18 replies to this topic

[lakerfan4life11]

do you think humanity will ever get the tech to survive without the sun and will be able to live indefinitely even after the sun dies?

[Kolos]

Don't you think you are a bit obsessed with this issue? It's not going to happen tomorrow, not even bilion years from now so relax.

[forever freedom]

Worthless topic.. repeat. And screw this issue; i'm worried about the next centuries.

Edited by forever freedom, 03 May 2010 - 09:36 PM.

[chris w]

I read that Michio Kaku is already plotting how to move our assess to other universes, so I wouldn't worry that much about this sun, relax and think of dying of old age a bit more.

Edited by chris w, 03 May 2010 - 09:56 PM.

[shadowhawk]

do you think humanity will ever get the tech to survive without the sun and will be able to live indefinitely even after the sun dies?

This is a good question for anyone who asks basic questions about the cosmos. I don’t agree with Davies but this now kind of old book, is great in asking some basic questions. We are going to die a heat death in keeping with the second law of thermodynamics.

http://www.amazon.co...l...2358&sr=1-1

http://www.amazon.co...P...&sr=1-2-ent

Some of his other books are also interesting.

As for Mayan writings, we don’t have long. We surely will be fried by a version of hell fire long before the sun burns out when it expands. We may be inside the surface of the sun. We have to get off the planet. I should say some of our offspring need to get off the earth for humanity to survive. We will go the way of the earth unless we have some other way to overcome its fate. We need a new heaven and earth.

[lakerfan4life11]

do you think humanity will ever get the tech to survive without the sun and will be able to live indefinitely even after the sun dies?

This is a good question for anyone who asks basic questions about the cosmos. I don’t agree with Davies but this now kind of old book, is great in asking some basic questions. We are going to die a heat death in keeping with the second law of thermodynamics.

http://www.amazon.co...l...2358&sr=1-1

http://www.amazon.co...P...&sr=1-2-ent

Some of his other books are also interesting.

As for Mayan writings, we don’t have long. We surely will be fried by a version of hell fire long before the sun burns out when it expands. We may be inside the surface of the sun. We have to get off the planet. I should say some of our offspring need to get off the earth for humanity to survive. We will go the way of the earth unless we have some other way to overcome its fate. We need a new heaven and earth.

i was reading this one book called REJUVENATING THE SUN... it talks about overcoming this issue. i was just curious what people thought about it.

[shadowhawk]

do you think humanity will ever get the tech to survive without the sun and will be able to live indefinitely even after the sun dies?

This is a good question for anyone who asks basic questions about the cosmos. I don't agree with Davies but this now kind of old book, is great in asking some basic questions. We are going to die a heat death in keeping with the second law of thermodynamics.

http://www.amazon.co...l...2358&sr=1-1

http://www.amazon.co...P...&sr=1-2-ent

Some of his other books are also interesting.

As for Mayan writings, we don't have long. We surely will be fried by a version of hell fire long before the sun burns out when it expands. We may be inside the surface of the sun. We have to get off the planet. I should say some of our offspring need to get off the earth for humanity to survive. We will go the way of the earth unless we have some other way to overcome its fate. We need a new heaven and earth.

i was reading this one book called REJUVENATING THE SUN... it talks about overcoming this issue. i was just curious what people thought about it.

Here is Amazon's review of Rejuvenating The Sun.

“This book investigates the idea that the distant future evolution of our Sun might be ‘controlled’ (literally, asteroengineered) so that it maintains its present-day energy output rather than becoming a highly luminous and bloated red giant star – a process that, if allowed to develop, will destroy all life on Earth. The text outlines how asteroengineering might work in principle and it describes what the future solar system could look like. It also addresses the idea of asteroengineering as a galaxy-wide imperative, explaining why the Earth has never been visited by extraterrestrial travellers in the past.”

[niner]

i was reading this one book called REJUVENATING THE SUN... it talks about overcoming this issue. i was just curious what people thought about it.

The book is kind of interesting, but the concern is rather pointless. It makes the mistake of insisting that humanity will still occupy a form the same or similar to our current bodies, for one thing. It assumes that our understanding of physics and of the universe is complete, or nearly so, at this time, which is comical. It wildly mis-prioritizes concern, considering the much more near-term threats that we face.

[valkyrie_ice]

Not worried in the slightest.

Beyond Nanotech, beyond the Singularity even, we have the potential of String tech. All matter is energy in patterns. Alter the patterns you alter the matter. If we survive the Singularity, and String theory proves correct, (which is debatable) then we won't have to worry about it. Why rejuvenate when we could instead simply re-pattern the Sun into whatever stage we prefer?

Regardless, speculation of billions of years from now is rather pointless. We could discover tomorrow that our entire understanding of physics is utterly mistaken. Not in our observations, but in our theories as to underlying causes. All science is simply the best guesses we have been able to make based on currently available data. New observations could either confirm them, or disprove them completely.

Ask again in several billion years, I'll have a better idea by then.

[shadowhawk]

Not worried in the slightest.

Beyond Nanotech, beyond the Singularity even, we have the potential of String tech. All matter is energy in patterns. Alter the patterns you alter the matter. If we survive the Singularity, and String theory proves correct, (which is debatable) then we won't have to worry about it. Why rejuvenate when we could instead simply re-pattern the Sun into whatever stage we prefer?

Regardless, speculation of billions of years from now is rather pointless. We could discover tomorrow that our entire understanding of physics is utterly mistaken. Not in our observations, but in our theories as to underlying causes. All science is simply the best guesses we have been able to make based on currently available data. New observations could either confirm them, or disprove them completely.

Ask again in several billion years, I'll have a better idea by then.

Science is a process not a position. http://amnap.blogspot.com/ Another statement is, science is almost always wrong. Almost every current position in science has several schools of thought and they are all fighting each other and say all kinds of mean things about each other. This is not a new condition and has been going on since there was science. A very old book, ‘Science is a Sacred Cow,’ is a classic. Now out of date it is still worth a read on this subject and was an eye opener for me when I was an undergraduate student..

http://www.amazon.co...A...7426&sr=1-1

Some fun quotes on science.

Science is a cemetery of dead ideas. ~Miguel de Unamuno, The Tragic Sense of Life, 1913

To know the history of science is to recognize the mortality of any claim to universal truth. ~Evelyn Fox Keller, Reflections on Gender and Science, 1995

Facts are not science - as the dictionary is not literature. ~Martin H. Fischer

Physics is mathematical not because we know so much about the physical world, but because we know so little; it is only its mathematical properties that we can discover. ~Bertrand Russell

For every fact there is an infinity of hypotheses. ~Robert M. Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, 1974

Science is the record of dead religions. ~The Oscariana of Oscar Fingall O'Flaherty Will Wilde [1856-1900] for George Bernard Shaw

Science is always wrong. It never solves a problem without creating ten more. ~George Bernard Shaw

There is no gravity. The earth sucks. ~Graffito

Things will change maybe sooner than later. For now, we (humanity) has to get off this earth.

[niner]

For now, we (humanity) has to get off this earth.

I'm not sure if you're kidding or not, what with the smiley, but I'll respond as though you're being serious.

No we don't. Not now. Probably never. You just pointed out the limitations of science. I contend that we don't yet have a full picture of either physics or the universe. Given that we have over a hundred thousand times the length of recorded history in which to get that sorted out before we need to worry about the sun swallowing us up, it would be lunacy to attempt to leave the planet in a significant way with current technology. Once we have a full understanding of physics and the universe, we will probably discover that we don't need to leave, or if we do, or just decide that we want to, we will have easy ways to do it. We may learn how to accomplish faster than light communication; perhaps incredibly faster. Perhaps we will be transdimensional beings that are everywhere at once, and getting off the earth will cease to have meaning.

[Forever21]

do you think humanity will ever get the tech to survive without the sun and will be able to live indefinitely even after the sun dies?

I would be more concerned of future humans destroying this sun from a new better star system where humanity moved.

[Reno]

Well, nanotechnology creates the potential to store energy with close to perfect efficiency for indefinite periods of time. Think about these fun facts. The amount of sunlight reaching the earth's surface is 6,000 times the amount of energy used by all human beings worldwide. The total amount of fossil fuel used by humans since the start of civilization is equivalent to less than 30 days of sunshine.

What if those distant galaxies which have long gone dark at the edges of our universe are inhabited by beings which had long ago mastered energy storage.

[chrwe]

I wish I will personally have to think about this one day in the far far distant future - still alive

Honestly, if we make it this far, we will somehow with technology we don`t even think about yet

[shadowhawk]

For now, we (humanity) has to get off this earth.

I'm not sure if you're kidding or not, what with the smiley, but I'll respond as though you're being serious.

No we don't. Not now. Probably never. You just pointed out the limitations of science. I contend that we don't yet have a full picture of either physics or the universe. Given that we have over a hundred thousand times the length of recorded history in which to get that sorted out before we need to worry about the sun swallowing us up, it would be lunacy to attempt to leave the planet in a significant way with current technology. Once we have a full understanding of physics and the universe, we will probably discover that we don't need to leave, or if we do, or just decide that we want to, we will have easy ways to do it. We may learn how to accomplish faster than light communication; perhaps incredibly faster. Perhaps we will be transdimensional beings that are everywhere at once, and getting off the earth will cease to have meaning.

Couldn’t agree with you more, we don’t have a full picture of either physics or the universe. That itself is probably a gross overstatement, we aren’t close.

We would be cooked long before the Sun expands and gets us inside its surface. Global warming and no way to turn it off. Still it hopefully is a long way off. Al Gore says it’s close.

It would be lunacy to try to leave t he planet. With the speed of the present technology it would take us 75 years just to get to the nearest star. That appears to be no place to go for life extension of any kind. Why would we go? Worm holes, if there are any we could fit in, may be a hope for speed..

As for the hopes you expressed such as full knowledge, fantastic speeds, evolution into transdimensional beings, yes that would be nice. Maybe we (our offspring) can stay on the planet! Maybe not.

I am kind of joking around and not. By the way, I have enjoyed reading your posts sense I joined. You are thoughtful and a wealth of knowledge. I have learned much from you. Thanks!

[johnf]

The Sun dying, or the continents re-merging into the next super-continent, or M-31 in Andromeda colliding with the Milky Way are only projections of what will probably happen, without the intervention of sentience.
I'll quote Dyson and short-cut lots of the arguments by saying that "not one species, but a billion will not exhaust all the niches available across the galaxies and down through time."
What hubris - talking about this scale of things, and the topic title is "humanity"...
"Laugh while you can, monkey-boy" --Lord John Whorfin ("Buckaroo Banzai: across the 8th dimension")
Sometimes the best you can say about humans is "fun to make, good to eat" --anon

Search Stellar husbandry or Star-lifting, for articles about modifying the Sun.
Next will be to take the K=2 civilization in the Dyson cloud around the Sun out away from the path of the colliding galaxies.
All husbanded stars could go on tour of nearby intergalactic space to watch the show as the galaxies merge (over hundreds of millions of years).
If the majority of stars in both galaxies are so husbanded and streered, then what's left to collide? Will we have taken control of the two super-massive black holes by then?

The results will be far different, seen from a distance, than all the destructive & wasteful galactic merges we're seeing; Huge regions of star-formation, with super-massive hot short-lived stars burning up the fuel are wasteful.
Husband that fuel, and it'll last in moderate stars for hundreds of billions of years.

For a good read, see
"Time without end: Physics and biology in an open universe"
http://www.aleph.se/...Omega/dyson.txt
Lecture I. Philosophy
Lecture II. Physics
A. Stellar evolution
B. Detachment of planets from stars
C. Detachment of stars from galaxies
D. Decay of orbits by gravitational radiation
E. Decay of black holes by the Hawking process
F. Matter is liquid at zero temperature
G. All matter decays to iron
H. Collapse of iron star to neutron star
I. Collapse of ordinary matter to black hole
Lecture III. Biology
Lecture IV. Communication

I shall discuss three principal questions within the framework of the open
universe with the metric (6).

(1) Does the universe freeze into a state of permanent physical quiescence as
it expands and cools?

(2) Is it possible for life and intelligence to survive indefinitely?

(3) Is it possible to maintain communication and transmit information across
the constantly expanding distances between galaxies?

These three questions will be discussed in detail in Lectures 2, 3 and 4.
Tentatively, I shall answer them with a no, a yes, and a maybe. My answers are
perhaps only a reflection of my optimistic philosophical bias. I do not expect
everybody to agree with the answers. My purpose is to start people thinking
seriously about the questions.
...
If my view of the future is correct, it means that the world
of physics and astronomy is also inexhaustible; no matter how far we go into
the future, there will always be new things happening, new information coming
in, new worlds to explore, a constantly expanding domain of life,
consciousness, and memory.

As a brief estimate of the duration of sentience of some sort in this universe (if the universe is open), he gives the tidy number of 10^10^76 years, or until proton decay sets in, unless we find some way around that.

[johnf]

niner

shadowhawk:
For now, we (humanity) has to get off this earth.

I'm not sure if you're kidding or not, what with the smiley, but I'll respond as though you're being serious.

No we don't. Not now. Probably never. You just pointed out the limitations of science. I contend that we don't yet have a full picture of either physics or the universe. Given that we have over a hundred thousand times the length of recorded history in which to get that sorted out before we need to worry about the sun swallowing us up, it would be lunacy to attempt to leave the planet in a significant way with current technology. Once we have a full understanding of physics and the universe, we will probably discover that we don't need to leave, or if we do, or just decide that we want to, we will have easy ways to do it. We may learn how to accomplish faster than light communication; perhaps incredibly faster. Perhaps we will be transdimensional beings that are everywhere at once, and getting off the earth will cease to have meaning.

Sure.
I'll bet someone in Kenya =~70,000 years ago said that they might as well sit tight and wait until we develop jet airliners and communications satellites. No sense walking north into the teeth of an ice age, just because of the population pressures or whatever drove our ancestors out of Africa.

No we don't have a full picture. It should be an axiom of science that the more questions there are about a subject, and the more to the root of the subject the questions are, the more likely it is that our understanding of it is due for a major revision.
Hardly a reason to not try to adress the problems we see today, with what we know now.

I'll echo "shadowhawk":
We, now, this generation, needs to make things happen and start moving the human interests out into the solar system. Long overdue.
Since the O-Neill colony studies of the mid'70s, no new inventions needed. Strong answers to all of the major problems facing us as a global civilization and species.
It's said that our moving into space is the greatest step a species has taken since the evolution of the lung.
Bucky Fuller said that it's instructive to look at it as if the Earth were a car's battery, and the solar system is the engine: We've been going about our business by running the battery down, not thinking to start the engine so we can keep the battery up and actually get somewhere.

"In a billion years [from now], it seems, intelligent life might be as different from humans as humans are from insects... To change from a human being to a cloud may seem a big order, but it's the kind of change you'd expect over billions of years."—*Freeman Dyson, Statement made in 1986, quoted in Asimov's Book of Science and Nature Quotations, p. 93 [American Mathematician].

John S. Lewis From 'Mining the Sky'
As long as the human population remains as pitifully small as it is today, we shall be severely limited in what we can accomplish. Human intelligence is the key to the future: human beings are not, as some would have it, a form of pollution.
Having only one Einstein, one Hokusai, one Mozart, one daVinci, one Shankara,... is not enough. We need -and can have- a million times as many.
We need intelligence, wisdom, compassion, and excellence. These godlike traits are manifested in the physical universe only by life, and in the biological universe, only by intelligent life.
Life is not a cancer of matter; it is matter's trancendance of itself.
The fulfillment of time & space is matter; the fulfillment of matter is life; the highest fulfillment of life is unbounded intelligence & compassion."
We would be quite wrong to conclude that the asteroid belt, or solar power... is the ultimate resource. Intelligent life, once liberated by the resources of space, is the greatest resource of the solar system.
The material and energy resources of the solar system allow mankind an infinite future: we can not only break free of the surly bonds of the Earth, but break free of the Sun and escape its fate.

"There is no way back into the past.
The choice is the universe -or nothing.
-- H.G. Wells

The Millennial Project: Colonizing the Galaxy in 8 Easy Steps
By Marshall T. Savage
Author's introduction
http://lufwiki.pbworks.com/TMP%20Intro

Now is the watershed of Cosmic history. We stand at the threshold of the New Millennium. Behind us yawn the chasms of the primordial past, when this universe was a dead and silent place; before us rise the broad sunlit uplands of a living cosmos. In the next few galactic seconds, the fate of the universe will be decided. Life--the ultimate experiment--will either explode into space and engulf the star-clouds in a fire storm of children, trees, and butterfly wings; or Life will fail, fizzle, and gutter out, leaving the universe shrouded forever in impenetrable blankness, devoid of hope.

Teetering here on the fulcrum of destiny stands our own bemused species. The future of the universe hinges on what we do next. If we take up the sacred fire, and stride forth into space as the torchbearers of Life, this universe will be aborning. If we carry the green fire-brand from star to star, and ignite around each a conflagration of vitality, we can trigger a Universal metamorphosis. Because of us, the barren dusts of a million billion worlds will coil up into the pulsing magic forms of animate matter. Because of us, landscapes of radiation blasted waste, will be miraculously transmuted: Slag will become soil, grass will sprout, flowers will bloom, and forests will spring up in once sterile places. Ice, hard as iron, will melt and trickle into pools where starfish, anemones, and seashells dwell--a whole frozen universe will thaw and transmogrify, from howling desolation to blossoming paradise. Dust into Life; the very alchemy of God.

If we deny our awesome challenge; turn our backs on the living universe, and forsake our cosmic destiny, we will commit a crime of unutterable magnitude. mankind alone has the power to carry out this fundamental change in the universe. Our failure would lead to consequences unthinkable. This is perhaps the first and only chance the universe will ever have to awaken from its long night and live. We are the caretakers of this delicate spark of Life. To let it flicker and die through ignorance, neglect, or lack of imagination is a horror too great to contemplate.
...
Scanning the star clouds of the Milky Way with the beacon of the mind's eye, we see that it is wholly uninhabited. All these treasures strewn before us are free for the taking. There is no guardian genie. There are no alien owners to be bargained with, no evil empires to be vanquished, not even a galactic bureaucracy to demand emigration forms in triplicate. The galaxy is free and open now in a way it never will be again. Our species can skate across the glassy spaces, sliding unfettered through the blizzard of stars, skimming down the frosty spiral arms to the snowy banks of the galactic nucleus.

For better or worse, Life has evolved Homo Sapiens as the active agent of her purpose. We are the sentient tool-users. Perhaps Life should have bet on the dolphins. But, she put her money on us, and there is no time left for second guesses. Life has endowed us the with power to conquer the galaxy, and our destiny awaits us there, among the powdery star-fields of deep space. Now we must spring from our home planet and carry the living flame into the sterile wastes. It is time to return the gift of Prometheus to the heavens.

(cont'd)

He says elsewhere:
Our future lies in space, but the Earth is the womb of life, and it will be a long time before we can cut our umbilical cord. The new worlds we wish to create can survive only if the Mother of Life (Gaia) is here to nourish them. If we are to fulfil our Cosmic destiny as the harbingers of Life, we must insure the survival of the planet....Our rapacious demands are overtaxing the ability of Gaia to regenerate herself. The result is a dying planet.
We must find a way to avert this catastrophe."

Fermi's paradox of aliens stands firmly rooted in silencce. They should be here and everywhere, yet there's not a sign of them anywhere "Where are they?" he asked, since we (in 1947) can already see ways we could do it.

[shadowhawk]

niner

shadowhawk:
For now, we (humanity) has to get off this earth.

I'm not sure if you're kidding or not, what with the smiley, but I'll respond as though you're being serious.

No we don't. Not now. Probably never. You just pointed out the limitations of science. I contend that we don't yet have a full picture of either physics or the universe. Given that we have over a hundred thousand times the length of recorded history in which to get that sorted out before we need to worry about the sun swallowing us up, it would be lunacy to attempt to leave the planet in a significant way with current technology. Once we have a full understanding of physics and the universe, we will probably discover that we don't need to leave, or if we do, or just decide that we want to, we will have easy ways to do it. We may learn how to accomplish faster than light communication; perhaps incredibly faster. Perhaps we will be transdimensional beings that are everywhere at once, and getting off the earth will cease to have meaning.

Sure.
I'll bet someone in Kenya =~70,000 years ago said that they might as well sit tight and wait until we develop jet airliners and communications satellites. No sense walking north into the teeth of an ice age, just because of the population pressures or whatever drove our ancestors out of Africa.

No we don't have a full picture. It should be an axiom of science that the more questions there are about a subject, and the more to the root of the subject the questions are, the more likely it is that our understanding of it is due for a major revision.
Hardly a reason to not try to adress the problems we see today, with what we know now.

I'll echo "shadowhawk":
We, now, this generation, needs to make things happen and start moving the human interests out into the solar system. Long overdue.
Since the O-Neill colony studies of the mid'70s, no new inventions needed. Strong answers to all of the major problems facing us as a global civilization and species.
It's said that our moving into space is the greatest step a species has taken since the evolution of the lung.
Bucky Fuller said that it's instructive to look at it as if the Earth were a car's battery, and the solar system is the engine: We've been going about our business by running the battery down, not thinking to start the engine so we can keep the battery up and actually get somewhere.

"In a billion years [from now], it seems, intelligent life might be as different from humans as humans are from insects... To change from a human being to a cloud may seem a big order, but it's the kind of change you'd expect over billions of years."—*Freeman Dyson, Statement made in 1986, quoted in Asimov's Book of Science and Nature Quotations, p. 93 [American Mathematician].

John S. Lewis From 'Mining the Sky'
As long as the human population remains as pitifully small as it is today, we shall be severely limited in what we can accomplish. Human intelligence is the key to the future: human beings are not, as some would have it, a form of pollution.
Having only one Einstein, one Hokusai, one Mozart, one daVinci, one Shankara,... is not enough. We need -and can have- a million times as many.
We need intelligence, wisdom, compassion, and excellence. These godlike traits are manifested in the physical universe only by life, and in the biological universe, only by intelligent life.
Life is not a cancer of matter; it is matter's trancendance of itself.
The fulfillment of time & space is matter; the fulfillment of matter is life; the highest fulfillment of life is unbounded intelligence & compassion."
We would be quite wrong to conclude that the asteroid belt, or solar power... is the ultimate resource. Intelligent life, once liberated by the resources of space, is the greatest resource of the solar system.
The material and energy resources of the solar system allow mankind an infinite future: we can not only break free of the surly bonds of the Earth, but break free of the Sun and escape its fate.

"There is no way back into the past.
The choice is the universe -or nothing.
-- H.G. Wells

The Millennial Project: Colonizing the Galaxy in 8 Easy Steps
By Marshall T. Savage
Author's introduction
http://lufwiki.pbworks.com/TMP%20Intro

Now is the watershed of Cosmic history. We stand at the threshold of the New Millennium. Behind us yawn the chasms of the primordial past, when this universe was a dead and silent place; before us rise the broad sunlit uplands of a living cosmos. In the next few galactic seconds, the fate of the universe will be decided. Life--the ultimate experiment--will either explode into space and engulf the star-clouds in a fire storm of children, trees, and butterfly wings; or Life will fail, fizzle, and gutter out, leaving the universe shrouded forever in impenetrable blankness, devoid of hope.

Teetering here on the fulcrum of destiny stands our own bemused species. The future of the universe hinges on what we do next. If we take up the sacred fire, and stride forth into space as the torchbearers of Life, this universe will be aborning. If we carry the green fire-brand from star to star, and ignite around each a conflagration of vitality, we can trigger a Universal metamorphosis. Because of us, the barren dusts of a million billion worlds will coil up into the pulsing magic forms of animate matter. Because of us, landscapes of radiation blasted waste, will be miraculously transmuted: Slag will become soil, grass will sprout, flowers will bloom, and forests will spring up in once sterile places. Ice, hard as iron, will melt and trickle into pools where starfish, anemones, and seashells dwell--a whole frozen universe will thaw and transmogrify, from howling desolation to blossoming paradise. Dust into Life; the very alchemy of God.

If we deny our awesome challenge; turn our backs on the living universe, and forsake our cosmic destiny, we will commit a crime of unutterable magnitude. mankind alone has the power to carry out this fundamental change in the universe. Our failure would lead to consequences unthinkable. This is perhaps the first and only chance the universe will ever have to awaken from its long night and live. We are the caretakers of this delicate spark of Life. To let it flicker and die through ignorance, neglect, or lack of imagination is a horror too great to contemplate.
...
Scanning the star clouds of the Milky Way with the beacon of the mind's eye, we see that it is wholly uninhabited. All these treasures strewn before us are free for the taking. There is no guardian genie. There are no alien owners to be bargained with, no evil empires to be vanquished, not even a galactic bureaucracy to demand emigration forms in triplicate. The galaxy is free and open now in a way it never will be again. Our species can skate across the glassy spaces, sliding unfettered through the blizzard of stars, skimming down the frosty spiral arms to the snowy banks of the galactic nucleus.

For better or worse, Life has evolved Homo Sapiens as the active agent of her purpose. We are the sentient tool-users. Perhaps Life should have bet on the dolphins. But, she put her money on us, and there is no time left for second guesses. Life has endowed us the with power to conquer the galaxy, and our destiny awaits us there, among the powdery star-fields of deep space. Now we must spring from our home planet and carry the living flame into the sterile wastes. It is time to return the gift of Prometheus to the heavens.

(cont'd)

He says elsewhere:
Our future lies in space, but the Earth is the womb of life, and it will be a long time before we can cut our umbilical cord. The new worlds we wish to create can survive only if the Mother of Life (Gaia) is here to nourish them. If we are to fulfil our Cosmic destiny as the harbingers of Life, we must insure the survival of the planet....Our rapacious demands are overtaxing the ability of Gaia to regenerate herself. The result is a dying planet.
We must find a way to avert this catastrophe."

Fermi's paradox of aliens stands firmly rooted in silencce. They should be here and everywhere, yet there's not a sign of them anywhere "Where are they?" he asked, since we (in 1947) can already see ways we could do it.

Great and interestng. If we have an open cosmos it changes things. I ordered the book you recommended. If the universe is closed here is also an interesting read.
Thanks.

http://www.amazon.co...c...7976&sr=1-4

Pannenberg has a response to Frank Tipler in this book on the Omega point which many here have talked about here.

[shadowhawk]

See two other interesting books by Frank Tipler I mentioned above.

http://www.amazon.co...y...3285&sr=1-1

http://www.amazon.co...-...3660&sr=1-1

Tipler's Website
http://www.math.tula...ipler/body.html