Originally Posted by clickwir
Well... just for the heck of it I'm going to put a diffrent spin on things so sit back.
We are nothing. In the grand universe, we are not even a spec of dust. The time we have even exsisted is hardly measurable. This poll is assuming that we, humans will cease.
I don't think so. Why? Well purely the small amount of time we have actually exsisted on this planet, we have done some pretty awesome things. Just look at the past 40 years. Computers, cars, trucks, space travel, exploration, discoveries. That's only 40 years. Double it. Another 40 years, imagine what amazing things we can come up with in the same amount of time. The earth itself is expected to naturally exsist for at least a couple more BILLION years.
Our ability to think and evolve designs and improve things is awesome. I think that well within 500 years, we will have not only explored each planet in our solar system, but at the very least have probes and rovers headed to other solar systems, other planets. At best we would already have thousands of people in orbit or higher.
500 years. It's nothing to the earth or the solar system. Sure it's quite a few generations for us, but just imagine what we could come up with in that time.
I don't think civilization will end. As long as we can work through our petty diffrences like religion and politics and money, we'll be fine. We will keep building and inovating and exploring. I believe that we will have colonized multiple planets in less than 10,000 years. 10k years seems like a long time to us, but to the universe... it's nothing. It's just another 10k years, just like the 50,000 10k years before it. And before it. And before it....
ok, now think of it this way. We already have enough nuclear weapons to destroy the earth. That being said it will take quite a few of them to completely destroy it so it would have to be a war or something for that to happen. Fast foward a few more decades. Say even a century from now. Now we are working on anti-matter bombs. Or even something less violent, maybe a generator powered by anti-matter that will significatly decrease the cost of electricity. Now all it takes is one oops to destroy the world. One bomb accidently goes off during production. Or one generator in one part of the world malfunctions. Now 500,000 years isn't that long for the universe. Now just think about it, what are the chances of not even one little oops in the next 500,000 years? Assuming of course we make it that long.
btw, I wrote this just for discussion. beleive it or not I am actually an optimist too.