Updated
Updated · Futurism · Aug 8
Gabriel Harry Proposes 9.1 Million-Billion-Year Plan to Keep Earth Habitable After Sun Dies
Updated
Updated · Futurism · Aug 8

Gabriel Harry Proposes 9.1 Million-Billion-Year Plan to Keep Earth Habitable After Sun Dies

3 articles · Updated · Futurism · Aug 8

Summary

  • Gabriel Harry outlined a paper-backed survival plan that he says could keep Earth habitable for another 9.1 million billion years after the Sun becomes a red giant in about 5 billion years.
  • 434,000 miles is the proposed radius of a sunshade at the Sun-Earth L1 point, attached to a 1.2 million-mile tether, to block the swollen Sun while fusion reactors 4,000 miles inside Jupiter would beam replacement energy to Earth.
  • A million asteroid flybys would gradually push Earth outward via gravitational slingshots, while 4 pounds of antimatter per day dropped into the core would, Harry argues, preserve tectonics and nutrient cycles.
  • 4 to 5 billion years later, the plan would also require moving the solar system to avoid the Milky Way's collision with Andromeda by firing a hydrogen beam near the Sun's poles.
  • The proposal, accepted for publication in the Journal of the British Interplanetary Society, is framed as a thought experiment that Harry says would avoid the far greater energy cost of interstellar migration or terraforming.

Insights

Could a bizarre plan involving Jupiter fusion and antimatter actually save Earth from our dying Sun in 5 billion years?
Why risk moving the entire solar system when interstellar colonization might be a far safer bet for our distant future?