What made Earth a giant snowball 700M years ago? Scientists have an answer
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Re: What made Earth a giant snowball 700M years ago? Scientists have an answer
#2See also:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39315378 (An extreme ice-age climate 700M years ago)
What Turned Earth Into A Giant Snowball 700 Million Years Ago? (astrobiology.com)
4 days ago (81+ points / 89+ comments)
Re: What made Earth a giant snowball 700M years ago? Scientists have an answer
#3Seems like a low risk approach for taking over a planet would be to just park a large shade between the planet and it's star then let it enter a deep freeze. Then you could just remove the shade and let the planet warm back up before settling down.
Re: What made Earth a giant snowball 700M years ago? Scientists have an answer
#4So, Ice Ball or Venus.
Seems like climate is more sensitive than we think.
Man made impact or not, the whole system seems on a knifes edge of tipping towards the extremes. That we are living right now is rare in-between point.
Re: What made Earth a giant snowball 700M years ago? Scientists have an answer
#5Seems like a low risk approach for taking over a planet would be to just park a large shade between the planet and it's star then let it enter a deep freeze. Then you could just remove the shade and let the planet warm back up before settling down.
Have you done the calculation how much material is required for such an endeavor? I bet there are more cost effective approaches.
Re: What made Earth a giant snowball 700M years ago? Scientists have an answer
#6Seems like a low risk approach for taking over a planet would be to just park a large shade between the planet and it's star then let it enter a deep freeze. Then you could just remove the shade and let the planet warm back up before settling down.
Sure if you've got unlimited time
Re: What made Earth a giant snowball 700M years ago? Scientists have an answer
#7Seems like a low risk approach for taking over a planet would be to just park a large shade between the planet and it's star then let it enter a deep freeze. Then you could just remove the shade and let the planet warm back up before settling down.
Better than nuclear weapon, no nasty fall out.
Better than death star, you still have a planet afterwards.
Re: What made Earth a giant snowball 700M years ago? Scientists have an answer
#8There is a fantastic BBC Horizons documentary from the 90s called Snowball Earth that was easy to find on YouTube the last time I looked, but just now I see a hot mess of search results and if it's still in there somewhere I can't find it.
EDIT: found it on dailymotion and its a great story of how the radical theory was rejected then accepted. https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x7o0b66
Re: What made Earth a giant snowball 700M years ago? Scientists have an answer
#9So, Ice Ball or Venus. Seems like climate is more sensitive than we think. Man made impact or not, the whole system seems on a knifes edge of tipping towards the extremes. That we are living right now is rare in-between point.
The process they described took millions of years. Yeah, we're probably in a somewhat rare in-between point. That "point" is still unimaginably long.
Re: What made Earth a giant snowball 700M years ago? Scientists have an answer
#10So, Ice Ball or Venus. Seems like climate is more sensitive than we think. Man made impact or not, the whole system seems on a knifes edge of tipping towards the extremes. That we are living right now is rare in-between point.
This balance is quite probably a very strong filter on the Drake equation.
Climate and Biosphere is delicate with lots of tipping points and cascades to uninhabitable.
A few billion years ago, the inner planets of the Sol system were capable of supporting abundant surface life - now only Terra.