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What made Earth a giant snowball 700M years ago? Scientists have an answer

sydney.edu.au

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Re: What made Earth a giant snowball 700M years ago? Scientists have an answer

#61

Post by mistermann »

nullhole wrote: post #19
itronitron wrote: post #3

Seems 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.

That'd make for a good story setup: aliens park a shadeship (c) at L1 and wait. They block out most but not all of the sun. After some time (months? years?), conditions on Earth become unbearable, so earthlings have to mount an attack. Kind of like the movie Sunshine, but with more believable physics. Edit: as a bonus, it could take place in ~50-100 years, when global warming has gotten worse. The aliens could disgui…

Another good story setup involving aliens: aliens pop by, tell us we have 25 years to "get our shit together, and the ambiguity here is deliberate, humans" on this planet, or we will be garbage collected.

Then they come back a year later: "I have bad news: the timeline has been accelerated, you now have 10 years".

What to do? To whom shall we turn for a plan?

Re: What made Earth a giant snowball 700M years ago? Scientists have an answer

#63

Post by deadbabe »

nullhole wrote: post #19
itronitron wrote: post #3

Seems 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.

That'd make for a good story setup: aliens park a shadeship (c) at L1 and wait. They block out most but not all of the sun. After some time (months? years?), conditions on Earth become unbearable, so earthlings have to mount an attack. Kind of like the movie Sunshine, but with more believable physics. Edit: as a bonus, it could take place in ~50-100 years, when global warming has gotten worse. The aliens could disgui…

The most unbelievable part of this would be that earth cooperates enough to organize an attack. Seems more likely countries will use the opportunity to attack each other. In the end, the aliens should win. A few straggling survivors might see the ships land on Earth to survey the conditions.

Re: What made Earth a giant snowball 700M years ago? Scientists have an answer

#64

Post by interestica »

itronitron wrote: post #3

Seems 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.

What if the aliens already set the snowball on this planet and haven't come back yet

Re: What made Earth a giant snowball 700M years ago? Scientists have an answer

#65

Post by ReptileMan »

nullhole wrote: post #19
itronitron wrote: post #3

Seems 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.

That'd make for a good story setup: aliens park a shadeship (c) at L1 and wait. They block out most but not all of the sun. After some time (months? years?), conditions on Earth become unbearable, so earthlings have to mount an attack. Kind of like the movie Sunshine, but with more believable physics. Edit: as a bonus, it could take place in ~50-100 years, when global warming has gotten worse. The aliens could disgui…

>The aliens could disguise their motives for a while, claiming to be there to help counteract global warming. Warnings from a lone scientist would be ignored.

It's a cookbook!

Re: What made Earth a giant snowball 700M years ago? Scientists have an answer

#66

Post by wincy »

lukas099 wrote: post #59
kzrdude wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"You're in the way of a construction project, sorry, but please evacuate the planet". The fake notice costs you next to nothing. "The plans for demolition have been available on Alpha Centauri which is only 4 light years away you know."

I like the idea of the solar system getting eminent domained for a scifi

This is literally the plot of Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. It’s a great read.

Re: What made Earth a giant snowball 700M years ago? Scientists have an answer

#67

Post by InitialLastName »

lukas099 wrote: post #59
kzrdude wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"You're in the way of a construction project, sorry, but please evacuate the planet". The fake notice costs you next to nothing. "The plans for demolition have been available on Alpha Centauri which is only 4 light years away you know."

I like the idea of the solar system getting eminent domained for a scifi

Here you go: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hitchhiker%27s_Guide_to_th...

Re: What made Earth a giant snowball 700M years ago? Scientists have an answer

#68

Post by blindriver »

interestica wrote: post #64
itronitron wrote: post #3

Seems 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.

What if the aliens already set the snowball on this planet and haven't come back yet

What if we are the aliens and have been back for millions of years?

Re: What made Earth a giant snowball 700M years ago? Scientists have an answer

#69

Post by GolfPopper »

baxtr wrote: post #22
hyperhello wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Okay, like what exactly?

This is dangerous talk. Aliens might be crawling HN and feed their AI models to find our weak spots! Beware.

No worries there - their AIs will spin them hallucination-riddled nonsense, just like our do.

Re: What made Earth a giant snowball 700M years ago? Scientists have an answer

#70

Post by Keyframe »

peebeebee wrote: post #55
DelaneyM wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, a trillion dollars to solve global warming sounds like a pretty good deal to me?

That would be a good ending. The villain suddenly becomes the hero, but his evil purpose disappears and he gets depressed. :)

and then he proceeds to train ChatGPT5 with given money, even though it wasn't $7T he was hoping for.
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