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Comment by kragen

The article claims that Earth will be incinerated, but we could just move Earth further from the Sun. The energy of escape velocity is just GMm/r. r is one AU, 150 gigameters. G is the gravitational constant, 67 piconewton square meters per square kilogram, M is the Sun's mass, 2.0 billion yottagrams. m is the Earth's, 6000 yottagrams. It works out to 5.3 billion yottajoules. The Sun emits 380 yottawatts, thus providing enough energy to move the Earth out of the Solar System entirely every five months. Moving it to a somewhat higher orbit, such as Jupiter's, would require somewhat less energy than that. And we have 500 million years, which most experts consider to be a significantly longer time than five months, so the problem is clearly soluble.

A possible problem is that Jupiter itself could destabilize Earth's new orbit. Possibly putting Earth into orbit around Jupiter as an additional moon would be a solution, but if not, I think we could solve that problem by removing Jupiter. If we drop it into the Sun, we can gain all of its orbital energy in the process.

parent kragen 1 year ago

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