Re: ( OT) Global Warming, a primer . .

Brenda Ann wrote:
"Whatever" <Whatever@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:FViXh.1096$KB1.89@xxxxxxxxxxx

Brenda Ann wrote:


On Apr 23, 1:17 pm, cuhu...@xxxxxxxxx wrote:


If y'all think Earth is warm now,,, stick around for about four and a
half billion more years.It will be the end times,I tell you,it will be
the end of everything.
cuhulin


I think that the 4.5 billion years may be quite an overestimate. I've read more conservative estimates of 1 to 1.5 billion years before the sun goes nova (Solar system warming?) I suspect that mankind will be long extinct by that time, or gone from the spent planet.

The sun doesn't have enough mass to go through the nova stage at the end of it's life. When it runs out of fuel for nuclear fusion, the sun will slowly expand to a red giant which dissipates into the solar system, leaving behind a white dwarf star. This star shines from residual heat instead of fusion. It has a much longer life span than the original star (sun). The white dwarf eventually becomes a black dwarf which emits radio waves instead of light but the universe is not old enough yet for black dwarf stars to exist.


Thanks for the cosmology lesson. Never too old to learn something new. Either way, though, the Earth would get pretty warm as the red giant expands to engulf it.

The red giant could expand to the orbit of Mars! The earth would be a charred cinder. If humans survive the next few thousand years, we will probably have the technology to do most anything we want with the matter in the universe, thus preventing the earth's demise. But we might not have any need for a planet by then.

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

Relevant Pages

  • Re: ( OT) Global Warming, a primer . .
    ... The sun doesn't have enough mass to go through the nova stage at the end ... leaving behind a white dwarf star. ... The white dwarf eventually becomes a black dwarf which emits radio ...
    (rec.radio.shortwave)
  • Re: ( OT) Global Warming, a primer . .
    ... I've read more conservative estimates of 1 to 1.5 billion years before the sun goes nova I suspect that mankind will be long extinct by that time, or gone from the spent planet. ... When it runs out of fuel for nuclear fusion, the sun will slowly expand to a red giant which dissipates into the solar system, leaving behind a white dwarf star. ... The white dwarf eventually becomes a black dwarf which emits radio waves instead of light but the universe is not old enough yet for black dwarf stars to exist. ...
    (rec.radio.shortwave)
  • Re: ( OT) Global Warming, a primer . .
    ... When it runs out of fuel for nuclear fusion, the sun will ... leaving behind a white dwarf star. ... It has a much longer life span than the original star ... The white dwarf eventually becomes a black dwarf which emits radio ...
    (rec.radio.shortwave)
  • Re: The Time Machine, with Guy Pearce
    ... years to when the sun was a red giant but it wasn't in the film when I ... they knew this in the later version hence the difference in the sun. ... Isn't our sun too small to end up as a white dwarf, ...
    (uk.media.tv.misc)
  • Re: Semi-OT Earths five space dooms!
    ... Sun burns out. ... becomes white dwarf - 6 billion years from now. ... forms ring of decaying debris that eventually all falls on Earth - depends on what happens when Sun goes red giant. ...
    (sci.space.history)