Will the Sun engulf the Earth before 12 billion years from now.
30
174
590
9999
20%
chance

According to wikipedia today "The future of Earth", the Sun will likely engulf Earth in about 7.59 billion years. Let's add about 50% margin of error, wait until that time and resolve the question accordingly.

This is mostly an experiment arround very long term market. This may show if a price can have a meaning (like reflecting scientific consensus) even if it's likely nobody from now will be around to see the outcome.


Close date updated to 9999-12-09 12:59 am

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bought Ṁ30 of NO

Some scenarios:
- earth has been disassembled by AGI (resolves NO)
- earth has not been dissasembled by AGI
- because AGI never happened and humanity died (resolves YES, very unlikely)
- because AGI happened and humanity decided to not dissassemble the earth and then let the earth be engulfed (resolves YES, very unlikely)
- because AGI happened and humanity decided to not dissassemble the earth and then didn't let the earth be engulfed (resolves NO)

predicts YES

@Nikola "AGI" is a likely scenario, however AGI causing singularity, rapture of the nerds and using nanotechnology against the law of thermodynamics is less likely.

predicts NO

@Nikola Don't forget AGI never happened and humanity died out but grabby aliens came along and disassembled the sun anyway (resolves NO)

predicts YES

Need markets for 11 billion years, 10 billion years, etc, so we can see the shape of the probability distribution

bought Ṁ200 of YES

My childrens children ^40 will swim in Manacoins!

How does this resolve if the Earth has been disassembled?

predicts YES

@Nikola If Earth has been diassembled, it would resolve NO.

If Earth is destroyed (naturally or not) but then more than half of current earth mass form more than half of a new body in hydrostatic equilibrium, then it is engulfed by the sun, it resolves to YES (so we can merge with the moon).

If a black hole eat the Earth, market resolves to NO, even if the mass ratio above is respected, as it is no more in hydrostatic equilibrium.

If a black hole eat the Sun, then the Earth, it resolve to NO.

If someone destroys the Earth or the Sun, or causes the Earth to go into the Sun earlier in the Sun, or sabotages any attempt to save the Earth from the Sun, in order to win some Ṁ, the market resolve to N/A.

@Zardoru a black hole is arguably in as much hydrostatic equilibrium as anything could possibly be

@ArmandodiMatteo "In fluid mechanics, hydrostatic equilibrium is the condition of a fluid or plastic solid at rest, which occurs when external forces, such as gravity, are balanced by a pressure-gradient force." In a black hole, gravity is not balanced, things keep up falling forever.

bought Ṁ10 of NO

This requires one of:

1. Astronomical scale engineering is mysteriously impossible or mysteriously prohibitively expensive

2. Future civilizations decide that the Sun should engulf the Earth (why?)

3. Civilization collapses permanently from something that leaves the Earth behind (so no AI or planet eating nanobots), and no new civilization evolves (or those that do also collapse permanently), and no aliens reach Earth

These seem pretty unlikely to me. Maybe less importantly, it also requires

4. The models that say the Sun will engulf the Earth are right (Wikipedia says this is the "most probable fate" based on this paper; I don't know how strong that evidence is, but the paper says a planet can survive at 1.15 AU, and earth is at 1 AU, so maybe that means it's not a huge margin of error)

bought Ṁ20 of NO

@StevenK To expand on point 1, moving Earth to Mars's orbit over 1 billion years takes 850 horsepower.

predicts YES

@StevenK Yeah, but good luck finding 850 horses that live that long...

predicts YES

@StevenK I'm aware that Manifold population has a strong bias in favor of technology will solve everything, but I still manage to get surprised.

  1. "prohibitively expensive" is not a so mysterious option.

  2. Question is why future civilizations would decide to not let the Sun engulf the earth.

  3. This option seems effectively quite likely, even if I don't like it.

  4. My feeling is there is a consensus here, but I'm not in the field.

Overall you give me some doubts. I was expecting a more than 90% value but I would understand a 75%

predicts NO

@Zardoru The Sun outputs 5e23 horsepower. What part is prohibitively expensive?

predicts NO

@Zardoru

Question is why future civilizations would decide to not let the Sun engulf the earth.

I don't know the details, but I expect they'll be doing something with the Sun or with the Earth or both.

@Zardoru

  1. Question is why future civilizations would decide to not let the Sun engulf the earth.

Sentimentality. Why let our home be destroyed?

predicts YES

@StevenK in the Physic stackoverflow response you link there is this paragraph "So, if you have 1 billion years, and you have an 850 Hp motor that can add energy to the earth's orbit magically with 100% efficiency, and you can keep it running non-stop for 1 billion years, then you can move the earth."

The key world here is "magically". Energy is not enough. You have to apply a force somehow, and the reaction force on another object.

bought Ṁ0 of NO

@Zardoru Applying a force to an object is something I think humans know how to do pretty well. No magic required.

predicts YES

@IsaacKing I asked the question to a friend.

Me:

If we want to move the Earth to avoid it to be engulfed by the Sun in about 9 billion years, how can we do ?

OpenAI chat:

It's not currently possible for us to move the Earth to avoid it being engulfed by the Sun in the distant future. The technology to do this simply doesn't exist, and even if it did, the amount of energy required to move a planet the size of Earth would be staggering.

Me:

We have billions of years to improve our technology.

OpenAI chat:

While it's true that we have a long time before the Earth is threatened by the expanding Sun, it's unlikely that we will be able to develop the technology to move the planet in that time. Even if we were able to develop such technology, it's unclear whether it would be possible to actually implement it on a global scale.

predicts NO

@Zardoru I think a solar sail would be enough?

bought Ṁ13 of YES

@StevenK "mysteriously prohibitively expensive"

Um, not so mysterious.

predicts YES

@StevenK a 1 billion year project is prohibitively expensive no matter what you are doing during that time, due to the cost of the billion years.

I will update close date when 10K date bug will be corrected, and so on.