aliceinwonderland

That's really cool! It's definitely not only computer screens, though - even if this makes up a large part as we sit hours in front of a screen each day. One important aspect is also lighting at the office and I really think a changeover to LED-lighting can be helpful there. I experience it myself a lot, I keep getting tired and exhausted whenever I work late at the office because we have flickering fluorescent lamps there. If you check the wavelength of LED light and use an appropriate lighting solution I think many of us would be much more comfortable at work and during sleep. So I totally agree with you saying, LED-lighting has a potential there and is also friendly to our circadian rhythm.

So it would take us around 8 minutes until we would start to notice, that makes sense to me. But how long would it take for us to die? I'm really wondering what the first consequences of the sun turning dark would be. I assume the problem would be the darkness and the drop in temperature, so how soon would the earth start to freeze and become a completely hostile environment? How long would humans be able to survive this? Would anything survive this?

I'd like to add that I think another constraint would be constant damages to the shield. Smaller meteoroids fall down on earth every day. A shield all around the earth would sooner or later be damaged by those meteoroids. So, who would be able to repair and maintain the shield so it keeps working? The ISS for example has radar and can avoid larger ones, but a global shield can't go anywhere and in the battle shield vs. meteoroid the shield won't win.

I think you'd need to go a bit further and define pain first. Basically, pain is a reaction of living organisms that sets off certain reactions (e.g. rise in adrenaline levels) in order to keep the organism from being destroyed. If you don't feel pain, you'll hurt yourself a lot. I might see why plants could feel pain - they do have cells too and are living organisms - but apart from that molecular structures like stone or water shouldn’t be able to feel pain. Except if molecules or atoms can suddenly feel pain, which I highly doubt

I'm wondering how much of our eating habits is based on culture rather than biological necessity. Arguably, humans (or the genus Homo) may not have developed that way, if those prehistoric homonids hadn't eaten meat. Today, however, I think it's more of a cultural thing. I think it would be very much possible to change our eating habits, but as culture develops only slowly this might take a very long time. And who knows, maybe this concious decision might give us an evolutional disadvantage over millions of years.

That's what makes it a really tough question for me. Yes, I'd like to enjoy all the possibilities in life without aging, because time is limited right now and we can't do everything we'd like to. But still, and this is the problem, I'd probably not enjoy life anymore as being alive won't mean anything, just as you pointed it out. Right now I live because I'd like to develop myself and maybe leave something good behind when I die. If I had forever to achieve that, I'd turn into a lazy person losing their own sanity.