From: joe_f@verizon.net   
      
   georgeorwell@email.com writes:   
      
   > from the NY Times,   
   >   
   > "There is new hope that Earth, if not the life on it, might survive   
   > an apocalypse five billion years from now.   
      
   If we assume (plausibly, IMO) that the evolutionary process taking off   
   from life as we know it and the human species in particular continues   
   till that era, we are left to speculate what forms it will have issued   
   in, over a period modestly longer than any life has existed so far,   
   and several orders of magnitude longer than human beings have   
   existed.  That is bound to be a strenuous exercise even for so   
   speculative a species as this company belongs to.  Certainly, we must   
   not take for granted that "the life on it" will mean what it means to   
   us.  It may well happen that our successors will have spread over so   
   large a volume of space that the solar system will have only   
   sentimental interest for them.  If, indeed, they are all that   
   sentimental, they may figure out how to move the earth away until the   
   sun quiets down, or hook it up to some young star that will preserve   
   its amenity for tourism.   
   --   
   ---  Joe Fineman    joe_f@verizon.net   
      
   ||:  On a banjo should be written:  This machine kills blue  :||   
   ||:  devils.                                                 :||   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)