• Question: How would we evacuate to safer exo-planets? wouldn't it take ages? And we would have to transport the whole of the earths population!

    Asked by 534erbb42 to Tom on 18 Mar 2015.
    • Photo: Thomas Barrett

      Thomas Barrett answered on 18 Mar 2015:

      Evacuation to another planet would be very tough. But given enough time before a big event we could manage it.

      Currently we don’t have spaceships capable of traveling at anywhere near the speed we would need to get to an exoplanet quickly. We are working on warp drives currently but it is only a theory and the stuff of Sci-fi at the moment.

      So assuming we don’t have warp drive then it would take thousands of years to get to the nearest habitable exoplanet (and it being habitable is a complete guess!). But say we knew it was habitable. You’ve got two main ways to get there without warp drives:

      1) You build a huge space ship (were talking city sized almost certainly bigger) capable of having lots of people on it and you set off. Everyone on that ship knows they wont see the new planet but their great great great great great grandchildren will. These ships would basically be floating cities which can sustain themselves and the plants and animals we take with us.

      2) Similar large ship but you put everyone in stasis (again something we don’t currently have but we are working on) That way the thousands of years it would take to get there don’t matter. It would be like going to sleep on a plane and waking up at your destination.

      In terms of the population…well that is a tough one. It is almost certain we wouldn’t be able to take everyone. Therefore I assume it would be based on something like skills needed, intelligence, impact on culture and lets face it I imagine you would be able to buy a ticket to safety as something this big will probably bankrupt the world!

      If we have warp drives then it is simple and we could probably save a lot more people. A quick hope to nearest planet (maybe a year at most, two years round trip? if faster than light) and again given enough time before the disaster we could have several ships do multiple runs back and forth.

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