[Vision2020] "When is the sun going to explode...?" "last days" & The Big Rip: Was: Re: Postcardgate [LONG]

[Ted Moffett]

I find is exceeding bizarre that separation of church and state has to
be defended so agressively in the current political/social climate.
Maybe "The Big Rip" (truly the "last days" of our universe) is already
occuring in some sense in our political/social system...

All joking aside, our Sun is not in the class of stars (much more
massive stars can explode in supernovas) that will "explode" while the
Earth is still habitable for humans.  Our Sun will eventually expand
into a Red Giant, with mass ejections occuring, that might be called
"explosions," but before this process fully unfolds the Sun will
become much hotter, rendering life on Earth impossible.  The Sun now
has coronal mass ejections, but to some extent the Earth's magnetic
field diverts these events away from a direct hit on Earth.

The Sun has been and is gradually becoming hotter, a fact which
results in the "faint young Sun paradox" in climate science, due to
the hot climate periods on Earth (PETM) millions of years ago when
solar input was less.

This source (A Brief History of the Universe:
http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/timeline.html#future
http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/README.html ) indicates in 1.1 billion
years the Sun will be 10% hotter, causing serious problems for life.
So humanity has hundreds of millions of years I would guess before
solar evolution will threaten our existence, plenty of time to execute
an escape, if possible... In 3.5 billion years, a 40% hotter sun will
evaporate the oceans.  The Red Giant phase will start in 5.4 billion
years, but life as we know it on Earth will already be long
extinguished, unless there are nearly miraculous technologies to
prevent this (giant solar shields?).  In terms of the Earth's lifespan
as a biosphere that can support life as we know it, most of this time
period has passed, given life has been on Earth for about 3.5 billion
years

The "Big Rip" is now predicted by Physics as an end to our universe,
when all matter degenerates... No life possible.  For those inclinded
to worry about the ultimate future of life, this is bad news. From "A
Brief History of the Universe" source above: "10 to the 23 power years
from now - All galactic clusters boil off.  From then on: the Universe
expands exponentially... All black holes eventually evaporate, and all
other forms of matter eventually disperse into individual elementary
particles."

>From American Institute of Physics website on "The Big Rip"
http://www.aip.org/png/2003/200.htm : "In the Big Rip model of
cosmology, "phantom energy," a particular kind of dark energy
supposedly fueling the accelerating expansion of the universe, will,
in the course of time, undo all the bound states prevalent in nature.
In this way galaxies would lose their constituent stars. Later solar
systems would fly apart. Later still even atoms would break apart
since electrons would no longer be held by their associated nuclei."
-----------------------------------------
http://wiki.answers.com/Q/When_will_our_sun_explode

>From website above:

When will our sun explode?

The Sun is an averaged size star so it doesn't have enough mass to explode.
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Vision2020 Post: Ted Moffett

On 10/23/10, Dickow <dickow at turbonet.com> wrote:
> I've just got to play devil's advocate...

> But... this suggests that we are now in 'the last days.' Huh? I keep hearing
> that. In fact, I have trouble counting how many times I've lived through the
> predicted end of the World. Well, I suppose, philosophically speaking, we
> are forever in 'the last days'. How long are 'the last days?' I million
> years? 3 billion years? When is the sun going to explode anyway? I forget.
> God... I lose sleep just thinking about that... when the sun explodes. It's
> going to, you know. Any time now. And, by God, I'm a Catholic, so I'll be
> ready.
>
> Bob Dickow, troublemaker
>