Quote from: TheHackMan on September 11, 2008, 06:02:16 pm
Quote from: Terry16389 on September 10, 2008, 05:12:13 pm
Well, as most of you know, the world was believed to have a slight chance of ending today. Some supercollider or another was supposed to generate a black hole, ending Earth and our entire solar system.
This rumor is a load of bullshit on so many levels. For one we are already doing the same thing and the people who say this stuff spew this crap every time a new super-collider comes online. The truth is they are smashing photons of light and even if that near impossible chance came to be the black hole would be the size of a photon of light which won't do a thing. It would take a black hole at least as big as our sun to destroy the earth.
Though I agree with you on the super collider, I should correct you on this. Photons have no mass, they're just the particle of light. Light acts as both a wave and a particle, and the particle portion of light's behavior is called the photon.
I think you're thinking of neutrons or quarks, since both don't have a charge. These are actual particles that will be accelerated to 99.99% the speed of light (185,999 miles an hour) and then smashed into eachother. Now it IS possible this could generate a black hole, but the black hole would be the size of about.. one one trillionth of an atom and weight as much as the two neutrons minus roughly a third of their mass due to the fusion process. Needless to say, that's such a small amount of weight that the black hole would evaperate before it becomes a threat.
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The biggest threat to life on earth is the current global warming threat we are facing right now and aside from that the next thing we have to worry about is in 2029 I believe when there is a 1:1000ish possibility that an asteroid will pass through a keyhole and hit us 7 years later(April Friday 13th).
Though global warming is now considered real, even though it's still a theory. We need to consider that humans have contributed less than 3% of the current carbon dioxide in the atmosphere right now. A single volcanic eruption roughly equals 100 times the yearly output of carbon dioxide that humans produce right now. My point being that reducing carbon immissions wont save the earth. Doesn't mean we shouldn't take care of the planet however.
We're due for a major impact however. Roughly speaking there should be a major impact once every 100,000 to 200,000 years.
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As far as the total destruction of earth goes that will be happening in about 200 billion years as the sun continues to expand and due to gravitational forces it will probably stop expanding just short of the earth due to the fact that as the sun moves out the other planets will slowly move away too. The destruction will happen when the sun finally collapses into a red dwarf and the shock wave will spread out and turn the solar system into a few small rock balls and some dust and whatnot.
Our star is a medium sized yellow dwarf star. It's average lifespan is about 12 billion years. Right now it's 5 billion years old. In about another 5 billion years the hydrogen core will deplete itself, eat into it's helium, and so on until it converts sodium into iron. At that point it'll expand and the outer photosphere will be in earth's orbit, which will slow down the Earth eventually causing the sun to swallow it whole.
BTW, our sun is too small to supernovae, it will however turn into a stellar nebulae, but we'll all be dead long before that.
My guess will be either the asteroid or comet that will bring an end to humanity.
Afterall, even with extreme weather patterns from Global Warming, we could develop technology to deal with it. And there's nothing we can do about the sun swallowing the earth in 5 billion years. But I hope at that point we aren't still relegated to our little blue spitball.