Oh joy, oh joy!
After doing posts on solar storms wiping out the electricity grid and possible supervolcano explosions I despaired of finding similar disaster stories. Now the New Scientist has come to the rescue.
The planetary orbits in our solar system comprise what is known as a “chaotic system”. A bit of a shove or a push here or there and the system could go wild.
The most likely trigger for chaos could come when the perihelions, the points where their orbits take them closest to the sun, of Jupiter and Mercury line up. According to simulations done by a team in the Paris Observatory of France the possibilities range between Mars diving into the sun or being spun out into space. But possibilities also include planet earth colliding with Mercury or Venus. Another possibility is that Mars whizzes close by, earth’s gravity tears it apart and the bits rain down on our heads.
What are the chances? About 1 in 100 we are told. OMIGOD!
But fear not, that’s 1 in 100 over the next 5 billion years. I can live with those odds and sleep peacefully at night. We are more likely to be done in by the disintegration of the Y-chromosone.
Also with nuclear technology we clearly have the technical capacity to wipe ourselves out. I recall an interchange on the ABC when one panelist suggested that in 50 million years the only trace of humans ever having existed could be a layer of toxic sludge in the fossil record. We have an amazing capacity to cooperate and an altruistic tendency that has carried us far. We also have a nasty, spiteful, aggressive nature able to kill with awesome efficiency. Somewhere perhaps between bonobo and the chimpanzee.
Our biggest danger lies within.
BTW the image at the head of the post comes from Iran Daily – Science.
BTW again, right next to that article in the New Scientist was another suggesting that beneath Mount St Helens there is a lot of material that could add up to a nascent supervolcano. So if you are short of something to worry about try this:
Don’t worry Brian. As Tyler told us, on a long enough timeline, everyone’s survival rate drops to zero. I have to tell you I really anticipate every update in your apocalyptic-disaster series of posts.
May I suggest, for sometime in the near future, the dangerous possibility of bio-engineering of bacteria and contagious diseases? The technology AFAIK is getting cheaper and cheaper, making the chances of a war-lab technician’s workplace fuckup turning into pandemic.
Hooray for anxiety porn!
Thanks Brian,
1.5 degrees every thousand years, eh? Not something to concern our children or our granchildren.
But look, why not send this to The Australian? I’m sure a Julia Gillard angle could be dreamt up. Let’s see, Jupiter has a Great Red Spot – matching her hair colour!! “Precession of the perihelion” – I’m confident some student leftists would have based their manifesto on that, circa 1983.
We’ll all be murdered in our beds.
Gawd Brian; and I thought “Car 51 where are you” in the Senate this pm was all the go…
Incidentally, re: fossil cities.
Well crap. I’ve just booked in a seat at a restaurant in 5 billion years and one day. I ain’t trustin’ nobody for nothin’, no more!
What if the science is wrong?
I say we nuke all the other planets right now.
Yep, Ken, pre-emptive strike. Way to go.
To be honest I was trying to finish a post (I’ll put it up next week) on Christine Milne’s vision of a splendid green future as delivered in her National Press Club speech. All the positivity was getting to me, until I was rescued sitting on the loo reading the latest NS. Gloomy posts are so much easier to write!
I blame Kevin Rudd and his links to China, not to mention Red Julia and her links to communism. Both of them would benefit greatly as a result of a failure to launch a pre-emtive strike as a result of lack of scepticism from drinking too many debt ridden soy lattes while driving a 1969 Mazda ute. Or something
No adrian – it is neoliberalism. Obviously, allowing all those planets their freedom to decide for themselves means that one day one of them might choose to suicide by crashing into one of the others.
The solution, of course, is social democracy. We can simply vote to elect representatives that will pass a law banning that sort of behaviour. Problem solved.
I’m putting my money on the black armhole of history. You know it makes sense.
Initially, scientists believed we had nothing to fear, because black holes were thought of as fairly stationary.
“Then, in the year 2000, all hell broke loose,” Kaku says. “At that point, we had conclusive evidence that there are wandering black holes — nomads, renegades — right next to us in our own backyard of a galaxy.”
http://abcnews.go.com/2020/Science/story?id=2365372&page=1
Repeal the Law of Gravity! You know it makes sense.
Commence waterboarding Uranus at once!
Gee, I don’t know, Brian. The image at the top of the article looks Photoshopped to me…
Ok, I’ll stop now.
Don’t know what you’re worrying about, Brian – there are far more pressing problems for our planet.
Nibiru is due to pass through the Solar system in 2012.
Catastrophe for ALL
Its all the fault of the Sumerians. If they hadn’t started civilisation, we wouldn’t be in this mess. OTOH, I suppose you could blame the hunter-gatherers that came out of the Rift Valley. Or Darwin.
I’ll see your Sumerians, and raise you the Maya, Paul.
‘the hunter-gatherers that came out of the Rift Valley. Or Darwin.’
That be Mark Textor, Paul.
The Bonobos solve all their problems by having massive orgies. So c’arn everyone. Bonk for world peace. No?
.
Wonder why that is. Something to do with property methinks.
I suppose you could blame the hunter-gatherers that came out of the Rift Valley.
.
I blame the Canadians. It’s all their fault. Always is.
Mercurius, would you believe, in the same issue, Seven things that don’t make sense about gravity.
Bloody hell !
Both the Sumerians and the Mayans agree on 2012.
Obviously we’ll all be rooned.
“in 50 million years the only trace of humans ever having existed could be a layer of toxic sludge in the fossil record”
That is an absolute certainty. But who or what is going to discover the layer?
Pterosaur,
From an ad I have seen on the History channel, Nostradamus also agreed on 2012. That said, I remember shows on in the 1990s that said that Nostradamus had predicted that it would be midnight on New Year’s Eve 1999.
He also apparently said (from 1980s shows) that Teddy Kennedy at one stage would be President.
Maybe he did and I have just imagined all this.
BilB, some future ape-like creature, a mix between the tendencies of the bonobo and the the chimp perhaps. After all this was us 47 million years ago.
Heaps of time for Gaia to write off the big brain experiment as a failure and have another go!
Liam @ 16,
)
It seems thehe Sumerians it appear have equaled the Mayans. Though I didn’t know or couldn’t remember the former had also predicted the end of the world, and I was about to concede. But, just a minor point,isn’y 2012 a wee bit early? Mind you, if its not I’m saving yp to buy me seat at one of Armidale’s footie grounds. (If I was really panicky about it I suppose I could just fly to Rome, stand in the Coliseum and wait for Jesus to come.
“I remember shows on in the 1990s that said that Nostradamus had predicted that it would be midnight on New Year’s Eve 1999″.
No that was Prince.
A hypothesis refuted by Cocker, J. and Pulp in Disco 2000 (Different Class:1995).
….But anticipated in 1987 by REM http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z0GFRcFm-aY
You guys do know that climate change is caused by astronomical activity, particularly changes in the earth’s orbit, right?
For example:
1. Precession: the toing and froing of the earth’s axis away from and towards the sun; a 24,000 year cycle.
2. Eccentricity: The 100,000 year change in the shape of the earth’s orbit about the sun from near circular, to one with an increasingly eccentric elliptical orbit.
3. The obliquity – tilt of the earth’s axis to the plane of earth’s orbit of the sun; around 21,000 years.
It is the interaction of these three that explains all our previous ice ages, and warmings.
We would do well to focus more on how these three interact with carbon emmissions.
I hope this helps.
It doesn’t really. I say that’s boring! And as far as I can tell also wrong.
I’ve checked three sources. All give the periodicity of obliquity (axial tilt) as 41,000 years.
One has precession as 19-23,000, one roughly 26,000 years with variations down to 21,600 and one about 23,000 years.
They comprise a very weak climate forcing.
Have a look at Hansen’s Iowa testimony (download from here). See especially Figures 10-13, you can find the corresponding text yourself. During the long cooling period of the Cenozoic era the dominant forcing was natural variations in CO2 at a rate of 100 ppm per million years. Today’s CO2 forcing is about 20,000 times stronger.
More recently during the Pleistocene epoch when we were going in and out of “ice” ages, the chief instigator of climate changes was orbital variations, the chief mechanism being GHGs and ice sheet area, as feedbacks. The only forcing that compares to what humans are doing now was the Paleocene–Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM). Today’s forcing is many times stronger.
Now if you want to argue, don’t tell me, write to Dr Hansen. I’ll consider it a thread derailment and deal accordingly.
Sorry, Brian, but it has to be said.
Ptolemy is clearly the new … err … Ptolemy (or maybe Galileo). He’s just noticed something that has been overlooked by tens of thousands of climate scientists, from dozens of different disciplines (including various flavours of physics) and it changes everything!!!!11!!111! Oh, and Al Gore is still fat.
Well, that’s right, David. I think I’d better bookmark that comment of mine so that I can use it again and again and again…
I keep on searching for a heart of Gold!?So no-one hear who all seem to be premature births,has mentioned the U.S.A. is about to Bomb the Moon for water!?No-one worried in the slightest!?Or does it have to be remembered from TV first!? Armidale has a Radio Controlled model plane Club assisting people from Dorrigo to set up theirs.Which all maybe just too late for me in a short few months.So many things I want to purchase,that time is running out before I am even near a fraction of saving.Cannot even save the Earth!