Earth Expected to Be Habitable for Another 1.75 Billion Years
79 replies, posted
[QUOTE=lifehole;42284731]I suppose. It's hard to tell if we will have a limit on what we can accomplish, the closest idea we have to that is machine transhumanisn and genetic transhumanism, both ways we can possibly improve/change the nature of being human. The possibilities of what we could become and if the consequences include our own destruction is something that only time will tell. It's very possible we could destroy ourselves or this planet through other, more present means simply because our society isn't exactly stable, and large amounts of time + instability + nuclear weapons = collapse. Sure, even though that isn't foreseeable now, political climate and societal stability is an ever changing thing. We live in a golden age compared to all ages before us, I am wary if we can sustain it.
Climate change is a threat, but I do not think it will make this planet completely uninhabitable. Mass exchange of thousands of nuclear weapons in the megaton scale may do that, though. Even still, humanity is a very resillient race, and I hope our society will adapt.
[editline]23rd September 2013[/editline]
I remember an article saying the evolution was progressing at the same pace despite modern medicine and society and whatnot. But I have a feeling that if we do advance ourselves; our advancement will be of a self created nature, not natural evolution, simply due to timescale and the rapid pace of civilization in this modern era.[/QUOTE]
There's no reason for evolution to slow down - what instead is happening is that natural selection isn't as effective at eliminating certain characteristics which would get you killed in the past.
Admittedly were genetically still fairly well off, most genetic issues which can take you down usually only happen after well breading age.
Life can find a way, we may not necessarily survive, but perhaps, overtime we will evolve into another form of human that has adapted to these changes.
What has always bothered me is that there is no greater life form than a organism (cell, tissue, organ, organism)
[QUOTE=BrickMan300;42289493]What has always bothered me is that there is no greater life form than a organism (cell, tissue, organ, organism)[/QUOTE]
Some have argued that ecosystems form a single cognitive living web, or that human society has created a Noosphere which constitutes a single living entity.
[QUOTE=Reshy;42287345]Why wouldn't our eyes evolve to become more like eagle eyes? They have 3.6 times the visual acuity of human eyes. Also we already can see all the information on our 'eye contacts' we just cannot process our peripheral vision terribly well. But neither of these would imply larger eyes are somehow going to be better. Also if you factor in eventual human genetic self-improvement it could look radically different.
Smaller brains is implausible because we are a species that has evolved to rely primarily on brain power, there's a reason why our heads are so large compared to our bodies. The larger the brain to weight ratio the more processing power can be devoted to things other than coordinating movement and other tasks like it.
Why we'd be more wrinkly makes no sense because there's no benefits from being wrinkled and is often caused by aging. The only time wrinkling has any benefit is with manipulating wet objects, and that only applies to hands and feet, not the body in general. It's not like we'd be living under water and even if so we'd adapt a different more permanent solution.[/QUOTE]
Evolution is not anything that has a defined path or goal. It isn't about improving an organism. It's about selective adaptation based on what survives and how. Humanity's a pretty big fluke in that we went down the right roads in our past to end up like we are.
As to the topic in general, there may be two billion years left in the Earth's lifespan, but there's far less than that forming the window for humans to try and get off this rock and expand. If we deplete everything, and only then discover the technology needed for interstellar travel, and then require one of the things we depleted for the technology to work, it's going to be tough titties for us. Or if we go into a dark age and lose the knowledge we've acquired, there are no real easy pockets of resources to start from scratch again. We'd be stuck scratching our asses.
[QUOTE=sloppy_joes;42286448]There's a good chance than interstellar travel is impossible, and if it's not, it probably won't be fast. You'll be born on a ship and your entire purpose in life will be to have children, and somewhere down the line, your descendants will arrive on a foreign planet.
I mean, FTL travel is impossible as far as I'm aware so if you consider that some things are thousands of light years away... yeah...[/QUOTE]
I honestly believe we're not in the right to make assumptions like "X is impossible" or "Y is not going to happen" etc. That's based on assumptions of the present, and while we [I]seem[/I] much better at predicting the future than say our 16th century brothers may have been, they are not fair statements to make.
[QUOTE=daijitsu;42287283]welcome to 'tabloid evolution', there's tons of wild theoretical stuff made by a guy who just felt like making people scared/angry at the notion we'd get that ugly
other times it's done by ideas guys who are just banking off wild speculation and trendy tendencies
remember these?
"1,000 years"
[t]http://wac.450f.edgecastcdn.net/80450F/929jackfm.com/files/2012/10/future-us-630x558.jpg[/t]
"100,000 years"
[t]http://i.huffpost.com/gadgets/slideshows/301619/slide_301619_2541819_free.jpg?1370559169572[/t]
the reason for the eyes was basically explained as "iphones keep getting smaller and now with google glass we know where things are going, so eventually we're going to need bigger eyes to read all the information on our future iContacts[/QUOTE]God I hate tabloids..
Guys why would we not be robots by then?
Brain and spinal column at the absolute most.
Unless you guys like heart attacks and breathing air or something.
[QUOTE=sloppy_joes;42286448]There's a good chance than interstellar travel is impossible, and if it's not, it probably won't be fast. You'll be born on a ship and your entire purpose in life will be to have children, and somewhere down the line, your descendants will arrive on a foreign planet.
I mean, FTL travel is impossible as far as I'm aware so if you consider that some things are thousands of light years away... yeah...[/QUOTE]
I think such ships won't be really ships, strictly speaking. Rather, flying country-sized colonies.
[QUOTE=Zillamaster55;42285106]65,000,000 years ago the Earth was struck by an asteroid the size of Mount Everest, and the atmosphere was coated in a thick cloud of superheated dust for decades. 80% of life on earth perished.
And life found a way.
I doubt Humans are gonna be that bad.[/QUOTE]
That extinction didn't kill anywhere near 80% of life on earth. What are you on.
[QUOTE=sloppy_joes;42286448]There's a good chance than interstellar travel is impossible, and if it's not, it probably won't be fast. You'll be born on a ship and your entire purpose in life will be to have children, and somewhere down the line, your descendants will arrive on a foreign planet.
I mean, FTL travel is impossible as far as I'm aware so if you consider that some things are thousands of light years away... yeah...[/QUOTE]
Yeah I always have this idea that we would just send an empty ship with only a few eggs and sperm cells frozen in. And then it arrives at the destination it unfreezes them and starts growing babies. Much more economical, but still you would have to educate these babies using some form of robots.
Doesn't the suns temperature gradually go up so basically in a few billion years the sun will be too hot anyway?
[QUOTE=Derp Y. Mail;42291930]Doesn't the suns temperature gradually go up so basically in a few billion years the sun will be too hot anyway?[/QUOTE]
yeah by "habitable" the titles only means that bacteria can survive. but bacteria can survive on the insides of volcanoes so that's not really meant as a consolation
[QUOTE=Daniel Smith;42285903]Well according to some people we will look like a fine mix of Porky Pig and ET with an impressive scrotum.
[IMG]http://morriscourse.com/myths_of_evolution/images/future_human.jpg[/IMG]
Is this NSFW?[/QUOTE]
Hrmmm, Risky Computer Brain uploaded to a robot copy of me? Or Pigface McAssBalls?
I reckon that's enough time for EP3 to be announced? :P
I'm reminded of this song.
[video=youtube;izQB2-Kmiic]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=izQB2-Kmiic[/video]
[QUOTE=Grimhound;42289847]Evolution is not anything that has a defined path or goal. It isn't about improving an organism. It's about selective adaptation based on what survives and how. Humanity's a pretty big fluke in that we went down the right roads in our past to end up like we are.
As to the topic in general, there may be two billion years left in the Earth's lifespan, but there's far less than that forming the window for humans to try and get off this rock and expand. If we deplete everything, and only then discover the technology needed for interstellar travel, and then require one of the things we depleted for the technology to work, it's going to be tough titties for us. Or if we go into a dark age and lose the knowledge we've acquired, there are no real easy pockets of resources to start from scratch again. We'd be stuck scratching our asses.[/QUOTE]
I know it's not a defined path, but they only develop when they are beneficial because if they are just mostly negligible either way than they cannot really develop. The main problem is that humans aren't really evolving in any general direction right now because rather than let nature select out weaknesses we use technology to compensate for them.
Aside from that I was only going off what tabloids say. Bigger eyes doesn't help if we need to read data from further away, but things like higher density photo-receptors would. The ability to focus on more than one point would. I wasn't saying that it would, at least naturally. You need to figure in the fact that humans will probably start giving themselves beneficial genes and biological systems [URL="http://io9.com/humans-may-soon-regenerate-damaged-body-parts-like-sala-509269956"]like the Salamander's ability to regrow limbs[/URL].
[QUOTE=Riller;42284532]Sure it will. We'll run out, and then we're kinda forced off of it. Climate change won't suddenly break the earth and make everyone fall over dead in one bigass pile. It'll be less hospitable for a long while, but sure as fuck still habitable.[/QUOTE]Can the power grids handle the current demand without coal power?
[QUOTE=RoboChimp;42293559]Can the power grids handle the current demand without coal power?[/QUOTE]
We'd likely switch to some other kind of fuel when we realize we're running out of coal (and by then we' have run out of gasoline and had that disaster happen so likely we'd have the infrastructure to keep going).
Sorry, you need to Log In to post a reply to this thread.