What are the chances of humans surviving, advancing, and exploring to the end of the universe and beyond?

Question

It seems like nobody has any confidence in the advancement of our race these days... I thought that was kinda the point of living... you know.... to hope that our achievements now, become the foundation of a future superior human species exploring and harnessing the universe, or has radical environ-mental cases like Al Gore have us all convinced we're doomed nomatter what?

Answer 1

As things are going right now -- nil.

If mankind does not make too many errors -- 400+ years.

Answer 2

I agree that there seems to be a lot of doom-saying right now. BUT - no-one would be making these grim predictions if we didn't hope that things could be "turned around", and a better, more sustainable way of living on earth could be achieved.

So the doom-saying is more out of frustration that we don't seem to be making the neccessary changes.

Also, even if the worst of the ecological preictions come to pass, this will not wipe out humanity totally. It will set us back a long way, and mean we will be substantially reduced in numbers and in comfort. So humanity will go on, unless a truly earth-shattering catastrophe (equivalent to the dinosaur extinction) occurs.

It is entirely uncertain, however, whether humanity will become capable of surviving the death of the planet. We'd need to have found a way to colonise other solar systems (or, at least, of surviving outside our own planet). There are some suggestionsas to if and how this might be possible - but these are all sci-fi right now.

If we cannot escape the earth, then we'll all be destroyed when the sun becomes a red giant, and boils-off the earths atmosphere (in about 7.5 billion years). Of course, this is a long time in the future, and we don't know how humanity will have evolved to then (assuming we do survive that long). Humans (as Homo sapiens) have only existed for about 250,000 years, which is 1/30,000th of that time.

Even if we do survive that (and 7.5 billion years is a LONG time to find a solution to *that* problem), there is the problem of the ultimate fate of the universe. The way the universe will age is unknown right now, but there are a few possibilities:

- the "Big Crunch", which is where the universe collapses back on itself. According to some recent calculations, we might be in the "middle age" of the universe, and will only have another 10 billion years or so before the whole thing collapses back into a singularity.

- the "Heat Death of the Universe", which is where the universe continues to expand. Entropy increases to such a degree that there is no free energy in the universe, causing all planets, stars, and galaxies to collapse into a series of supermassive black holes. The timescale for this is about 10^14 years (or 10,000 billion years).

Escaping these depends on being able to access things outside the universe. If we can leave the universe, and colonise another, younger universe we'll be able to persist pretty much indefinitely, and could escape either fate. Alternatively, if we can access energy from outside the universe, we could increase the free energy of our universe and locally offset the effects of the "Heat Death", creating "pockets" of inhabitable space.

Doing THIS, however is absolutely sci-fi at the moment.

Answer 3

highly doubtable people say it never ends

Answer 4

Is this the politics or science section?  Since its the science section lets try a little critical thinking.  

First, Al Gore is obviously convinced we are not doomed no matter what.  Why else would he try to convince people to change their ways?

Second, why is saving the planet and making it sustainable for our future generations not a great achievement?  The future generations who would do the things you dream depend on it.  Not doing it will either doom them or make it much, much harder.

Third, how are the problems we must deal with today destroying the confidence of our generation or retarding the advancement of the human race?  Necessity is the mother of invention.   All problems to be solved and needs to be met are opportunities for advancement.

Did you give this question a lot of thought?  Didn't think so.