From: Technotranscendence (neptune@mars.superlink.net)
Date: Sat Feb 15 2003 - 13:57:38 MST
On Wednesday, February 05, 2003 6:07 PM Lee Corbin lcorbin@tsoft.com
wrote:
>> "The Sun should enter the Apex Cloud (a 'cloudlet'
>> of the Aquila-Ophiuchus cloud, located within 5 pc
>> of the Sun) within ~10^4 years."
>
> Whew! The first time I read that I thought you
> said 10^2 years. Thank goodness it's really
> ten thousand years! That was a close one!
It's not as far off as I'd like. Imagine this. Human civilization as
we know is destroyed by some cataclysm that doesn't wipe out the species
or most higher life on Earth. We always have a chance to climb back up
the ladder again, but some later catastrophies might wipe all all life
or all higher life making this impossible. This kind of one-two punch
is perhaps unlikely, but I'd like to see smooth sailing for the next
several hundred thousand years or more.:) (Wasn't there a report about
a year ago of a potential NEO hitting Earth in around 900 years?
Imagine, if you will, our civilization experiencing a decline similar to
the dark ages of old. That could last well over 900 years -- putting us
in a very precarious situation as a species.)
Of course, if humanity (or posthumanity) migrates to space or develops
some other means of countering these threats in the interim -- which,
barring such catastrophes, I think is very likely -- then my tolerances
widen.:) Until we have such, though, we are extremely vulnerable.
Cheers!
Dan
http://uweb.superlink.net/neptune/
See "For a Free Frontier: The Case for Space Colonization" at:
http://uweb.superlink.net/neptune/SpaceCol.html
See "Space: The Forgotten Frontier" at:
http://uweb.superlink.net/neptune/SpaceForgot.html
See "A Late Answer to Bob Black" [on space commercialization] at:
http://uweb.superlink.net/neptune/Black.html
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