How much longer do humans have?

Among the possible ways human beings will go extinct include:

1) By their own hand through war, disease (like the Pandemic from Wuhan), man-made climate change, pollution or man-made disasters germ warfare or radiation spills.

2) The sun turning into a red giant near the end of its life and making temperatures unlivable for humans.

There are many other ways humanity can end such as an asteroid hitting earth, another ice age, etc.

How much longer does mankind have on earth? If Climate change remains unresolved and CO2 emissions are not reduced, I'd say humans will be extinct in 1,000 years.

If by the sun becoming a red giant, we have about 1 billion years since temperatures will be to hot long before the sun swallows earth.

@vivify said
Among the possible ways human beings will go extinct include:

1) By their own hand through war, disease (like the Pandemic from Wuhan), man-made climate change, pollution or man-made disasters germ warfare or radiation spills.

2) The sun turning into a red giant near the end of its life and making temperatures unlivable for humans.

There are many other ways humanity c ...[text shortened]... we have about 1 billion years since temperatures will be to hot long before the sun swallows earth.

My optimistic answer is never.

1) No plausible climate change/nuclear winter scenario would cause our complete extinction. Mass deaths, yes. But we have tens (maybe hundreds) of thousands of underground bunkers with years worth of stored food, seed banks to re-establish crops, sufficient diversity to adapt to change, intelligence to adapt to change, infrastructure built to withstand. Climate change will eliminate a lot of livable habitat, but we will be able to survive.

2) If we last 1 billion more years we will figure out how to flee the solar system.

@vivify said
Among the possible ways human beings will go extinct include:

1) By their own hand through war, disease (like the Pandemic from Wuhan), man-made climate change, pollution or man-made disasters germ warfare or radiation spills.

2) The sun turning into a red giant near the end of its life and making temperatures unlivable for humans.

There are many other ways humanity c ...[text shortened]... we have about 1 billion years since temperatures will be to hot long before the sun swallows earth.

In any of those scenarios I’ll already be long dead, so I couldn’t care less tbh.

@vivify
I don't think much of any life forms have lived for one billion years so for instance, Neanterthals were around for what, 300,000 ish years? Under a million for sure, and how old is Earth? Four or so BILLION years?

Call it THREE billion years for grins. 300,000 times ten, 3 million, so times another thousand you get to 3 billion, 1/10,000ths of the time of Earth even counting it 3 bil.
Humans, around for say 200,000 odd years, so let's go back to 4 bil as age of Earth, maybe it's 4.5 but lets stick with 4 bill for ease of arithmetic.
200,000 years times 20 is 4 million years. So times that by 1000 and humans have been here about 1/20,000ths of the age of Earth.

Not good odds for lasting even ONE million years much less one BILLION years.
That would be preposterous. If we get to interstellar space maybe we could be around in some form a million years from now but not too likely considering so far we can only dream about going close to c and totally in dream world to go even ten times faster than that.

So lets suppose we get a 10 X c thing, even the closest star would be about 5ish months journey and ten ly, one full years journey, 1000 ly? 100 years.
So for a real interstellar civilization, we would need more like 1000c, there we have a 100 LY journey in a couple of months.
1000 LY in a year.

My guess is we would go extinct before we found even THAT kind of velocity so the number of stars we could see in say 1000 years, assuming we could freeze the passengers so they don't need nutrients, toilets and such, and arrive there more or less in one piece as a number of sci fi stories have done, like The book of the long sun by Gene Wolfe, but they are not frozen but a living society evolving on a thousand year journey going something like 1/10 c or so.
That puts us 100 LY away, a lot of stars in THAT sphere though.

At best that would make a bunch of totally isolated civilizations and totally separate evolutionary paths. I guess that would make a nice sci fi story expanding on the Wolfe scenario.
But living only on Earth? good luck.

We can live on Mars and maybe even make a nice Earthy atmosphere but I don't think there is much you can do with what, 1/3 of Earth gravity and that would have to lead to evolutionary changes in X amount of generations, say ten generations and a new species emerges not able to procreate with humans.

The magnetic field now mainly absent on Mars is a technical issue, we can fix that with a few turns around Mars' equator of a superconductor with a few thousand amps flowing and we would have something like a Earthy magnetic field so we would not lose our newly man made atmosphere and the like but we for sure won't be changing that 1/3 gravity thing so we would evolve to adapt to that level of gravity eventually and that would mean those folks would never be able to go back to Earth, which would be 3 times stronger and most likely they would have broken bones and internal damage if they tried to go back to Earth so they wouldn't be fully human any more but a separate humanoid race, see the problems doing the interplanetary colonization thing?

Sure, we could make giant cylinder living spaces kilometers across and say 100 kilometers wide spinning and we live inside that spinning tube and we could go on living as more or less present day humans by having artificial gravity but living long term on planets with 1/3 or 1/6th Earth gravity like the moon, long term there would be evolutionary changes to accommodate such planets or moons.

My guess is say 1000 years of scientific growth meaning we are around for the next 1000 years in more or less the civilizations we have now, like dodging the nuclear war bullet and climate change bullets maybe we could develop some of that technology or even sooner but does anyone here think Germany, US, Russia and such will be around in our present forms 1000 years from now?

More likely EVERYTHING will be unrecognizable 1000 years on, all our present countries dust in the history books.
So we would have a LOT of trouble getting ANY prognostication even ten percent right, meaning 90 percent WRONG.

So it just seems to me we cannot make anything like reliable assertions of human life 1000 years from now and in this present political climate, even what is 100 years ahead.

Look at what life is like now for humans compared to 1923. Good luck with any of folks from that year imagining 300,000 watt laser weapons on ships right now or the internet or cell phones of even computers of most any sort other than mechanical calculators. Imagine US now in 2023 prediction what will be around scientifically or politically in the year 2123.
Anyone have thoughts on those kind of scenarios?

@vivify said
If by the sun becoming a red giant, we have about 1 billion years since temperatures will be to hot long before the sun swallows earth.

If we can't get off this planet to somewhere else before then, we deserve to go extinct.

@suzianne said
If we can't get off this planet to somewhere else before then, we deserve to go extinct.

Maybe they were on to something in Logan’s Run.

@divegeester
The only way we can ever traverse the mind-boggling immense distances in space, even to reach the nearest star, let alone the nearest galaxy is by employing a method that in Dune is described as ‘folding space’ and Star Trek using a ‘warp drive’.

Apparently this is theoretically possible.

Einstein’s general theory of relativity states that space and time are curved - there are no straight lines or steady time flow of time in space.

If a configurable energy field lower than that of a vacuum could be created a space craft could achieve speeds apparently faster than the speed of light by a warp drive which locates wormholes in the space-time continuum and then contracts the space in front of it and expands the space behind it resulting in effective faster than light travel, instantly connecting all parts of the universe.

Science or fiction?

@Pianoman1
So far, fiction, those warp drive things wants 'negative energy' and maybe we can make that stuff in micro size but not enough to fold over a whole spacecraft.
Come back in 500 years🙂
Do you have any tracks on soundcloud? I am running 295 tracks there now. I play acoustic guitar, mandolin, keyboards, dulcimer.
I can PM my link there but been burned before even hinting at my name.

@pianoman1 said
@divegeester
The only way we can ever traverse the mind-boggling immense distances in space, even to reach the nearest star, let alone the nearest galaxy is by employing a method that in Dune is described as ‘folding space’ and Star Trek using a ‘warp drive’.

Apparently this is theoretically possible.

Einstein’s general theory of relativity states that ...[text shortened]... ive faster than light travel, instantly connecting all parts of the universe.

Science or fiction?

Science of course.

Do you have point?

@divegeester said
In any of those scenarios I’ll already be long dead, so I couldn’t care less tbh.

Don't you have any decedents/ offspring?
Any next generation in your family at least?

@yo-its-me said
Don't you have any decedents/ offspring?
Any next generation in your family at least?

No kids; who needs that grief in their life. No pets either.
Lock-up and leave whenever we want to.

I have little time for humans generally speaking; but fortunately chimps share only 1% less DNA with me than my irritating species does, so I’m leaving it all to them and wish them well in the coming apocalypse.

@vivify said
Among the possible ways human beings will go extinct include:

1) By their own hand through war, disease (like the Pandemic from Wuhan), man-made climate change, pollution or man-made disasters germ warfare or radiation spills.

2) The sun turning into a red giant near the end of its life and making temperatures unlivable for humans.

There are many other ways humanity c ...[text shortened]... we have about 1 billion years since temperatures will be to hot long before the sun swallows earth.

I imagine I've already lived longer than 3/4 of my life. Beyond the grave how long this world lasts will not matter to me.

@pianoman1 said
@divegeester
The only way we can ever traverse the mind-boggling immense distances in space, even to reach the nearest star, let alone the nearest galaxy is by employing a method that in Dune is described as ‘folding space’ and Star Trek using a ‘warp drive’.

Apparently this is theoretically possible.

Einstein’s general theory of relativity states that ...[text shortened]... ive faster than light travel, instantly connecting all parts of the universe.

Science or fiction?

That's exactly how warp nacelles work in Star Trek.

@sonhouse said
@vivify
I don't think much of any life forms have lived for one billion years so for instance, Neanterthals were around for what, 300,000 ish years? Under a million for sure, and how old is Earth? Four or so BILLION years?

Call it THREE billion years for grins. 300,000 times ten, 3 million, so times another thousand you get to 3 billion, 1/10,000ths of the time of Ear ...[text shortened]... nd scientifically or politically in the year 2123.
Anyone have thoughts on those kind of scenarios?

Does a species that adapts so well have to evolve very much? Different subspecies evolve because they have to. Sharks don't need to as much as other species. They are already well adapted. Sure, you have your hammerhead sharks and adaptations like that, but most of them have changed very little in millions of years.

Even primitive man survived the ice age. With our modern technology we are super adaptable. We don't need to change much. We can put a colony on the Moon. How is that for adaptable?

@pianoman1 said
@divegeester
The only way we can ever traverse the mind-boggling immense distances in space, even to reach the nearest star, let alone the nearest galaxy is by employing a method that in Dune is described as ‘folding space’ and Star Trek using a ‘warp drive’.

Apparently this is theoretically possible.

Einstein’s general theory of relativity states that ...[text shortened]... ive faster than light travel, instantly connecting all parts of the universe.

Science or fiction?

Probably fiction.

People just don't want to accept that light is the speed limit. Once people accept that they have to accept stars are too far away for travel. It bursts their sci fi bubble. The reality is that stars are too far away. An alien species would not make the super long trip. They would send highly advanced robots assuming their creators are curious and very patient enough to even bother. They might have bigger problems to deal with at home.