Planetary Engineering...is this not playing God?

[beer]

http://www.usatoday.com/news/science/astro/2001-02-15-orbit.htm

It seems to me that having the power to do this is playing God, far beyond what cloning is...

 

[uncouth]

That article is great. I wonder if the dinosaurs were devising similar plans back in the day

 

[Mday]

uh, how is that playing god?

gravitational pulls due to more massive bodies affect us all the time...

i mean, duh...

 

[uncouth]

or better yet had designed

 

[Bignate603]

you know that sounds really cool...

 

[Double Trouble]

This would not be "playing God" at all, it's a matter of simple physics. Of course this doesn't seem like all to bright a thing to do, but still.....

 

[jorken]

Haha look at the list of possible consequences... f*uck that!

 

[vi edit]

<< However, he and his colleagues note a few drawbacks:

• We may lose the moon.
• The gravity tugs might spin Earth faster, shortening a day to a few hours.
• Mars and Venus apparently need Earth to stay in their orbits.
• The scheme might pull Jupiter 10 million miles closer to the sun, disturbing the asteroid belt and sending more rocks hurtling onto our planet.
• A miscalculation might send the 62-mile-wide asteroid slamming into Earth, which &quot;would sterilize the biosphere most effectively, at least to the level of bacteria,&quot; the astronomers warn.

>>



A FEW drawbacks?????

 

[zippy]

<< We may lose the moon.
The gravity tugs might spin Earth faster, shortening a day to a few hours.
Mars and Venus apparently need Earth to stay in their orbits.
The scheme might pull Jupiter 10 million miles closer to the sun, disturbing the asteroid belt and sending more rocks hurtling onto our planet.
A miscalculation might send the 62-mile-wide asteroid slamming into Earth, which &quot;would sterilize the biosphere most effectively, at least to the level of bacteria,&quot; the astronomers warn.
>>


Yeah, sounds good to me! :disgust:

In a billion years, if a nuclear winter or something, hasn't wiped out the human race, then I'll bet there will be some kind of superior form of energy in a rocket or something that can just nudge earth.

 

[UG]

<...It seems to me that having the power to do this is playing God...>

When will people learn that WE are god?

No one wants to take responsibilty for themselves. Losers.

The meek shall inherit the Earth. The rest of us will go to the stars.

 

[OS]

Did you guys read the whole thing? The whole rationale behind the article is that in a few billion years, the sun will heat up and expand to a red giant when it runs out of hydrogen. This leaves humanity with two choices; do something, or sit and fry. Now, I don't know about the rest of you, but I would certainly gamble and try to move the planet, than leave it where it is and fry the Earth.

 

[Aihyah]

yup, don't have to worry about us doing this within our own solar system.. if we have to it means we fuxored the earth enuph that we had no choice

By the way, all medicine is playing god

 

[vi edit]

OuterSquare, I know the reasoning behind it. It's just a game of cat and mouse. UG can correct me, but I think that the sun will eventually swell out to the earths current orbit before it starts to collapse back into itself. How far out can you keep going?

Not that it really matters anyway. By the time that it comes this, we will either be dead, or living somewhere else because we have exhausted the resources on this planet.

 

[OS]

<< It's just a game of cat and mouse. >>



What's the problem again? I see it as move it or fry.



<< How far out can you keep going? >>



Practically, you can move it to almost the asteroid belt, assuming you deal with Mars properly. It would be much harder to deal with the asteriod belt and Jupiter.

 

[Pretender]

Did anyone bother reading the article? This isn't some overnight plan, this is something involving thousands of years, involving using an asteroid to slowly pull us away from the sun.



<< The plan would have the asteroid give Earth a gravity tug as it passes by. Then the asteroid would slingshot around the sun and loop around Jupiter for another return trip past Earth. Each round trip would last 6,000 years. >>



Besides, our race's motto is think of what we can do now, and think of the consequences later. If and when we decide on this plan, it'll take many multiples of 6000 years for the consequence to be seen, and the initiators won't care since they'll be long dead.

 

[LadyJessica]

This is neat. However, if the human species survives the next billion years, don't you think we'd have moved off planet already thus negating the advantage of moving this chunk of rock?

 

[UG]

<...the sun will eventually swell out to the earths current orbit before it starts to collapse back into itself...>

Whence the Sun initiates Helium fusion reactions, Earth will find itself swimming beneath the sun's surface gases.

<...we will either be dead, or living somewhere else...>

The after-life insenstive will be living somewhere else. Everyone else will meet Sun.

 

[OS]

<< However, if the human species survives the next billion years, don't you think we'd have moved off planet already thus negating the advantage of moving this chunk of rock? >>



I suspect some humans will always want to live on the earth, just as people still live in the old world. People still live in the Mesopotamia area after all (site of many ancient civilizations). No matter what happens, Earth is the birthplace of humanity, and humanity will probably want to save it. And by then, humanity will have billions of years of history, knowledge, architecture, art and culture on Earth. I doubt humanity will stand idly by and watch their birthplace, home and billions of years of human history be burned down.