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Page added on September 20, 2013
How Much Longer Can Earth Support Life?
Earth could continue to host life for at least another 1.75 billion years, as long as nuclear holocaust, an errant asteroid or some other disaster doesn’t intervene, a new study calculates.
But even without such dramatic doomsday scenarios, astronomical forces will eventually render the planet uninhabitable. Somewhere between 1.75 billion and 3.25 billion years from now, Earth will travel out of the solar system‘s habitable zone and into the “hot zone,” new research indicates.
These zones are defined by water. In the habitable zone, a planet (whether in this solar system or an alien one) is just the right distance from its star to have liquid water. Closer to the sun, in the “hot zone,” the Earth’s oceans would evaporate. Of course, conditions for complex life, including humans, would become untenable before the planet entered the hot zone. (The Top 10 Ways to Destroy Earth)
But the researchers’ main concern was the search for life on other planets, not predicting a timeline for the end of life on this one.
The evolution of complex life on Earth suggests the process requires a lot of time.
Simple cells first appeared on Earth nearly 4 billion years ago. “We had insects 400 million years ago, dinosaurs 300 million years ago and flowering plants 130 million years ago,” lead researcher Andrew Rushby, of the University of East Anglia in the United Kingdom, said in a statement. “Anatomically modern humans have only been around for the last 200,000 years — so you can see it takes a really long time for intelligent life to develop.”
Rushby and his colleagues developed a new tool to help evaluate the amount of time available for the evolution of life on other planets: a model that predicts the time a planet would spend in its habitable zone. In the research, published today (Sept. 18) in the journal Astrobiology,they applied the model to Earth and eight other planets currently in the habitable zone, including Mars.
They calculated that Earth’s habitable-zone lifetime is as long as 7.79 billion years. (Earth is estimated to be about 4.5 billion years old.) Meanwhile, the other planets had habitable-zone lifetimes ranging from 1 billion years to 54.72 billion years.
“If we ever needed to move to another planet, Mars is probably our best bet,” Rushby said in a statement. “It’s very close and will remain in the habitable zone until the end of the sun’s lifetime — 6 billion years from now.”
While other models have been developed for Earth, they are not suitable for other planets, he added.
10 Comments on "How Much Longer Can Earth Support Life?"
DC on Fri, 20th Sep 2013 10:08 pm
Not sure why this article is even here…
mike on Fri, 20th Sep 2013 10:23 pm
Can we please put all the progress acolytes on a rocket to mars and wave goodbye forever. I can’t believe 200,000 people applied to go to that barren backwater.
Nowhere is better in the entire universe for human beings than Earth. People who are desperate to “get off this rock” are the other extreme to doomers who wan’t the world to end any way they can (I’m looking at you Mike C. Ruppert). Progress acolytes subconsciously apply the leaving of earth as the secular version of the rapture.
GregT on Fri, 20th Sep 2013 10:43 pm
The Earth may very well continue to host life for another 1.75 billion years, but at the rate we are destroying it today, chances are, that life won’t look anything like what we see today in less than a century.
actioncjackson on Fri, 20th Sep 2013 11:33 pm
Hey now, you leave Mr. Ruppert out of this 🙂
LT on Fri, 20th Sep 2013 11:41 pm
Here is what I see: We, human beings, cannot destroy the Earth. But what we have been doing is destroying the living arrangements/conditions that Mother-Nature had set up for us. And by destroying it, we are killing ourselves.
The Earth cannot heal herself with the present of a massive population. But she can do it with a tiny human population over a long period of time, ten of thousands of years.
Population collapse is inevitable. And those who are selfless, and kind hearts will have good chances to survive such a collapse.
That is a cycle of (human race) life on Earth: Begin with the birth of human, growth of human population, human population self-destruction, healing period for the Earth, then rebirth of human beings starts a new cycle again.
Can humans avoid this? Regrettably no. That is because we have a tendency to become a stone instead of a piece of wood! Stone sinks but wood floats in time of a flood!
BillT on Sat, 21st Sep 2013 1:56 am
Nothing to add to the above comments except…right on.
rollin on Sat, 21st Sep 2013 2:14 am
The concern should be, will you or yours survive the next thirty years or so. Much as thought games are interesting it’s time to get those heads out of the clouds and start breaking the lies that hold us bound to a suicidal path.
J-Gav on Sat, 21st Sep 2013 9:28 am
1st time I read this I nearly swallowed my chaw – I thought he wrote 1.75 – 3.25 ‘Million’ years! Then I realized it was ‘Billion’ – Whew, you can imagine my relief.
Newfie on Sun, 22nd Sep 2013 12:10 am
I think a 100 years is all we have. Climate change will warm the planet an estimated (average of) 5 degrees Celsius. That is enough to make most of the planet uninhabitable to higher life forms. A mass extinction of 95% of all species is probable.
GregT on Sun, 22nd Sep 2013 4:06 pm
Newfie,
The estimated 5 degree C, mean global temperature change by 2100, does not take into account a number of positive feedback loops.
Many in the scientific community are now predicting that catastrophic runaway climate change, triggered by positive feedback mechanisms, has the potential to raise temperatures 5 degrees globally, in less than one decade.
It would be foolish for us to continue burning fossil fuels in this light, but that is exactly what we are going to continue to do.