What are your thoughts about the "end of the world as we know it"?
Are the modern Kassandras and Nostradamuses right?
Will we be destroyed soon - or live long and prosper?

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"The Earth is the cradle of the mind, but we cannot live forever in a cradle". - Tsiolkovsky

I'm rather hopeful that the answer about humans surviving no matter what happens will be the answer. However, I chose that it's not possible to answer because we cannot see the future. At least, I cannot. 8)

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"The oxen are slow, but the earth is patient."

The sun will swell into a red giant far down the road and end this world but by then (unless something unexpected happens) we should be elsewhere to continue our species.

Archer, I like your thinking!

Now, do you suppose it could've already happened? I mean, some species elsewhere, long ago, spreading out into the cosmos away from their swelling Red Giant to survive?

It's possible A.DIM, assuming this happened in an inhabited solar system :wink:

If human beings get wiped out, we will do it to ourselves. No astronomical apocalypse required.

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Everything I need to know I learned through Googling.

I believe that Mankind is Gonna be around for a long long time. The Technological Strives made in the last 100 years pales in Comparison to what we will see in the next 20. Things that seem impossible today will be commonplace tommorow. Personaly I Think mankind will eventually move the entire population to a controlled enviroment like a dyson sphere therby rendering the human race immortal for all intents and purposes.

HEY YOU ASKED

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Just because something is improbable Doesnt mean its impossible.

Humanity will die out when a group of people decide that its a good idea to train monkies to use guns. After that, we are all doomed.

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"Someone out there was going to find out that their worst nightmare was a maddened Librarian." - Terry Pratchett

A nuclear war will render this planet completely uninhabitable to anything other than certain bacteria. I'm talking war on a massive scale - 1000-Hiroshima fusion bombs being dropped on everything from isolated villages to bustling cities, setting off nukes at high altitudes to contaminate huge areas, etc.

For what reason? Don't ask. I'll just say that humans have destructive tendencies.

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If ignorance is bliss, why is the world so full of misery?

Call me an optimist, but I think we'll all die from some zoonotic disease like ebola, long before the sun goes red giant.

I believe we will survive regardless. Technology is simply moving too fast to keep us on Earth for much longer. The sun will not be an issue for our species.

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Calvin: Sometimes when I'm talking, my words can't keep up with my thoughts. I wonder why we think faster than we speak.
Hobbes: Probably so we can think twice.

~Calvin & Hobbes~

Great. So.... monkeys with rayguns, then? I'm serious here. What do we send up into space first? What does Sci-Fi show in experimental pods? Monkeys! We are going to train monkeys to fly spaceships and fire lasers! We're doomed!

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"Someone out there was going to find out that their worst nightmare was a maddened Librarian." - Terry Pratchett

I voted impact. If that doesn't happen, however, and we survive everything past the red giant stage of the sun I say we will die in the eventual heat death of the universe. Either that or the Big Rip, if it happens...

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Yes, I have a life. It's quite different from yours.

Even if we surive the end of the earth we will die sometime out in the universe. It's impossable for us to not.

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The question isn't "what are we gonna do", the question is "what aren't we going to do."

I AM A GOLDEN GOD- Robert Plant, Led Zeppelin

Assuming we avoid the asteroid, self-anhialation, and find some way out of the devestating Reality TV craze. I think humans are survivers. We will populate moons and planets and spread our ilk throughout the galaxy.

Never say never! We could someday transform ourselves into multidimensional super-beings capable of traveling through the very fabric of the universe and discover new realms of existance impervious to extinction.

You were thinking billions of years into the future weren't you?

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"Patriotism is supporting your country all of the time... and your government when it deserves it." - Mark Twain

'monkeys'? methinks you mean 'Apes'? some words are better not used around the Librarian... :wink:

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Who are you going to believe, me or your own eyes? -- Groucho Marx

The Hiroshima bomb was not a fusion bomb, and it would take a lot more than a thousand fusion bombs to destroy hummanity. Civilization, maybe, but not humanity alltogether.

Seriously, we aren't as Godly as we often like to think we are. I voted for asteroid impact.

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"Most editorials are written by people that love to argue but got kicked off debate team for not making any sense." -Seanbaby

I think Kebsis meant that each bomb would be 1000 times more powerful than the Hiroshima bomb.

Personally, I think life will carry on much as it has done for a long time into the future - just muddling along, humanity lurching from political crisis to war to natural disaster and back again, with a fairly normal mixture of happiness and misery. As soon as somebody can make money out of it, we will start to see space-cities, terraforming and colonisation, but only for a few: either the lucky ones (rich people leaving a polluted, crowded Earth) or the unlucky ones (transporting convicts, or perhaps the undesirable ethnic group of the day). But I don't think humanity will be wiped out for a good long while.

PS: Sorry for the gloom, but I have an exam in three hours time

I'm an optimist, so i'll say that humanity will cling on to this universe and refuse to let go under any circumstances... except in the case of the heat death of the universe, where we may meet our final end or find some way of entering a new universe.

I dislike the idea of space travel being the exclusive preserve of either a wealthy elite or a despised underclass (or both)
Space travel should be made cheap, safe, and convenient as soon as possible. 'the stars for all' should be an important aphorism for us to remember.

Cheap space travel would mean the easier collection of the goodies that space contains; Water and metals in asteroids, gases from Jupiter et al, and other resources from the rocky moons and planets.
And perhaps, petrochemical resources from extrasolar planets.

I contend that if we survive the disaster that Nature and human stupidity throw at us, then we can carve our name on the universe.

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Happiness is the Earth in your rear view mirror.

I voted on "We humans will destroy earth and/or ourselves long before any of the above happens" because its true. Blowing things up is our nature and its bound to happen...

I'm pretty sure we'll conquer everything we can get to. The stepping stones have already been found. I voted we'd last for 'ever.' At least the ever afforded us buy this universe. Maybe during the big rip or heat death the gateway to the multi-verse will open and we'll step outside of time and space and get to see the big picture, verify a few string-theory verifiables, then find a way to become athereal beings composed primarily of energy.
NOTE: Don't rely on technology so much. If that asteroid impacted tomorrow, and 99% of people died, where would are technology be?
How many people does it take to make 1 cup of coffee in the morning? Thousands. Water, electric, the coffee can, the can opener, the coffee maker, sugar and milk if that's your thing, the house your in and the cup your driniking from were all made by other people, sometimes YEARS in advance... Lots of forethought was put into your having 1 cup of coffee in the morning. If any part of that chain failed, you'd find it easier to just drink water or if that was what failed, you'd go down to the creek and take a sip...
It would take FOREVER to get back to where we are now if we either killed most of each other, or if nature does it for us.
And don't get me started on the infrastructure required to make or manufacture these technologies on a different planet, moon, or whatever...

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Feynman
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Science is a way of trying not to fool yourself. The first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool.

Religion is a culture of faith; science is a culture of doubt.