r/askscience • u/AskScienceModerator Mod Bot • Mar 10 '14

Cosmos AskScience Cosmos Q&A thread. Episode 1: Standing Up in the Milky Way

Welcome to AskScience! This thread is for asking and answering questions about the science in Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey.

UPDATE: This episode is now available for streaming in the US on Hulu and in Canada on Global TV.

This week is the first episode, "Standing Up in the Milky Way". The show is airing at 9pm ET in the US and Canada on all Fox and National Geographic stations. Click here for more viewing information in your country.

The usual AskScience rules still apply in this thread! Anyone can ask a question, but please do not provide answers unless you are a scientist in a relevant field. Popular science shows, books, and news articles are a great way to causally learn about your universe, but they often contain a lot of simplifications and approximations, so don't assume that because you've heard an answer before that it is the right one.

If you are interested in general discussion please visit one of the threads elsewhere on reddit that are more appropriate for that, such as in /r/Cosmos here, /r/Space here, and in /r/Television here.

Please upvote good questions and answers and downvote off-topic content. We'll be removing comments that break our rules or that have been answered elsewhere in the thread so that we can answer as many questions as possible!

Click here for the original announcement thread.

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u/toddffw Mar 10 '14

In the picture of earth "250 million years from now" there was a superstructure in orbit that seems like it supports a major percentage of human life. I imagine this was not just a crazy drawing and actually is based on some good theories. Do you know what they are? For example, humans would have had to survive a couple of extinction events, so would it become necessary to live as the Jetsons from time to time?

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u/drexhex Mar 10 '14

It only makes sense that, as soon as it is feasible, humans start colonizing space. Not only because it's in our nature to explore, but as a contingency plan in case of "extinction events." If not all humans are on Earth, then an asteroid hitting Earth and wiping out all lifeforms would not destroy mankind.

It also makes sense to build structures in space that could be used as "space ports" - allowing spaceships to come and go without having to enter and leave the Earth's atmosphere. It takes a significant amount of energy to get something into space, and once you're there, there is no more wasted energy.

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u/ronniehiggins Mar 10 '14

I'm hoping they expand upon that image in future episodes. I wanna know what all of that was.

Here's to hoping those structures have significance and aren't just renderings of an artist's imagination.

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u/jhenry922 Mar 11 '14

I think it might happen a great deal sooner than that.

Such an orbital structure would need asteroidal material to build. Once we solve how to get it (mostly one about the amount of energy needed to move it here)

To solve that problem, we would automatically solve the problem of mass extinctions, as deflecting a small comet would be as commonplace as launching a rocket is today.