Thread: Our future

Well since we are trying to we are trying to start new topics, I thought of something interesting we could all discuss.

Obviously, the sun, like all stars, will not last forever. Eventually, if we are to survive as a species, we must leave this planet. But where will we go? And how will we get there?
I would like to hear your ideas on how this could be accomplished.

FIrstly, I would choose to go to a planet on Zeta 2 Retucli. Why? Well at 32.8 light years, it is very close. Secondly, there is a suspected planet in the "life zone" of the star.

Now the bigger problem, how to get there? Would we bring everyone, just a select few, only the desirable?
At the speed of light it would take 33 years to reach that planet, but wouldn't it be better if we could break the speed of light? Theoretically this can not be done. However, step outside for a minute with a laser pen and streak it accross the sun. That light just streaked accross the sun at approximately 12,450,000,000 meters/sec. that is much faster than the speed of light which is a mere 299,792,458 meters/second.
Can the speed of light be broken? ... not with our technology. However, I did hear of a device being built that would break it. The speed of light is thought to be broken at the event horizon of a black hole. This is caused by light (obviously traveling at the speed of light) being whipped around the event horizon. The machine I am talking about uses this same principle, however it uses lasers to blast a proton around a curve. Will it work? I don't know, but it could be the first step to securing our future.

Anybody seen Titan A.E.? I think when the time comes, the geniuses will all pull together and come p with some huge spaceship thing that will be able to re-create earth as we no it. All it needs is the correct tecgnology, the right planet, and a lot of dreaming.

If we can't make it in time, or find a place, sadly the human race will die out, just as all species on earth eventually do. If we could, however, evolve before the sun dies out, we might have a chance.

Evolve? What do you mean by that?

If we would build a generations ship speed wouldn't be that important. It just should be self sufficient enough to last several hundred years for long trips.

Yeah, I like that idea. Who knows, maybe Star Wars will be a realtiy one day, except for the force. But that would be cool!

Space vibrates in the upper cosmic range. Velocity is space dependant. Were one able to saturate space with frequency of its oscillation, Simple Harmonic Motion law states that space would probably rupture into a sort of warped space. Gene Roddenbury spoke with many theorists before he wrote Star Trek. Warp Theory has been around longer that Star Trek. Theoratically if one were not harmed within this Breach of space, FTL would magically be formed. Pretty S.F. at our current state of science though. S.F. is tomorrows science. Forgot who said that???

Humanity will be probably be long dead before the sun comes close to dieing out, so I wouldn't worry yourselves about it. We'll be dead by that time that's for sure, so why does it matter?

Originally Posted by sploit

Well since we are trying to we are trying to start new topics, I thought of something interesting we could all discuss.

Obviously, the sun, like all stars, will not last forever. Eventually, if we are to survive as a species, we must leave this planet. But where will we go? And how will we get there?
I would like to hear your ideas on how this could be accomplished.

Our star won't be burning out for millions and millions of years so that we have allot of time in order to solve this problem. I'd think we should start solving the environmental problems now so that we have a planet that will sustain humans in say a thousand years.

We could build a new star in the future if this one dies out. We could also move our planet closer to the sun as it dies. We could find other planets outside of our own solar system that might be habitable by humans.


There's many things that we don't know but will understand as time goes on. There will be new technologies that will be able to do things unimaginable today.

Originally Posted by kestasjk

Humanity will be probably be long dead before the sun comes close to dieing out, so I wouldn't worry yourselves about it. We'll be dead by that time that's for sure, so why does it matter?

You have a very good point. Which is why we shouldn't keep all our eggs in one basket. We've had a few thousand years of 'civilization'. Relatively recently, technology has taken-off, and it's accelerating at a tremendous rate. If we can just hang in there for maybe a couple of hundred years, maybe with our nanotechnology, quantum computers, new synthetic fibres etc. etc., we can start to get a foothold on other worlds. What are the options:

1) Modify this planet's orbit away from or toward the sun, as necessary.
2) Bring Europa into an equable orbit.
3) Colonise Mars.
4) Build 'generaration' ships with their own biosphere, and set out to other stars.
5) Build new planets in this solar sytem, using the junk available in the asteroid belt, or the Kuiper Belt.

Anyone got other ideas? Seems to me the important thing, if we aim to preserve life, and human life in particular, is to increase the odds of survival by scattering it around the cosmos a bit.

Hey, no, I'm not kidding! I believe it can be done. In fact I believe it must be done.

yeah if humanity can just hold out for 4.5 billion years, approx, then we will be able to watch our sunn die.

mind you before then we probably would have colonised the galaxy and observed such things happening to other worlds and possibly life forms.

but with the worlds current social state i don't know if we will even live to see the dawn of the next millenium.

Yes, let's tell the politicians to take off their bomber jackets. The future is where our sons and daughters are heading. What can we do to optimize the prospects for a better world?

What can we do to optimize the prospects for a better world?

Try to help the environment for without it there's not much that they can have to be able to survive.

develop new advanced energy technologies, a field which is commercially neglected.. also develop warp drive... high hopes, lol.

cosmictraveler, Clarky: Definitely. Preservation/improvement of the environment and new energy technologies must go hand-in-hand as critical factors in ensuring a world fit for life.
Technology seems to promise such fantastic opportunities just over the horizon. The areas that stand out to me are qubit quantum computing, nanotechnology, and genetic engineering - although the last is considered potentially very dangerous by many. In the field of new energy technology, fusion power may prove to be successful. As the words of the song go, "If you never dream, how you gonna have a dream come true?"

No dreams there , all those things you mention are possible with time and money. Just gotta keep on trying to get hydrogen for the prome fuel source because you'll never run out of it for it recucles itself back to water to be used over and over again. Fusion is going to happen , its just when.

Yes, the first experimental fusion plant is being built at Cadarache, near Aix-en-Provence, France, and is scheduled to become operational in 2016. The great thing is, it's an international project.

Plasma exhaust and density control in tokamak fusion experiments with neutral beam or ICRF auxiliary heating
D.S. Gray, J.A. Boedo, M. Baelmansa, R.W. Conn, R.A. Moyer, K.H. Dippela, K.H. Finkena, A. Pospieszczyka, D. Reitera, R.P. Doerner, D.L. Hillisb, G. Manka, G.H. Wolfa and TEXTOR Teama
Fusion Energy Research Program, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, California, United States of America
a Institut für Plasmaphysik, Forschungszentrum Jülich GmbH, Jülich, Germany
b Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Oak Ridge, Tennessee, United States of America

E-mail: dsgray@ucsd.edu
Received 12 September 1997, accepted for publication 9 July 1998
Print publication: Issue 11 (November 1998)

Abstract. Particle exhaust studies have been carried out with the pump limiter ALT-II in the TEXTOR tokamak, under ohmic conditions as well as with NBI and with ICRF auxiliary heating, and the pumping effectiveness is shown to meet the requirements for a fusion reactor. Quantitative measurements of Dα emission, made with a CCD camera, have been used to determine the particle efflux from the plasma. Roughly one third of the Dα emission occurs in a diffuse `halo' that surrounds the limiter belt. The particle confinement time is less than the energy confinement time by a factor of typically 4. Modelling in 2-D of plasma and neutral flows in the TEXTOR boundary has been performed. The source of D+ ions can be related to the Dα emission by a factor that is found to depend on the location of the emission and on the discharge density. The predicted total Dα emission agrees with the measurements within a factor of about 2. Pumping of ALT-II allows for density control; with NBI, the density can be increased well beyond the ohmic limit without the discharge ending in disruption. The plasma particle efflux and the pumped flux both increase with density as well as with heating power. The exhaust efficiency is typically ~2%, with the highest values observed in high density NBI discharges. Higher exhaust rates are observed with NBI than with ICRF. Plasma and neutral flows in the ALT-II scoops have been simulated, making use of a simple plasma model. The scoop may be viewed as a non-linear amplifier of the plasma particle flux; the amplification is found to range from about 2 to 3 for most cases. Flow reversal in the scoop is found in some of the NBI cases and particularly in the highest density case.



You see America has already been doing fusion experiments for over 50 years and has tried many ways to get it to work and spent over 100 billion dollars to try and achieve that goal. After all this time nothing yet has been close to getting a reactor to work with fusion type reaction. I wish them good luck but did wish they would have tried to work in America for it already has 4 types of fusion reactors online therefore saving them enormous amounts of money in buildoing another one.

Thanks for the info, cosmictraveler. My last entry was quite incorrect. I should have said "the first fusion experiment that's designed to culminate in a fusion plant capable of producing commercial power".

For anyone who's interested, this is from Wikipedia:
"ITER is an international tokamak (magnetic confinement fusion) experiment, planned to be built in France and designed to show the scientific and technological feasibility of a full-scale fusion power reactor. It builds upon research conducted on devices such as TFTR, JET, JT-60, and T-15, and will be considerably larger than any of them. The program is anticipated to last for 30 years - 10 years for construction, and 20 years of operation - and cost approximately €10 billion."