this post was submitted on 12 Nov 2023
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Science Memes

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[–] [email protected] 24 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I had this exact conversation a few days ago, and my kid is even 6!

[–] shneancy 22 points 1 year ago

wow your kid is 720? no wonder he's scared he might live to see it!

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago

On the bright side, that's plenty of time to do something about it

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago (1 children)

So strangely true... My son got scared a few years ago while watching a documentary about black holes and the death of the Universe.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

tbh that is kinda scary, just for different reasons

[–] Raxiel 9 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Don't worry about the sun expanding to swallow earth! It will gradually get hotter as the core uses fuel and contracts, rendering earth uninhabitable within just 1b years (if we don't beat it to the punch)

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

The Earth is about 4.5 billion years old and the Sun will expand large enough to make the planet uninhabitable in about 500 million years.

In other words, the Earth is already 90% of the way through its life cycle.

Don't worry though. We'll almost certainly make it uninhabitable for humans long, long before that time

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago

This fact, paired with the fact that first it will become a red giant and completely destroy our little ball of dirt, is a serious problem when you're trying to come up with any sort of universal value for our lives. Eventually, every single thing human beings have ever done but we bathed in atomic fire for a billion years.

The only solution I could ultimately find was to stop thinking about the universe, just because something that matters to me as a human can't be explained by looking at alpha centurai doesn't mean it doesn't matter to me.