From: Robert J. Bradbury (bradbury@aeiveos.com)
Date: Wed Aug 28 2002 - 12:51:16 MDT
On Wed, 28 Aug 2002, Michael Wiik wrote:
> spike66 wrote:
> > The earth might really want to be made into something different.
If spike keeps spouting such nonsense, I'm going to develop
a strong desire to turn *him* into something really different.
> I'm curious as to what happens to the earth after the gray goo scenario
> has wiped out all earth life. Does it just sit there, forever unchanging
> as a crystal or some kind of sludge, or is it subject to mutation
> (perhaps via solar radiation)?.
The laws of physics don't change. The oceans eventually evaporate.
The sun expands, though the most recent paper I've seen suggests that
the Earth's orbit may move outward away from the sun and it may not
be engulfed (though it probably gets quite toasty). Eventually
the sun becomes a white dwarf and the Earth slowly cools into
a frozen waste. See:
http://casswww.ucsd.edu/public/tutorial/StevII.html
and
http://casswww.ucsd.edu/public/tutorial/StevI.html
Of course Michael, you throw in without any shred of justification,
that the gray goo scenario is a foregone conclusion. Lord(!), Eliezer
must be giving away free popsicles to so easily seduce people into
his camp.
If we can avoid the GG scenario, we can save the Earth, harvest
the energy resources of the solar system and nearby brown dwarfs
or molecular gas clouds and steer our planet on a neverending quest
for nirvana.
Robert
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