Time enough to terraform Venus.
The future lifespan of Earth’s oxygenated atmosphere
11–20 of 90 posts
Re: The future lifespan of Earth’s oxygenated atmosphere
#12We will have built a Dyson sphere to mine Bitcoin until then.
Re: The future lifespan of Earth’s oxygenated atmosphere
#13I wonder if the great filter is not one, but multiple coincidences brought upon by "intelligent" life and the natural lifetime of a planet and/or solar system.
If Mars had intelligent life and now it doesn't how does that bode for Earthlings? Can life really adapt given the lack of evidence anywhere?
I wonder how will space travel to the next possible habitable planets work. Shoot in all directions and hope that life spawns on a few of those possible habitable planets that are light years away.
Re: The future lifespan of Earth’s oxygenated atmosphere
#14Time enough to terraform Venus.
Eh, if the Sun is too hot for Earth, what makes you think Venus would be better?
Re: The future lifespan of Earth’s oxygenated atmosphere
#15Enough time to migrate to another planet.
Or to move the planet further from the Sun.
Re: The future lifespan of Earth’s oxygenated atmosphere
#16We also won't have oceans by then - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Future_of_Earth
And it's very hard to conceptualise what a billion of years in the future actually means.
Re: The future lifespan of Earth’s oxygenated atmosphere
#17TL;DR: It's basically just than speculation based on the sun being hotter in a Billion years.
So, two people ran one model described in one paper. Even if that was the whole issue, it would merit "may last only" rather than "will last only".
Additionally, the authors are making a variety of assumptions with little or no basis about the behavior and development of Earth Flora and Fauna; specifically, that it will be mostly static in most ways, with no adaptation in genetics, inter-species interaction, prevalence in different places on Earth etc.
Having said that - in 5 Billion years, Sol will become a Red Giant, so this planet is going South at some point between now and then.
Re: The future lifespan of Earth’s oxygenated atmosphere
#18[deleted]
Re: The future lifespan of Earth’s oxygenated atmosphere
#19That's an incredibly long time, and there's no reason to assume our technology can't get better in that time (if we are around). Another solution is to move spaceship Earth:
https://dwheeler.com/essays/move-spaceship-earth.html
Re: The future lifespan of Earth’s oxygenated atmosphere
#20As I understand it the sun has another 4.5 billion or so years of life remaining but the earth has only another billion years or so of being habitable. That's interesting. Complex life first appeared on earth about 2.5 billion years or so ago and has 1 billion more years to go for a total span of 3.5 billion years. In earth's projected 9 billion year lifespan it will only have been habitable for 3.5 billion years, or 39% of that time. A technologically advanced civilization will have only existed for 1 billion years - or 11% of that time (that's assuming of course some form of advanced civilization continues on earth for another billion years).
Those are interesting numbers to consider when searching for extraterrestrial life in other planetary systems: 39% of planetary lifespan had advanced life, 11% of planetary lifespan had technologically advanced civilization.