are formed from the subsequent explosion.

do you mean natural elements or things like 'dark matter' ?

 

[Flanker]

No, anything that isn't Hydrogen or Helium was formed inside a star. We humans, ourselves, are formed from the mass of some exploded star somewhere. Think about it, that finger of yours, chances are that the atoms that make it up were once a part of the mayhem inside a star.

And I think humans will last much longer. Look at how far we've come since the year 1000AD. It was a long time ago, and because techonology advances exponentionally (as well as the human popuation) we're bound to last a long time.

Though it would be exciting to see the Sun expand (Nubius, imagine waking up and seeing a bright-red sun occupy half the horizon) I'd be more excited to see the Andromeda-MilkyWay collision. A couple million years before it actually happened, you'd see the galaxy approaching the Milky Way. Now imagine going out at night, looking up, and seeing this huge mothafugga of a galaxy take up the whole sky.

****, if only...

I love Astronomy. It doesn't get hard enough

Its Carl Sagan, and no, most of this stuff can be found out by watching the Science Channel or something (which I do quite a lot). Also helps to read books on it. The FUN stuff doesn't start till you get to quantum mechanics. I recommend A Brief History of Time, and The Universe in A Nutshell (both by Stephen Hawking) as advaced reading.

I'm just answering random questions I picked up in the thread. The Sun is 4.5billion years old, and has 5 billion years left in it's life.

Oh yea, one last thing. Nubius, you said that you found it amazing how the beautiful nebulae were just out there in space. Well, for one, nebulae are usually the remnants of an exploded star. But what I wanted to say was that with the naked eye, that stuff doesn't look as beautiful. If you were to look at the cat's eye nebulae with your eye and nothing else, you'd just see a bunch of blue lights and stuff. If you've ever looked at the Orion nebula through a telescope, the beautiful "red flower" is nowhere to be found. You only see 4-or so blue stars, and thats all. Kind of disappointing. Those beautiful pics are taken though UV and Infrared and other wavelenths that our eyes just can't see.

 

[Nubius]

I'm just saying though, they look like crazy fluffy clouds, it's ridiculous.

I've got carl sagans "universe explained" but yeah, obviously it doesn't go into the quantum mechanics and all that kind of stuff. I've watched a lot of shows about quantum mechanics and string theory and all that good stuff and whew....it's too much lol.

Definitely stuff that's beyond me

 

[Ste]

No, anything that isn't Hydrogen or Helium was formed inside a star. We humans, ourselves, are formed from the mass of some exploded star somewhere. Think about it, that finger of yours, chances are that the atoms that make it up were once a part of the mayhem inside a star.

Not all elements are formed at a stars core, during a supernova Heavier elements are formed.



"Supernova explosions are the main source of all the elements heavier than oxygen, and they are the only source of many important elements. In standard cosmology, the Big Bang produced hydrogen, helium, and traces of lithium, while all heavier elements are synthesized in stars and supernovae. For example, all the calcium in our bones and all the iron in our hemoglobin were synthesized in supernova explosions, billions of years ago. Supernovae inject these heavy elements into the interstellar medium, ultimately enriching the molecular clouds that are the sites of star formation. Evidence from daughter products of short-lived radioactive isotopes shows that a nearby supernova helped determine the composition of the Solar System 4.5 billion years ago. Supernova production of heavy element over cosmic time ultimately made possible the chemistry of life on Earth."


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supernova

Btw "The Elegant Universe" is a great book.

 

[gaara]

I'm more interested in some of those really far out questions like where exactly a wormhole takes stuff and how far the universe really extends and what's on the "edge" of it if anything at all

It really does boggle the mind thinking about how long the universe has been around and how big it really is