Earth engulfed by sun, painful?

[aiir]

here they say after about a billion years the sun will become hot enough to boil our oceans, will this cause animals and humans any pain? and if not will a few billion years later, the sun will become a red giant so large that it will engulf our planet; will this cause a long painful death or a quick death?....

thanks.

[zapatos]

2 hours ago, aiir said:

here they say after about a billion years the sun will become hot enough to boil our oceans, will this cause animals and humans any pain? 

thanks.

I suspect it will hurt at least as much as a poke in the eye with a sharp stick.

[iNow]

Long before the earth gets enveloped, the change in temperature from the growing approaching sun will cause drought, famine, and related catastrophe. On human timescales, it will be slow, painful, and horrible. On galactic timescales, the entire history of humanity is a blink of an eye. Fortunately, we’ll almost certainly all long be gone before it matters. 

[Phi for All]

If you absolutely know the house is burning down and you can't do anything about it, you don't ask, "How painful will it be if we just sit here?" If it takes us more than a billion years to find a safer neighborhood, then we deserve to cook.

12 hours ago, zapatos said:

I suspect it will hurt at least as much as a poke in the eye with a sharp stick.

LOL. My mom was Missouri folk, and she used that expression when things didn't turn out quite right. "Beats a poke in the eye with a sharp stick." 

[Janus]

1 hour ago, Phi for All said:

If you absolutely know the house is burning down and you can't do anything about it, you don't ask, "How painful will it be if we just sit here?" If it takes us more than a billion years to find a safer neighborhood, then we deserve to cook.

LOL. My mom was Missouri folk, and she used that expression when things didn't turn out quite right. "Beats a poke in the eye with a sharp stick." 

I read about a study made a few years back that looked into the feasibility of  moving the Earth away from the Sun as it warms.   It considered using asteroids or other bodies for gravity-slingshot type fly-bys that would be used to slowly boost the Earth in its orbit in order to keep it in the habitable zone as the Sun warmed. (Most of the action in Larry Niven's novel A World Out of Time  takes place on an Earth that has been moved out to be a moon of Jupiter for this purpose.)

[Area54]

1 hour ago, Janus said:

I read about a study made a few years back that looked into the feasibility of  moving the Earth away from the Sun as it warms.   It considered using asteroids or other bodies for gravity-slingshot type fly-bys that would be used to slowly boost the Earth in its orbit in order to keep it in the habitable zone as the Sun warmed. (Most of the action in Larry Niven's novel A World Out of Time  takes place on an Earth that has been moved out to be a moon of Jupiter for this purpose.)

I wonder what complexity, if any, the presence of the moon would add to the process? Just avoid hitting it, or something more involved?

[mistermack]

In the last 120 years, we've gone from a man in a kite gliding a few yards, to people living in space for a year, or travelling to the Moon.

In a billion years, we should be able to live as far away from the Sun as we like, and have plenty of humans orbiting other stars. 

In any case, the odds of a major extinction event on Earth are very high due to a major collision, long before the Sun starts to swell.

[JacobsLadder]

On 08/01/2018 at 6:20 PM, Janus said:

I read about a study made a few years back that looked into the feasibility of  moving the Earth away from the Sun as it warms.   It considered using asteroids or other bodies for gravity-slingshot type fly-bys that would be used to slowly boost the Earth in its orbit in order to keep it in the habitable zone as the Sun warmed. (Most of the action in Larry Niven's novel A World Out of Time  takes place on an Earth that has been moved out to be a moon of Jupiter for this purpose.)

It seems to me it would be much easier to move the Sun away from the Earth.

I very much doubt the scenario will arise but theoretically a network of windmills stretched across the length of the Earth could gradually push the Sun upwards each time it passes.

[Strange]

17 minutes ago, JacobsLadder said:

I very much doubt the scenario will arise but theoretically a network of windmills stretched across the length of the Earth could gradually push the Sun upwards each time it passes.

Douglas Adams would be proud of you.

[dimreepr]

7 minutes ago, Strange said:

Douglas Adams would be proud of you.

LOL +1 It reminds me of this:

Quote

There is an art to flying, or rather a knack. The knack lies in learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss, ... Clearly, it is this second part, the missing, that presents the difficulties.

 

[Scott of the Antares]

On 08/01/2018 at 6:20 PM, Janus said:

I read about a study made a few years back that looked into the feasibility of  moving the Earth away from the Sun as it warms.

Imagine if they got it wrong and we wandered outwards into a slow freeze rather than a slow boil!

[Velocity_Boy]

On 1/7/2018 at 6:43 PM, aiir said:

here they say after about a billion years the sun will become hot enough to boil our oceans, will this cause animals and humans any pain? and if not will a few billion years later, the sun will become a red giant so large that it will engulf our planet; will this cause a long painful death or a quick death?....

thanks.

Well..first off I believe you're short changing us earthlings a little with your time scale. Most cosmologists think it's gonna be closer to five to seven billion years before our sun begins expanding into a red giant on it's way to totally incinerating the inner four planets.

Unfortunately...it's not gonna be an immediate and painless process, like if you were caught at the epicenter of a nuclear explosion. Nope....any life on Earth during this event will die in inches. Or rather....a little at a time over a three or four decade time window.

As the sun's hydrogen nuclear fusion winds down and it's hydrogen fuel supply dwindles, we here on Earth will see the sun's luminosity increase by about 10% a decade. And the ambient temperature will also ramp up accordingly.

 

https://www.livescience.com/32879-what-happens-to-earth-when-sun-dies.html

[Janus]

4 hours ago, Velocity_Boy said:

Well..first off I believe you're short changing us earthlings a little with your time scale. Most cosmologists think it's gonna be closer to five to seven billion years before our sun begins expanding into a red giant on it's way to totally incinerating the inner four planets.

Unfortunately...it's not gonna be an immediate and painless process, like if you were caught at the epicenter of a nuclear explosion. Nope....any life on Earth during this event will die in inches. Or rather....a little at a time over a three or four decade time window.

As the sun's hydrogen nuclear fusion winds down and it's hydrogen fuel supply dwindles, we here on Earth will see the sun's luminosity increase by about 10% a decade. And the ambient temperature will also ramp up accordingly.

 

https://www.livescience.com/32879-what-happens-to-earth-when-sun-dies.html

We don't have the luxury of waiting till the Sun begins to expand into a Red giant.  The Sun as it is now is warming at a rate of 10% per billion years, and  10% increase would raise the Temp on Earth enough to cause it to no longer be in the Goldilocks zone.

[Velocity_Boy]

8 minutes ago, Janus said:

We don't have the luxury of waiting till the Sun begins to expand into a Red giant.  The Sun as it is now is warming at a rate of 10% per billion years, and  10% increase would raise the Temp on Earth enough to cause it to no longer be in the Goldilocks zone.

Wrong.

The recent climate change cycle has been going on for far too brief a time for one to extrapolate it into a one billion years formula! And climate change had zero to do with the OP red giant question.

[Janus]

4 minutes ago, Velocity_Boy said:

Wrong.

The recent climate change cycle has been going on for far too brief a time for one to extrapolate it into a one billion years formula! And climate change had zero to do with the OP red giant question.

I didn't say anything about climate change. The Sun itself is increasing in output as part of its natural life cycle while it is still in the main sequence and before it enter its next phase and  expands into a Red giant.

[Sensei]

On 8.01.2018 at 1:43 AM, aiir said:

here they say after about a billion years the sun will become hot enough to boil our oceans, will this cause animals and humans any pain? and if not will a few billion years later, the sun will become a red giant so large that it will engulf our planet; will this cause a long painful death or a quick death?....

Denaturation of proteins happen at much lower temperatures (> ~41 C) than water boiling temperature (~100 C)..

The main reason of death of living organisms will be lack of food and water. When average temperature will be too high, soil will turn to desert, disallowing plants to grow. Without them herbivorous animals and predators won't be able to survive. Existence of the real (or artificial) intelligence can change it a bit, but not for a long time (e.g. mirrors in cosmos between the Earth and Sun to decrease energy delivered to the planet).

 

On 8.01.2018 at 7:20 PM, Janus said:

I read about a study made a few years back that looked into the feasibility of  moving the Earth away from the Sun as it warms.  

Mirrors (or pair of polarization filters with remote controlled rotation) reflecting enough of light prior it arrives to the Earth, is more feasible..

 

Edited May 14, 2018 by Sensei