If the threat radius is 1000 light years on average, then the most
likely location for one that will threaten us is somewhere 870 light
years away. Given this, then its all a function of rate of expansion
versus time till dooms day. If the probability is once every 200 million
years, and the last one was 100 million years ago, then there's a 0.50%
chance of it being sometime in the next million years. Assuming this is
the case, then we could expand at a rate of 0.50% of light speed in all
directions (.005 C) and still have the ability to allow 50% of all of
humanity to escape destruction, assuming they are still human in a
million years. At faster rates of expansion, obviously, the percent of
humanity surviving goes up.
>
> >Besides this, I expect that technology will allow
> >the development of sheilding sufficient to protect any "Noah's Ark" type
> >preserves, possibly in the cores of asteroids or dead moons like our
> >own. Several hundred miles of solid rock in every direction should be
> >enough sheilding against anything two neutron stars can cook up from
> >several hundred light years away.
>
> Noah's Ark is a myth, remember.
Of course, simply a metaphor.
You can survive in a "Noah's Ark", but a
> civilization can't (nor an ecology). Complex civilizations need very large
> numbers of people to support them. And imagine the chaos created if a solar
> system-wide civilization discovered 99.9% of the population was going to die
> in the near future? I'd expect the fighting to destroy the Arks.
Given the vastness of space, it will hardly be like the evactuation of a
city. Even using salt mines would suffice for planetary protection,
while with space, there are plenty of comets to go around in the Kuiper
belts of most stars. Even at a slow rate of huma expansion, the
population density will still be less than one person per cubic AU or
even small fractions of that.
-- TANSTAAFL!!!Michael Lorrey ------------------------------------------------------------ President retroman@tpk.net Northstar Technologies Agent Lorrey@ThePentagon.com Inventor of the Lorrey Drive Silo_1013@ThePentagon.com
Website: http://www.tpk.net/~retroman/ Now Featuring: Mikey's Animatronic Factory http://www.tpk.net/~retroman/animations.htm My Own Nuclear Espionage Agency (MONEA) MIKEYMAS(tm): The New Internet Holiday Transhumans of New Hampshire (>HNH) ------------------------------------------------------------ Transhumanist, Inventor, Webmaster, Ski Guide, Entrepreneur, Artist, Outdoorsman, Libertarian, Arms Exporter-see below. ------------------------------------------------------------ #!/usr/local/bin/perl-0777---export-a-crypto-system-sig-RC4-3-lines-PERL @k=unpack('C*',pack('H*',shift));for(@t=@s=0..255){$y=($k[$_%@k]+$s[$x=$_ ]+$y)%256;&S}$x=$y=0;for(unpack('C*',<>)){$x++;$y=($s[$x%=256]+$y)%256; &S;print pack(C,$_^=$s[($s[$x]+$s[$y])%256])}sub S{@s[$x,$y]=@s[$y,$x]}