The Thought Box

[Kroms]

What happens in 5 billion years? The sun "dies" the earth "burns"?

I want to see it, but we´ll never see that.

 

One of my biggest question: I can´t answer it myself.

How look like the world, if there is NOTHING: No world, no big beng, no nothing, no matter, not even THE NOTHING!

 

True. But then again we've only been here for a few million and we're yet to evolve even more. I wonder if we'll adapt though?

[Thrik]

We won't adapt through evolution to a sun that'll get so hot the entire surface of our planet will be melted off until it becomes a flat, featureless sphere.

 

Evacuation is always an answer, of course.

[neon_git]

Try watching this. It's quite old now but it's an interesting idea, certainly fun when thinking about the nature of reality.

 

As I was watching that I thought, hey this seems just like Flatland (The narrator then goes on to present a portion of it practically verbatim!). Flatland deals with explaining multiple spacial dimensions rather than arbitrary "infinities". It's well worth reading if you can find it although the first half is a bit of a slog.

 

True. But then again we've only been here for a few million and we're yet to evolve even more. I wonder if we'll adapt though?

 

I'm no expert, but it seems to me that humans as a race wont evolve anymore (until society collapses anyhow). Evolution is a process which progressively makes changes to an organism so that it better suits it's environment. Human beings posses the ability to change their environment to better suit them. This means that if somebody's genes have mutated outside the norm then they will be less suited to the environments we have created for ourselves.

 

I know alot of people who are way smarter than me disagree but I've never seen an explanation of why.

[elTee]

The environment we have created for ourselves is capable of sustaining most forms of life - certainly very-slightly-mutated human beings anyway. It might not have been designed for them, but then, what environment has ever been designed for a new form of life? It either adapts to the environment it is given or it dies.

 

That said I know what you mean. I guess it's just that the variations are so small, and happen so slowly, that it won't be easily visible as a mutation at an individual level. But then suddenly in a few thousand years we'll all be a different shape or something.

[Sven_Q45]

It happens in ca 5 billion years.

 

Where is bgbennyboy?

[Thrik]

Well, not quite five. It's going to take less than one billion years for the constantly rising temperatures to kill the vast majority of life on earth, and within two billion years the water will be permanently vapourised.

 

While we may hang on by living very deep underground and somehow coming up with an alternative to water (or simply keeping our existing stocks recycled down there), there's no way we'll reach anywhere near five billion years — nor will the planet as we know it.

 

The only real way to survive is to simply get the hell out of here. The only complications is: will we survive long enough to develop the technology to do so? Whether it's war or premature global warming (it's inevitably coming sooner or later), there's a lot that could take us out.

 

[Kroms]

I'm no expert, but it seems to me that humans as a race wont evolve anymore (until society collapses anyhow). Evolution is a process which progressively makes changes to an organism so that it better suits it's environment. Human beings posses the ability to change their environment to better suit them. This means that if somebody's genes have mutated outside the norm then they will be less suited to the environments we have created for ourselves.

 

People who live in Africa have noses that are flatter than, say, mine. This is because of all the dust, and they have had to adapt to breathing in less of it. The nostrils are thus shut-in, as a process of human evolution/adaptation.

 

You raise a good point on us changing the environment...but at some point it'll get out of our hands. Say a nuclear war broke-out: we're essentially screwed. This is Frankenstein's monster. We can't keep on changing nature because it'll cream us.

 

That said I know what you mean. I guess it's just that the variations are so small, and happen so slowly, that it won't be easily visible as a mutation at an individual level. But then suddenly in a few thousand years we'll all be a different shape or something.

 

I forgot where I read this, but apparently humanity is just the first step in a long chain of evolution. If our species survives long enough, our great X 100^(million zeroes) will be the start of an even newer species. Man my great x 100^(million zeroes) grandson will be Wolverine!

 

The only real way to survive is to simply get the hell out of here.

 

True.

 

 

This all being said, I do believe in God and I'm religious. I'm not saying ZOMG evolution is wrong or anything, I could write for days about this (I've done some of my homework) but I still find it oh-so annoying that science will now replace God. Ask half of the people who say that what that means and they say they have no clue. 90% of the "scientific" population are in it for the orgies, I guess.

 

But that's just me.