[thedoc (OP)]

What will cause the end of life on planet Earth? Will it be the when the sun dies or something else?
Asked by Abigail


                                        Find out more on our podcast page

[chapter podcast=1000890 track=14.10.28/Naked_Scientists_14.10.28_1002882.mp3]  ...or Listen to the Answer[/chapter] or [download as MP3]

[thedoc (OP)]

We answered this question on the show...

[img float=right]/forum/copies/RTEmagicC_4594496739_20e27f985b_o.jpg.jpg[/img]
Graihagh -  Will hungry humans be the cause of the apocalypse or will it be something like the catastrophic comet that cause the dinosaurs to go extinct?  We put it to you on Facebook and Paul came back with this...
Paul -  Humans may survive, breeding, warring, poisoning, destroying and plundering forever but I fear, nothing habitable will be left behind, for humans are cancer to all life.
Graihagh -  Whereas Jeremy thought life was just to hardy to ever go extinct.
Jeremy -  Life is persistent stuff.  NASA tried to create a sterile room to build Mars rovers to prevent interplanetary contamination.  What did they find?  Bacteria that evolved to eat the paint in the sterile room.
Graihagh -  So, will life always find a way to endure, no matter what happens to Earth?  To find out, we spoke to Astronomer Royal, Martin Reese from Cambridge University.
Martin -  We know that the sun will die in about 6 billion years.  When that happens, it’ll flare up, become a red giant and engulf the inner planets and end any life remaining on Earth.  Long before that, in fact, life have become uncomfortable on Earth because the sun is getting brighter all the time.  So after about 1 billion years from today, the ocean would start to boil.
Graihagh -  The Atlantic boiling, our sun exploding... 6 billion years from now, do we have any hope?
Martin -  I would expect it in a few hundred years, there’ll be communities living away from the Earth on asteroids or on Mars and they will in fact, use genetic technology and cyborg technology to modify themselves.  So, they'll be post humans already.  But if we imagine that the Earth has ahead of it, more time that it’s taken to go all the way from simple organisms to humans, then we can imagine that by the time the sun dies, there’ll be life descended from human life, all through the galaxy perhaps and taking many different forms.
Graihagh -  So, human life may end on Earth but not elsewhere in the universe.  Thanks, Martin.  Next week, we’ll be twirling our moustaches over this beaded beauty of a question sent in by listener Mark...
Mark -  I've been taking part in November which is a fundraising for cancer research where men raise money by growing moustache over the course of the month of November.  Hence, that 'M' in November.  It’s been 10 years since I've grown any hair on my chain and this year, it’s growing white.  The hair on my head isn’t white, it’s not grey. My question is, why is my facial hair growing white and I don't really want people to think I'm dying it. 

[thedoc (OP)]

We discussed this question on our  show


Click to visit the show page for the podcast in which this question is answered. Alternatively, [chapter podcast=1000890 track=14.10.28/Naked_Scientists_14.10.28_1002882.mp3] listen to the answer now[/chapter] or [download as MP3]

[Oceanbliss]

Honestly... either some biological disease from acts of war... or flesh eating cats. no really though... if there is anything we've seen from the past.. its diseases that have done the most harm in the history of humans.

[David Cooper]

I think we can put up a parasol for the Earth to get another few billion years out of her.

[alancalverd]

Humans are irrelevant. Life will continue until there is no water left for the last cell to divide.

[syhprum]

I sometimes think Green peace who say "make peace not war" have got it the wrong way around it would be better for the world if humans killed themselves off.

[David Cooper]

There are a lot of bad genes in people because rape and pillage was a major part in our evolutionary history with the bad guys winning repeatedly. It's really quite remarkable that so many people are nice and civilised despite that. What we need to do is reprogram all the bad stuff out of our species so that we no longer have any abusive individuals spoiling it for the rest. Once that's done, we have billions of years ahead of us here where we are no longer a negative thing.

[PmbPhy]

If I had to bet I'd say that someday in the very distant future some insane person will figure out how to destroy the earth in a major nuclear detonation and that same person will do it for the hatred he has for all or most people. And there's plenty of reason to do it. Almost every single day we bump into people who act rude, mean or will act violently or threaten you. There are plenty of cops who are power hungry and love to toss their authority around to make themselves feel good. There are doctors who let their patients suffer so they don't get into trouble with the FDA or the DEA. The list goes on and on. If this same person was abused as child and has grown up with a hatred for mankind in their heart then I can easily imagine it happening. So in, say, 100,000,000 years I can see it being possible for the average physicist to figure it out.

[yor_on]

I don't know if we will make it. too many things going wrong at the same time.

1. We're living in a mass extinction
2. We're ignoring global warming
3. We will most probably be choosing non renewable sources of energy as we get closer to a panic.
4. We've built a economic religion based on the concept of 'infinite resources, and needing a constant economical growth.
5. We're over breeding, the last hundred years we went from approximately one billion people to 7, and counting.
6. and the last one is that we refuse to question ourselves, our motives and our stupidity.

then of course, with acidity of the oceans, one of the first food chains we have and use should disappear.
=

That has nothing to do with the prospect of continuing life on this planet though. I'm sure there will be life even if we became a extinct species. Just not us.

[Ophiolite]

We pause for a moment of optimism in response to yor_on's post.

1. We're living in a mass extinction - But unlike the bolide that took out the dinosaurs the cause of this mass extinction is conscious and capable of doing something about it.
2. We're ignoring global warming - We are not yet doing enough, but we are doing a considerable amount and as the indicators become clearer even the naysayers will back off.
3. We will most probably be choosing non renewable sources of energy as we get closer to a panic. - The evidence is to the contrary on this point. The panic reaction, if renewables are insufficient will be nuclear.
4. We've built a economic religion based on the concept of 'infinite resources, and needing a constant economical growth -  This point I concede. Never trust an economist. Their place in hell is only one level above bankers.
5. We're over breeding, the last hundred years we went from approximately one billion people to 7, and counting. - And yet the projections show that the rate of growth is falling and in some countries reversing. 10 billion will still be too many, but it is just manageable.
6. and the last one is that we refuse to question ourselves, our motives and our stupidity

[yor_on]

Yeah Ophiolite

I could be more optimistic, couldn't I? In a way I am, It's a mystery this life, and each one of us are on a journey of discovery. Then again, we also kill, torture, imprison and enslave each other, over pieces of nature and 'ideals'. That one hasn't changed in my view, even though many of us nowadays consider themselves 'democratic' and 'progressive'.

We also seem to believe we're the crown of creation, so expecting ourselves to be able to terraform a whole Earth, if needed and at short notice. That is what I would call hubris, to me we're just a part of a complex web of life, us now running wild, killing of each other as well as other species, not by wars solely, but by blind faith. Maybe not so unlike other population of predatory species, getting opportunities to dominate, but we know about it, and where it lead, and that's our problem. That doesn't change that each one of us are born equal, and die equal. Death doesn't care for money. Neither does Earth.

It's going to be a rude awakening.

[yor_on]

Once I thought we could something about it, but as it is today I've started to doubt it. It's like a bad soap opera, in where you see the actors doing the same mistakes over and over again. That doesn't necessarily mean that we can't find a new balance with life and our earth. But those days I guess that the 'forces' that correct us will be way out of our voluntary, individual, control. Some of the reasons to why it looks like it does for us has to lie in the way we're (hard) wired, no matter what color or language one have. And to change those is the same as expecting every human to voluntary start to question himself, and then act on it. I don't expect that to happen, it hasn't so far.

[yor_on]

Okay, new years eve, well somewhere, somewhat

Fair is fair Ophiolite.

Now I will pompous as ever, put up dreams.

Internet.

It can change your world, and mine, but most of all, our kids. It's the way we talk today, and using it positively we will be able to change our thinking, and when we do that, we will change our world.

Physics.

As long as we read something more than just physics.

Behavioral sciences.

We definitely need it, but we need to be able to take that step outside our comfort zone. We need to use ethics.

[yor_on]

In essence.

Can we still dream?

Because when you look at it, and I do. It's not the way people disappear from me, by age or other circumstances, it's our dreams. What do we want? Do we really want to sit in some (as compared to the Earth we left) small rocket, leaving all our birthrights and our kids, waiting for some miracle, somewhere else?

Or are we what I think we are?
Dreamers, that will make a change?

[AnotherView]

Diseases are the usual way great civilizations have ended. But in all likely hood it would be water radiation poisoning from Fukushima or any others that may occur.

[dlorde]

Diseases are the usual way great civilizations have ended. But in all likely hood it would be water radiation poisoning from Fukushima or any others that may occur.

Fukishima may have looked serious, but the radiation risk was local, and relatively minor for Japan as a whole.  To have globally toxic radiation levels, you'd need many times the full amount of radionuclides that Fukushima could have released. The oceans and atmosphere together provide enormous volumes for dilution.

[chiralSPO]

I think it is worthwhile to remember that nuclear fuel was mined from the Earth and concentrated for use. In this concentrated form it is quite dangerous, but if returned to the dilution it was originally found in, not likely to be much more hazardous that it was at the outset. I remember reading somewhere that the levels of radiation naturally found in the Andes is significantly higher than those currently found on the Bikini Atoll (where the US did much of its nuclear weapons testing...)

Of course there are some radioisotopes with shorter half-lives that are produced in the reactor that would not have necessarily formed naturally...

[syhprum]

I think that the nuclear accidents in the Ukraine and Japan caused very little damage on a worldwide scale but the minor accident at Three mile island will be the cause of an untold number of deaths due to delaying the introduction of nuclear power with the contamination caused by fossil fuel continuing.

[dlorde]

I think that the nuclear accidents in the Ukraine and Japan caused very little damage on a worldwide scale but the minor accident at Three mile island will be the cause of an untold number of deaths due to delaying the introduction of nuclear power with the contamination caused by fossil fuel continuing.

I'm told that the burning of fossil fuels releases many times more radioactivity into the atmosphere than nuclear plants, leakages and all.