• Question: Do we eventually have to move to mars as the sun will soon be to hot or to cold for the earth?

    Asked by swlingi123 to Arttu, Ceri, James_M, Monica, Philip on 16 Jun 2011.
    • Photo: Philip Dolan

      Philip Dolan answered on 16 Jun 2011:

      Interesting idea – although Mars is further away from the sun, and it would stay cooler for longer I’m not sure that’d be the best solution (Mars is already so in hospitable it’d be little better than a spaceship). I think current estimates give us some billions of years before we need to worry about the sun changing, so hopefully our technology by then will be sufficiently advanced to give us some options.

    • Photo: James M Monk

      James M Monk answered on 16 Jun 2011:

      This is a possibility, although an unlikely one. The problem with Mars at the moment is that it is too cold and its atmosphere is too thin. When the Sun expands the Earth will become too hot for life (in about 1000000000 years), whereas Mars may actually warm up to the point where liquid water (and hence life) can exist on its surface.

      It is so far in the future that I doubt that anything we would recognise as human will exist then though.

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