The sun's distant future

[Jax]

oooo I do love a good space talk

My interest has been piqued by this so called Dark Flow and how it seems, some structure beyond the visible universe is pulling on matter in our vicinity making clusters of galaxies race towards one location...Its already been ruled out that no sort of Black hole could be doing it.

What interests me more than anything is the fact this thing seems to be counter-acting against expansion & gravity...very cool

Personally I think God pulled the plug out by accident

 

[Asbo Zaprudder]

oooo I do love a good space talk

My interest has been piqued by this so called Dark Flow and how it seems, some structure beyond the visible universe is pulling on matter in our vicinity making clusters of galaxies race towards one location...Its already been ruled out that no sort of Black hole could be doing it.

What interests me more than anything is the fact this thing seems to be counter-acting against expansion & gravity...very cool

Personally I think God pulled the plug out by accident

Yeah, it seem that the Dark Flow is even pulling on the Great Attractor. What did happen to Elvis anyway?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Attractor
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_flow

 

[Jax]

If my limited memory on the subject remembers right then Dark Matter is supposed to be counteract expansion right? but theres not enough of it to stop the already MASSIVE 93 billion lightyear Universe from expanding faster and faster...

I wonder if there is a concentrated source of this this stuff at this location, while not big enough to counteract the entire universe it has a hold on a part, making these clusters come towards it into a mini big crunch of sorts.

Hell it could be a Dark Matter Galaxy - how cool would that be...of course its not but one can dream

 

[ProtoAvatar]

If the universe would be composed only of particles moving at light speed, FAR from being frozen in time, time would flow just fine for such an universe, from his perspective.

Fair point about having to choose the correct frame although you might be in danger of falling into the same trap yourself. Can you have a frame of reference other than that of an individual photon in a universe that consists solely of photons? Surely, every other photon would look frozen in time as their relative speed has to be exactly c.

Yes, every other photon will look frozen in time, but for you, the observing photon, time will flow just fine.
And this will be true for every photon in the universe AKA you will find no frame of reference in the universe where time stays still AKA time will most certainly not disappear.

The only frame of reference known to man where time stays still is inside a black hole, the singularity.

 

[Asbo Zaprudder]

Yes, every other photon will look frozen in time, but for you, the observing photon, time will flow just fine.
And this will be true for every photon in the universe AKA you will find no frame of reference in the universe where time stays still.

Of course, the universe would look mighty peculiar being squished (actually rotated through a hypersphere, I believe) into an infinitely thin plane at right angles to your path. Time might elapse, but there would be zero distance between any two points along your worldline.

 

[Asbo Zaprudder]

I wonder if there is a concentrated source of this this stuff at this location, while not big enough to counteract the entire universe it has a hold on a part, making these clusters come towards it into a mini big crunch of sorts.

Hell it could be a Dark Matter Galaxy - how cool would that be...of course its not but one can dream

There are "super-structures" such as the Sloan Great Wall, the Pisces-Cetus Supercluster Complex, CfA2 Great Wall, and the possible supervoid corresponding to the CMB cold spot.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Large-scale_structure_of_the_cosmos#Large-scale_structure

These don't explain the Dark Flow of course, but it would probably take a dark matter supercluster rather than a galaxy to produce the effect.

 

[ProtoAvatar]

Yes, every other photon will look frozen in time, but for you, the observing photon, time will flow just fine.
And this will be true for every photon in the universe AKA you will find no frame of reference in the universe where time stays still.

Of course, the universe would look mighty peculiar being squished (actually rotated through a hypersphere, I believe) into an infinitely thin plane at right angles to your path. Time might elapse, but there would be zero distance between any two points along your worldline.

The special relativistic space contraction is just like the special relativistic time dilation.

Meaning that for the observing photon space will be 3-dimensional, this photon - and the universe - will have length. The other photons will be 2-dimensional due to space contraction, yes, but this won't change the 3-dimensionality of space as observed.
And, again, this will be true for every photon AKA for every possible reference frame existing in the universe.

 

[Jax]

These don't explain the Dark Flow of course, but it would probably take a dark matter supercluster rather than a galaxy to produce the effect.

SuperCluster of Dark Matter...now that would be cool and also very hard to find, being invisible so far to any of our instruments. I read a theory about there being a small pocket of Dark Matter near Earth because of some speed anaomly space crafts keep experiencing at a particular point and no one can explain it

Wonderful weird world of our Universe ey

 

[Asbo Zaprudder]

The only frame of reference known to man where time stays still is inside a black hole, the singularity.

Well, we don't know what happens there anyway, until someone comes up with a convincing theory of quantum gravity. In any case, experimental verification would be impossible if a singularity is always conveniently hidden from observation by cosmic censorship, but that's as yet unproven. The discovery of a naked singularity would be quite a turn up for the books.

All this extrapolation produces lots of interesting speculation but it won't get the pigs in. It's kind of fun to poke holes in Cox's arguments, but the program is, of course, intended as a light and fluffy introduction to these things. Translating arcane maths into accessible language is never going to lead to precise statements that are also entertaining. Perhaps there's a law for that as well...

 

[EJA]

So in 3.5 billion years the Earth will be like Venus is now, eh? Oh dear. I'm not sure even an atmospheric shield would be able to improve things much in those kind of stellar conditions. And then, of course, the sun will swell up into a red giant and totally engulf the planet.

 

[KJbushway]

Funny everyone says something about saving Earth some how by doing something to Earth itself. How come no-one says something dealing with the sun itself, maybe a way to keep it alive and smaller for longer?

 

[sojourner]

^ because that would be an exponential harder thing to do. The earth is big. The sun is much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, bigger.

 

[Asbo Zaprudder]

It'd probably be easier to move the human race to a suitable planet around Proxima Centauri (if one exists). However, problems with red dwarfs include that they have a lot of flare activity, their luminosity varies considerably, and planets are likely to be tidally locked.

 

[C.E. Evans]

Eh, nothing lasts forever. Everything eventually dies. The Human race (or whatever it will become billions of years from now) may find a way to cheat "ultimate death" by moving onto a higher plane of existence, but that's so far beyond reality (literally) right now...

 

[KJbushway]

^ because that would be an exponential harder thing to do. The earth is big. The sun is much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, bigger.

Sorry didn't know people always took the easy way out.

 

[Meredith]

Funny everyone says something about saving Earth some how by doing something to Earth itself. How come no-one says something dealing with the sun itself, maybe a way to keep it alive and smaller for longer?

With "Stellar Lifting" We could probably squeeze another several billion of years out of the sun.

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

Of course we would need to have developed a very advanced space faring civilization to achieve this.

 

[sojourner]

^ because that would be an exponential harder thing to do. The earth is big. The sun is much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, much, bigger.

Sorry didn't know people always took the easy way out.

If someone asks you to move a car do you take the easy way out and drive it or do you take it a part and move it piece by piece?

Even the "easy way out" in this case would take at least a thousand years to develop the technology. By the time we could manipulate the Sun in order to save the earth just moving the earth would be nothing more than a minor inconvenience.

Don't confuse "easy" with efficient.

 

[Asbo Zaprudder]

Funny everyone says something about saving Earth some how by doing something to Earth itself. How come no-one says something dealing with the sun itself, maybe a way to keep it alive and smaller for longer?

With "Stellar Lifting" We could probably squeeze another several billion of years out of the sun.

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

Of course we would need to have developed a very advanced space faring civilization to achieve this.

Ah, David Criswell strikes again.

 

[Myasishchev]

It'd probably be easier to move the human race to a suitable planet around Proxima Centauri (if one exists). However, problems with red dwarfs include that they have a lot of flare activity, their luminosity varies considerably, and planets are likely to be tidally locked.

For the last problem, at least, it may be easier to search for Jovians and set up shop on a suitable moon.

I wonder if the Sun will leave the Main Sequence and eventually become a White Dwarf?

On the other hand, given how widespread misconceptions are about the sun "going supernova," it bears repeating. <_<

 

[YellowSubmarine]

We'll deal with the heating sun problem. First of all, I don't think it's impossible for both us and the other life on Earth to adapt. Second of all, we'll find a way to engineer ways to cool the planet down. Remember, Venus is in the habitable zone, the fact that it is so hot there is caused by the composition of the atmosphere, and there are a lot of people who consider the terraforming of Venus possible. Surely terraforming Earth under the new conditions wouldn't be harder, especially when the heating comes so gradually.

Another thing is that we'll eventually inhabit other planets and moons in the Solar System, so the humanity will survive the intense heat phase on Mars, the red giant phase on the moons of Jupiter and Saturn, and the white dwarf phase by using hydrogen from the gas giants for fusion. Unfortunately, we'll probably never have the resources to move all the humans to one of those places, and we'll never be able to move most of the biospheres. So the human race will be composed of the descendants of a few small colonies that comprised a small part of the human population on Earth. In other words, almost all of the humanity left on Earth would eventually be brutally destroyed, even if many colonies are thriving in other places. It's a bit disturbing that the people from the surviving colonies will be able to watch how the humans on Earth are slowly destroyed, but will not be able to do anything.

There's another troubling issue that we will face soon. In 4 billion years, there's a great possibility that Andromeda will collide with the Milky Way, and there's a great possibility that the Solar System will be ejected into intergalactic space. While the chance is small, there is little we can do about that, and even travelling to another star system without such problem will be very troublesome, the space ship will have to achieve a delta V that will keep us either in Andromeda or the Milky Way.

This means that most of the us (or even all of the us) will be left flying together with a dying star through the empty intergalactic space with no star systems around, and with no chance of reaching any in billions or even trillions of years. This means no chance for moving anywhere after we deplete the four gas giants, no chance for contact with alien races, no chance for contact with the rest of humanity (if someone managed to move to a safer star system before the ejection). Even in Star Trek they can't travel between galaxies, in the real world it's almost unthinkable.

Of course, the close encounter with Andromeda also brings new possibilities. We can study the stars from it closely, if our galaxy (or the nearby stars) lack life, the passage by Andromeda increases our chances of finding extraterrestrial life and civilizations – both in Andromeda, and in the stars we pass by as the Milky Way gets shuffled. And if the two galaxies don't merge, we would have the chance to leave descendants of the human population in both galaxies, provided that we can build fast enough spaceships.