alt Hacker NewsThe article claims that Earth will be incinerated, but we could just move Earth further from the Sun. The energy of escape velocity is just GMm/r. r is one AU, 150 gigameters. G is the gravitational constant, 67 piconewton square meters per square kilogram, M is the Sun's mass, 2.0 billion yottagrams. m is the Earth's, 6000 yottagrams. It works out to 5.3 billion yottajoules. The Sun emits 380 yottawatts, thus providing enough energy to move the Earth out of the Solar System entirely every five months. Moving it to a somewhat higher orbit, such as Jupiter's, would require somewhat less energy than that. And we have 500 million years, which most experts consider to be a significantly longer time than five months, so the problem is clearly soluble.
A possible problem is that Jupiter itself could destabilize Earth's new orbit. Possibly putting Earth into orbit around Jupiter as an additional moon would be a solution, but if not, I think we could solve that problem by removing Jupiter. If we drop it into the Sun, we can gain all of its orbital energy in the process.
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I've noticed how you regularly use five digit zero prefixed Y10K-compliant Long Now Years, but if things go well, you're going to need a lot more digits than that! ;)
https://longnow.org/ideas/long-now-years-five-digit-dates-an...
Zager & Evans - In the Year 2525
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zKQfxi8V5FA
Now it's been ten thousand years, man has cried a billion tears
For what, he never knew, now man's reign is through
But through eternal night, the twinkling of starlight
So very far away, maybe it's only yesterday
If we had the technology to move a planet, we would also have the technology to build a planet-sized space station, which would be a much more efficient use of resources. You could use spin gravity to make the entire mass inhabitable and useful, instead of almost all of the mass sitting in the core/mantle.
> I think we could solve that problem by removing Jupiter. If we drop it into the Sun, we can gain all of its orbital energy in the process.
How did you come up with dropping Jupiter into the sun being a net energy producing operation? You have to cancel out around 10^35 J of kinetic energy to drop it from its orbit, and that is real work. How do you get that 10^35 J back? (Ignoring that from your own math, that E35J is around 100,000 years of the sun's total energy output).
>>The Sun emits 380 yottawatts
Only the part that illuminates the earth can do us any good.
I think it'd be easier to colonise another moon/planet. You have a few 100k years go do it.
> The article claims that Earth will be incinerated, but we could just move Earth further from the Sun.
The article isn’t trying to make science-fiction predictions, it’s simply explaining how things are expected to go according to the workings of the Universe. The article also isn’t suggesting humans will go to Europa to survive, only that life could theoretically develop and persist there.
We can’t even let our fellow humans live. Hatred and division is growing, and we’re ever more worshipping and giving power to destructive, selfish, science-denying, power-hungry maniacs with access to world-destroying technology. And you think there’s any chance we’ll all agree and unite to move the whole planet? It would be nonsensical for the article to even hint at entertainment that scenario in any serious capacity, and it would have been rightly dismissed by most people if it did.
A more practical way to lift the orbit is probably to "capture an asteroid of suitable size and set it on a series of fly-bys, shuttling between near the Earth and near Jupiter" https://www.quora.com/Would-it-be-theoretically-possible-to-...