These cosmic threats are neither alien invaders nor super-villains but natural events.
Nine thousand years after Laurinda Ashcroft's time, the Solar System will enter a gas cloud that will press the Solar wind, magnetic field, heliosphere and its bow wave to within the orbit of Saturn, thus decreasing protection against cosmic rays and trebling or quadrupling the radiation count on Earth, thereby causing mass extinctions, also enabling enough hydrogen atoms to enter the Terrestrial atmosphere to deplete her oxygen and enough dust to fill the stratosphere with ice particles to cause a long, intense winter.
Asteroids and comets on collision courses with Earth are diverted.
Nearby supernovae, gamma ray bursters or neutron star collisions:
"...flood the Solar System with lethal radiation." (IX, p. 96)
Earth is shielded by a large disc constructed from interplanetary matter.
Once Sol passes too close to another star. (In Fifth Planet by Fred Hoyle and Geoffrey Hoyle, another star with planets passes right through the Solar System, taking some Solar planets with it when it leaves. One interplanetary/interstellar round trip is possible during the transition.) We are told only that the Terrestrial intelligence took one million years to prepare for this close passage and three million to deal with it and its consequences.
"A few other threats, humans had never imagined." (ibid.)
1 comment:
Kaor, Paul!
Intriguing, I've forgotten about these perils! I would like to think, and hope, humanity would cope with these dangers, without any need to use AIs.
Ad astra! Sean
Post a Comment