From: Jeff King Date: Tue, 29 Nov 2011 10:29:29 GMT Subject: Re: [PATCH] Implement fast hash-collision detection Message-ID: <20111129102929.GA28024@sigill.intra.peff.net> In-Reply-To: On Tue, Nov 29, 2011 at 11:24:18AM +0100, Ævar Arnfjörð Bjarmason wrote: > On Tue, Nov 29, 2011 at 10:07, Jeff King wrote: > > > However, it may be of interest that the Sun is expected to burn out in a > > mere 10^10 years[1]. > > Off topic, but it's a a lot sooner than that. The total age of the sun > is is around 10^10 (10 billion) years, but we're already ~4.6 billion > years along that line. Yeah, I checked Wikipedia, but rounded up for simplicity. I did use 5 billion for my fun fact at the end of the email, which is close to accurate. > However the Sun is currently in a stage of gradual heating until it > turns into a red giant in ~5 billion years. In around 500 million > years the earth will be uninhabitable as we know it, and in around 1 > billion years the surface will be hot enough to have boiled all the > oceans. In other words the earth in a billion years will probably look > similar to how Venus looks now. Good point. If we want an accidental collision in the next 500 million years, we'd better step up the pace of development! -Peff