zybotelectron said:i read this recently and this thread reminds me off it....there's an english scientist who talks about how by the time the sun is going to supernova, we will be like bacteria compared to what we are now. So us at that time will be so far evolved, we have no idea what they'll be like...
so granted that we don't kill ourselves, it seems that per our evolution that there's alot to be wondered about where we'll be at......
that's all i got.. =)
I'm sorry to disagree with your English scientist but I am an active amateur astronomer and I can tell you that our current sun does not have sufficient mass to supernova a third time. Yes it has supernovaed twice in the past (that's where all the iron, calcium, oxygen, carbon, silicon, mercury etc. on the earth has come from) but our sun's future is going to be quite dull this time round - it will simply burn away and cool down and one day it will just go dark. And it does not have sufficient mass to become a black hole either.
Download the following song with KaZaA or eMule or whatever:
In The Year 2525 by Zager & Evans
It paints quite a bleak picture of the development of the human race through the next 8000 years, exactly the period the original poster was thinking about.
clop