A Place to Stand

An article at Next Big Future on the risk of the Sun producing anything from a large enough flare to wipe us out to a full blown Nova. This could be natural but since it hasn't happened so far looks infinitely more likely to occur by human intervention. I am credits by the author Joseph Friedlander with giving a name to this regrettable possibility

This is your occasional guest correspondent, Joseph Friedlander, writing about the possibility of the least welcome kind of ‘anthropogenic global warming’ imaginable—a human caused detonation of the Sun we all depend upon.

At the request of Professor Alexander A. Bolonkin, I have compiled a re-translation of the Russian-language interview concerning the Professor’s 2007 investigation of the danger of a man-triggered detonation of the Sun. As Next Big Future is an alert mechanism of the Lifeboat Society, we should appreciate that a solar detonation of any magnitude could destroy any free-flying colony buildable soon in the inner Solar System—and total Solar detonation could do far more than that.

A term to describe this has been invented by Neil Craig -- ‘novaing’ the Sun. Note that this does not necessarily connote the entire destruction of the physical order of the Solar System—even quite minor changes in solar luminosity and regularity could be fatal for the Earth as an inhabitable planet. Even if temporary, what comfort if we will not be around when the Sun recovers?

I said this on an external comment where I had been discussing the race run by humanity between Godhood & extinction. As technology has advanced it has become possible for 1 government to wipe out the planet. That is part of why we need to get a spacegoing civilisation. If novaing becomes possible & bearing in mind how puny our H-Bombs are compared to the surface of the Sun I personally think we are a very long way from such a possibility, it would mean we had to settle other star systems too. or deep underground on various planets. The latter would not protect us from a full nova but would for the worst imaginable flare.

Professor Alexander Bolonkin in the interview is less sanguine about the difficulty

Here you (like most people) are gravely mistaken. This "match" may be a specially constructed nuclear bomb. And the firebug -- a dying dictator of a totalitarian state that has nuclear bomb and missiles. People are already convinced that the world is full of suicide terrorists, who sincerely believe that the more they kill "infidels", the sooner they get into heaven.

Astronomers often observe an explosion of so-called "new" stars, when they explode, all around the world. Many of the astronomers explain the explosions from natural causes. But these explosions (or at least part of them) may be artificial - caused by war within civilizations which have mastered nuclear technology.

It is unfortunate that one answer to the Fermi Question of why haven't aliens landed yet is that the growth in destructive power may be inherently greater than that in the ability to survive it in which case disaster for any advanced civilisation becomes inevitable. I tend towards the other view that this is not inevitable & that the answer to Fermi is that we are alone, as an intelligent lifeform. I certainly intend to act as if that is true. Acting otherwise, whatever the truth, is not constructive.

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I have also invented the word "fakenewspaper" like fakecharity & some looney on wikipedia invented "Croatiaphobia" (I would never have invented such a clumsy term) as an excuse to put up a wiki entry being rude about me & my views on Yugoslavia. Neither have reached the OED or anywhere else but they do seem fairly escapist compared to "novaing".

UPDATE I forgot I also invented the term Snek (or $NEK)[June 13th-17th] acronym for dollars for exch liowatt - being a measure of the relationship of GNP & electricity production. World average Snekm is about 4, we are just over 6, China 2 1/2. No that hasn't been picked up by the OED either.

Labels: Science/technology, space