"J. R. Molloy" wrote:
> "About 5 billion years" the physicist answers.
>
> " Oh Thank God" the man says greatly relieved, " I thought you said
> 5 MILLION".
The true figure is a lot less, since the solar constant kinetics is
going to go explosive a lot earlier, rendering Earth unfit to inabit for
anything but extremophiles, and soon not even them.
Three orders of magnitude of difference gives a different species a
chance to go sentient and then off-planet, in case we screw it up,
so there *is* a difference between megayears and gigayears. (Though
it does not make a lot of difference to us personally, then,
admittedly, but I can't help rooting for a good case, so).
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Mon May 28 2001 - 09:56:16 MDT