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The future lifespan of Earth’s oxygenated atmosphere

nature.com

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Re: The future lifespan of Earth’s oxygenated atmosphere

#81

Post by richardfey »

Communitivity wrote: post #65
excerionsforte wrote: post #13

I 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…

It would not surprise me if civilizations evolved in the same way life did on Earth. Life evolved in the sea. At some point life evolved to leave the sea and go to land, whether the sea was no longer hospitable enough, or in search of better food. Life continued to evolve on Land, specializing into different groups and colonizing different lands. Perhaps civilizations evolve on their planet, then at some point they l…

This sounds like a lot of wishful thinking.

The most probable scenario is that life is born multiple times, in multiple places, when conditions permit it.

There's no evidence of life moving across planets of different star systems.

Re: The future lifespan of Earth’s oxygenated atmosphere

#82

Post by aaomidi »

simonebrunozzi wrote: post #64
josemanuel wrote: post #10

Earth will not host complex plants in 600 million years. So that’s also a problem - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_far_future

Please post non-mobile links to wikipedia when you can [0] [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_far_future

Wikipedia should auto redirect to non mobile site when you're not on mobile. Requiring people to follow unwritten rules is annoying.

Why is Wikipedia not doing this?

Re: The future lifespan of Earth’s oxygenated atmosphere

#83

Post by tabtab »

woeirua wrote: post #61

Life on Earth already survived one transition from an anoxic environment to an oxygen-rich environment, I see no reason to expect that it could not make the transition back to an anoxic environment. Granted it may not look anything like the life we're accustomed to today, but I suspect life will exist on Earth in some way, shape, or form for a long time to come.

For simple life-forms, perhaps, but complex life probably requires rather special or rare circumstances. In areas of Earth low in oxygen, the life-forms there are similar to ediacaran fauna: slow and soft. Increases in oxygen are probably a key cause of the Cambrian explosion.

Perhaps it's possible there is another high-metabolism cycle that doesn't involve much oxygen, but nobody really knows both if a pathway exists, and if evolution can "find" it in time. Any biochemists here who want to weigh in?

Re: The future lifespan of Earth’s oxygenated atmosphere

#87

Post by tzs »

gspr wrote: post #2

This is one can I'm OK with kicking down the road :-) (I'm joking; the article is interesting, and I'm not trying to frame it as trying to portray this as an urgent threat)

Definitely a kick it down the road problem.

It's one of a whole class of problems that (1) we will have to solve or we will go extinct, but (2) are completely and utterly pointless to actually try to solve now because they are so far beyond our level.

When some far future people finally have the ability to seriously start working on one of these problems, they will have techniques and knowledge so far ahead of us that anything our best and brightest could do in a lifetime's work now on the problem will be something the future people can trivially do in a day.

The only contribution we can make now to these problems is to just continue to improve our science and engineering in general, in the hope that if we do that for enough generations then eventually our successors will have enough accumulated knowledge to actually tackle these problems.

Re: The future lifespan of Earth’s oxygenated atmosphere

#88

Post by vimacs2 »

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #43
vimacs2 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's literally enough time to even lift heavier elements from the Sun to extend it's stable life cycle by several billion years. Another commenter suggested moving the planet and got down voted to oblivion but it's not at all a ridiculous suggestion in these kinds of time scales. You could place giant ion thrusters on the moon and set it in an orbit where tidal effects would nudge the Earth outwards over a few millio…

The problem isn't the engineering, as usual, it's political. Can you realistically foresee humanity taking on such long term projects? We can't even get people to stop burning fossil fuels to "mine" cryptocurrency.

Sure but you're thinking current humanity and contrary to modern times, there were plenty of civilisations that did engage in long term infrastructure in the past.

We're talking millions of years in the future and assuming "we" are still around, I doubt that a 21st century layperson would be able to deduce that they ever stemmed from the same genus, never mind species - even assuming no genetic engineering or cyborgs.

Life extension is also likely going to play a major factor in the future and it's a lot harder to dismiss the merits of long term thinking when it's a very likely possibility that you will be around to experience the consequences of your current short-sightedness.

Re: The future lifespan of Earth’s oxygenated atmosphere

#89

Post by sebringj »

jacquesm wrote: post #25
sebringj wrote: post #22

We humans will be able to control everything on earth's climate if we survive even a couple thousand years from now assuming technological advances.

What makes you think that?

The pace of current technology seems like it is speeding up more and more. Feels like a solid prediction even in hundreds of years of not thousands but of course if there is no civilization-ending thing that happens.

Re: The future lifespan of Earth’s oxygenated atmosphere

#90

Post by sebringj »

JackFr wrote: post #32
sebringj wrote: post #22

We humans will be able to control everything on earth's climate if we survive even a couple thousand years from now assuming technological advances.

> assuming technological advances. Kind of makes it a tautology.

I think the point was a billion years is quite a long time and many things we know today will not be the same. Predictions were made about the amount of horse dung that will overrun new york city if the pace of traffic continues, as an example.
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