What if Alpha Centauri has no planets?

[r_rolo1]

So much optimism around here....

Somewhere in the future it will happen something that will wipe out our species ( just because it can happen.... if you have a unlimited ammount of time ,anything with prob >0 will happen ), and any species that is confined in one enviroment will have certainly more chances of atleast partial survival

 

[GeoModder]

and any species that is confined in one enviroment will have certainly more chances of atleast partial survival

Shouldn't that be "spread over several environments"?

 

[bestbrian]

We're all toast and eventually it would have all been for naught, but we can at least enjoy the ride.

 

[Magma_Dragoon]

A rebuttle to rolo about my post on Venus losing its water. Kinda big quote from my astronomy text book. I was off a little on the exact mechanism, but pretty close.

Spoiler :

...Venus's proximity to the sun kept surface temeratures higher than those on Earth, ultimately leading to its strong greenhouse effect. The high surface temperatures prevented outgassed water vapor from condensing, so it remained in the atmosphere. Some water molecules made their way into the upper atmosphere, where solar ultraviolet photons broke them apart. Thermal escape sent the freed hydrogen atoms into space, never to return. The remaining oxygen was lost to a combination of chemical reactions with surface rocks and stripping by the solar wind (made easy by Venus's lack of a magnetic field). Other water molecules then rose to the upper atmosphere, suffering the same fate. Acting over billions of years, this process can easily explain the loss of an ocean's worth of water from Venus. In fact, Venus may have lost so much water that its crust and mantle also dried out.

From The Cosmic Perspective, Bennet, Donahue, Schneider, Voit, third edition, page 323.

I was serious about smashing those worthless planets together, they are no good as they are now. If we need water, we could set Pluto on a collision course with the new Mars, which in the future, will be called Robo-France 29. <--(that part was a joke)

 

[Magma_Dragoon]

I think it will take quite a bit to exterminate humanity, I think even if the killer asteroid slammed into Earth, La Palma slid into the ocean and Yellowstone erupted at the same time there would still be PLENTY of us, just about 6 billion less

The impact of a 400 kilometer wide object would release enough energy to vaporize all water on Earth and steralize the surface. This is called a 'total evaporation event' by astronomers.

 

[Magma_Dragoon]

Actually, current technology is not capable of detecting systems like ours. They could be very common, but we wouldn't know because we can't detect them.

We have the technology, Congress just won't give NASA enough money.

My little thread has grown up into a man, this must be what its like to be a parent.

 

[Magma_Dragoon]

We're all toast and eventually it would have all been for naught, but we can at least enjoy the ride.

Yes, 100 trillion years from now all the stars will burn out, and the insterstellar medium will have all been used up. Time to start working on that time machine or a dimensional gateway or something.

 

[r_rolo1]

@Magma_Dragoon

Ok, homolitical cleavage is OK... I was talking about the heterolitical cleavage ( with charge separation ) that you proposed, that was clearly impossible.

But your text book makes quite some big assumptions, given our knowledge of Venus... ( in fact Venus has more atmospherical water than mars ) . As far as we know most of Venus water may be trapped in rocks and only a planetwide real geo survey could prove/ disprove that.

 

[NintendoTogepi]

The impact of a 400 kilometer wide object would release enough energy to vaporize all water on Earth and steralize the surface. This is called a 'total evaporation event' by astronomers.

Well, an object that big hitting is sort of unlikely isn't it? I'm looking up articles and people are very concerned over a 4 kilometer wide object coming close. (which would be very bad if it hit but not an total extinction)

http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/mystery_monday_040412.html

Look though, even if there is a 15 kilometer object slamming into the San Francisco area, I can watch it on TV and only have to worry about some ejecta, a minor earthquake, and then for the next coming years terrible food shortages and a dust covered sky

People in Europe won't be effected at all, well, besides the massive dust clouds

 

[Wodan]

Dude, what do you have against the people of San Francisco?

 

[GeoModder]

Look though, even if there is a 15 kilometer object slamming into the San Francisco area, I can watch it on TV and only have to worry about some ejecta, a minor earthquake, and then for the next coming years terrible food shortages and a dust covered sky

People in Europe won't be effected at all, well, besides the massive dust clouds

You do realize the Dinosaur killer was a 10-11 km sized object, don't you?

 

[NintendoTogepi]

You do realize the Dinosaur killer was a 10-11 km sized object, don't you?

Did you click my link?

Also, I'm afraid the dinosaurs did not have trade routes, indoor gardening, houses, cottages (always the answer), basements, irrigation, advanced agriculture techniques, dried food, etc.

Regardless, I still think I would probably end up starving to death

 

[GeoModder]

Did you click my link?

And several others about the same event.

 

[Magma_Dragoon]

Look though, even if there is a 15 kilometer object slamming into the San Francisco area, I can watch it on TV and only have to worry about some ejecta, a minor earthquake, and then for the next coming years terrible food shortages and a dust covered sky

People in Europe won't be effected at all, well, besides the massive dust clouds

That ejecta reentering the atmosphere could heat the surface to about 400 degrees farenheit.

 

[frekk]

Forget Dyson spheres and terraforming .... much easier, and more practical, to simply assemble self-powered artificial environments and put them in a happy orbit. There's no limit to the amount of space, no need to restructure an entire planets atmosphere (heck, we can't even afford to fix our own, which is infinitely easier than fixing Mars'), no need to worry about magnetospheres, etc.

Plus, it's the kind of thing that could be funded privately, those who benefit from it can invest in it. Not only that but it affords the possibility for people of a like mind to create their own little societies, free from constraint. Separatists, utopianists, idealists, religious fanatics, and misanthropes of all stripes will find this infinitely more appealing than yet another planet.

 

[Magma_Dragoon]

We biggest paradox in space colonization is that we want to find alien life, but in all likelihood, we would need to exterminate it in order to survive.

 

[Dryhad]

We biggest paradox in space colonization is that we want to find alien life, but in all likelihood, we would need to exterminate it in order to survive.

I suppose you're basing that on all the alien life we've discovered so far? Seriously, what makes you say that? If it's intelligent it can be reasoned with, same as any human group (There are roughly 200 nations in the world at the moment, clearly extermination is not necessary when any two groups of people meet) and if it's not it wouldn't pose much of a threat to a space faring civilisation. Why do you think any alien life form we meet will necessarily be both hostile and unpacifiable?

 

[r_rolo1]

I have to agree. Most likely we and those aliens will not compete much for food or needed resources and unless we/them have something very valuable for the other or that the universe in our surroundings is a very crowded place, confrontation would be unlikely....

 

[GeoModder]

Plus, it's the kind of thing that could be funded privately, those who benefit from it can invest in it. Not only that but it affords the possibility for people of a like mind to create their own little societies, free from constraint. Separatists, utopianists, idealists, religious fanatics, and misanthropes of all stripes will find this infinitely more appealing than yet another planet.

Don't know, the key word here is "little". How viable in the long run is a small artificial society? And is its ideology compatible with an unavoidable technocratic basis in case of orbiting space structures?

 

[Wodan]

Whether we will be in competition with aliens probably depends on 2 things
1) whether they are based on a chemistry which also requires earth-like worlds, or not
2) whether we discover some vital strategic resource which is limited yet requires FTL travel, or some such

(In other words, if we are in competition, whether ipso facto or de facto.)

If neither of these are true, for example if they live and thrive on large gas giants, then almost certainly we will not come into conflict at all.