Given the incredible technological progress since the industrial revolution (cooking by fire to walking on the moon and nuclear power in under two centuries), I am highly skeptical of this assumption.
The only things that can stop us are regressions to the primitive, of which I know of only two forms: the first is belief in the supernatural and its primacy as the basis of abstract thought. The second is nihilistic hatred of man and progress masked as practical necessity and love of nature.
I stand for life, and for progress. I am proud, and you should be, too. Whatever challenges nature holds in store for us, we can figure it out!
I really don't know what to make of this. You surely can't think that "cooking by fire" was the height of technological sophistication in the year 1813?
Remember the timeframes involved are of many million years. The Sun will change very slowly until the very end and moving the Earth any faster would create climate problems of their very own.
BTW, we'll have some problems before that, when the Milky Way merges with Andromeda. I imagine lots of stars will gain excessive mass from fast moving gas clouds and may decide to go nova/supernova in the millennia it will take for both galaxies to pass through each other.
You shouldn't be. Basing your argument on "incredible technological progress since the industrial revolution" and "a billion years" passing is mere extrapolation.
Extrapolation of this form is like saying "I ate 1 burger on Monday, 2 on Tuesday and 4 on Wednesday. Given this rate, I'll be eating billions of burgers by next week".
For one, early discoveries, when science started its' pacing were easier. They are "low hanging fruit". We got the most basic stuff in 2-3 centuries (electricity, magnetism, gravity, modern math, evolution, boolean algebra, sets, engineering), refined them in another (relativity, quantum physics, computing, DNA). At some point you reach a plateau. We are not increasing anywhere near the same pace as in the start in breadth and quality: mostly in volume (more research into various aspects of stuff) and detail (more detailed results).
Second, there are other limits. For example, handling stuff below or above some natural limits requires (by the physics of the thing) enormous energy -- and we either don't have that or couldn't use it without melting earth.
There are also limits to our resources -- the very stuff we use to make our tech. From minerals to water. And then there's social limits. We could have been wiped out from a WWIII style thing several times during the cold war -- and could be even worse going forward, if on top of the usual greed and diplomatic expansion games there's also something like a fight for natural resources (draught, famine, etc).
It may be sad to lose the home planet, with all its historical importance, but maybe then we are routinely terraforming other planets and moving them around.
If you're interested in really long term survival, arguably the thing to do is to work out how to store the energy, or to turn the temperature down a bit so you're using less fuel, or to find out how to live on less fuel ourselves. Or all of the above.
Lots of energy going to waste out there - and the underlying point behind the article, I suppose, is that the universe has a limited energy budget. Like cancer - if you live long enough something will get you.
Around 1900, that seemed to be the state in physics.
We have an extremely limited understanding of these places. We barely have an inkling of how elements and compounds behave in such temperatures/pressures/environments, particularly with respect to each other.
Even on Earth, places we consider to be "harsh" environments are often found to be thriving with life.
There are just simply no available building blocks in the sun. The sun's gravity is so strong that it sorts out it's elements by atomic weight almost perfectly. Hydrogen, Helium, and then some heavier ones. At that point... we're just out of building blocks. What would we build the life with? Swirls of Hydrogen? Hydrogen can only bind to itself, one at a time. There's no way to make any structures.
As someone with a biochem degree (which is admittedly biased towards earthling life): my understanding of life is that it's fundamentally about selectively letting certains molecules in to create energy and chemical gradients. It's about separating one's inside from the surrounding, so the inside can be manipulated.
The insides of cells are a very different solution than outside--- and along similar lines of homeostatis, the blood of dolphins is very different from sea water.
I just have a ton of difficulty seeing how a uniform pool of plasma could hold life.
"harsh" environments on Earth, such as the depths of the oceans, are still quite life-friendly compared to places like the Sun, Venus or Jupiter.
Nobody is dismissing the possibility of life on the Sun, Venus or Jupiter... it's just very unlikely. I would personally rate more life-friendly places such as Europa or Titan. The oceans of Europa could be thriving with sea-life and it's so exciting to have that possibility right in our own solar system.
Life is a kind of pattern that can replicate itself in a certain environment. We usually consider it as chemical reproduction but why should it be. There's more energy in stars and complex magnetic structures. Who's to say that over billions of years some of them couldn't become replicating?
Indeed, why would anyone immediately dismiss life on the Sun!
Dr. Peter Venkman: Ray, pretend for a moment that I don't know anything about metallurgy, engineering, or physics, and just tell me what the hell is going on.
Dr Ray Stantz: You never studied.
The rate of cooling of the Earth’s interior, the gravitational interactions with other objects, and a steady increase in the Sun's luminosity is well documented.
The sun is just another star, and the basic of star phases is good understood. The sun will eventually burn up most of its fuel and enter a red giant phase that destroys the Earth if we don't intervene [0].
And there's still selection pressure from so many sources. Partial list: Some people die before they reach breeding age, some people refuse to have children, some people are born unable to have children, some people have children with dead-beat spouses, some people are simply incapable of caring properly for kids, some people are prohibitively undesirable as mates, and so on.
