The Super Nova!...and all that jazz

[J8555]

After recently taking an Astronomy course, I started to think more about the whole picture. Many people live their daily lives rarely thinking about how vast the universe is. People live their lives running around looking at certain errands and events as holding the utmost importance, seldom coming to the realization that what we do is in fact very miniscule in the whole aspect of the universe. The size of the universe is huge, and when comparing the earth or even our solar system, we really are quite petite. People for the most part are rightly so in not thinking about this much during our lives. Why dwell on it? It’s depressing.

Our solar system, from what we “know” is located in one of the arms of what we call a Spiral Galaxy. The Earth is positioned just the right distance from the Sun, which allows life on Earth. Most people know that a star goes through a life cycle, as any living thing does. After a star is “born” it continues to expand over a long period of time. Nebula-> Protostar -> Red Giant-> Planetary Nebula-> White Dwarf/Black Dwarf, with variables in between. Eventually a star’s life ends. Our Sun is currently still in the stage of Protostar. There’s some large number like 50 million years before the Sun will have fully reached Red Giant stage.

And now finally to the point, the reason for all this long drawn out mumbo-jumbo:
The theory is that as the sun expands, it will eventually grow so large that it will come much closer to Mercury, Venus, Earth, and beyond. Now all life will have been wiped out before this, due to the extreme heat. Following this everything would become much colder since the sun will have died out, making Earth very chilly. This is what the eventual end is supposedly going to be.

The whole point of this is to address that the inevitable end of life on Earth will be the end of the Sun. This is unless of course we’re blown up, or destroyed in some other way before the sun dies. Basically what I’m getting at is that wars between countries, extreme weather changes, and other major events do definitely effect people, but the greatest obstacle man will face appears to the Sun ending it’s lifecycle, ceasing all life on earth.

Now, there really isn’t a point for us to worry about it now, as it won’t effect us in our lifetime, or our children’s lifetime, or farther down the road than that, but some 50 million years from now, all life will be faced with this dilemma. My main interest on this subject is what will happen at that point. No one really thinks about mankind actually ceasing to exist unless you’re watching some fiction movie or something. If we were faced with something like that now, there would be nothing anyone could do. There is simply nothing that could be done to stop it. The question is will there be something that can be done 50 million years down the line? It’s not even conceivable of “stopping” the Sun from doing this. 50 million years is a long time for technology to evolve, but is it long enough to come up with a way to defeat the inevitable? Will there be flying spaceships and teleports at this point that can take man out of the solar system to a safer place? How far will mankind evolve, and will the end of the Sun end mankind as well?

What do you think? Any thoughts pertaining to this subject at all? Discuss! = )