Does life on planet Earth have an expiration date? Science answers!

The Earth was formed approximately 4.5 billion years ago, following a complex process that occurred in the universe during the early stages of the Solar System. Just like the development of the planet, The first living forms emerged as a result of millions of coincidences over millions of years. But the truth is that nothing lasts forever.

Just as a living creature’s life has a beginning, middle and end. Earth will ‘cease its activities’ and will no longer be a habitable planet in a few billion years – unless climate change brings an end before then. Despite the resilience of life, there have been many extreme weather events that have ultimately nearly wiped out living things, and science shows that everything will, in fact, come to an end.

“Planets like Earth around stars like the Sun, although relatively common today, will be extremely rare in the distant future. And longer-lived stars may be poor candidates for sustaining life, even if there are Earth-sized planets around them because of their incredibly active behavior,” said the astrophysicist and NASA columnist Ethan Siegel Middle.

After all, does life on planet Earth have an expiration date? Short answer: yes. Just as food can spoil, so can people; Even if science develops a way to stop cellular aging and make humans immortal, we will still depend on Earth’s perfect natural conditions to continue living. Unfortunately, our planet is not spared from the end.

To further explain that life on Earth has an expiration date and will end in billions of years, we gathered information from experts and scientists on the subject.

The end of life on planet Earth

The end of the world is constantly depicted in Hollywood films such as The Day After Tomorrow (2004) and Apocalypse (1998), but they tend to suggest different ideas about how everything will end. In reality, the world can end in unexpected ways for humanity, such as a massive meteor hitting the Earth. But, Besides all these possible situations, science has already predicted that our planet and all life on it will end in a certain way.

In a future where humanity could not spread to the rest of the universe, civilization would be forced to remain on Earth. Unfortunately, our planet already has an expiration date and as a result, all life in the universe will also disappear; If the existence of extraterrestrial beings is confirmed, perhaps it will not disappear.

The Earth’s expiration date is entirely linked to the Sun’s cycle, with the result that the planet is stuck in orbit around the star. Here’s what scientists predict: The Sun will consume all the fuel in its core within five billion yearsThen the celestial body will turn into a red giant.

Once the Sun reaches this final stage, it will continue to function for another 100 million years, but before that it will grow so large that it will likely swallow the Earth. But the planet’s biosphere will end long before that; temperature rise will reach a critical level that will destabilize Earth’s ecosystems.

Rising temperatures during the end of the biosphere will cause most of the water in the oceans to evaporate, which will cause further warming of the planet, resulting in more evaporation, and so on. So at some point during this process, life on Earth will end.

In an article on the website Think bigAdam Frank, professor of astrophysics at the University of Rochester (USA), He said that there is still 1 billion to 1.5 billion years left for civilization to disappear from the planet.

“The possibilities for life, at least as we understand it, remain diverse and ubiquitous, and should be plausible even in the cosmic future of our Universe, even if our cosmic home is not habitable for much longer. In a Universe with so many worlds and so many biochemical possibilities ( It would be foolish to assume that how events unfold here (past, present and future) represents the only reasonable path to success. [da vida]”, adds Siegel.

It is important to highlight He said that this is just a prediction about the fate of the Earth, but the future may present many different situations that could change the predicted end.. Life on Earth will be devastated much sooner, perhaps due to problems caused by climate change, or perhaps due to the impact of an unexpected comet.

Did you like the content? Read more interesting facts about the world at TecMundo. If you wish, you can have the opportunity to watch the animation showing how the Earth experienced 5 mass extinctions.