Is the past a prologue to the future? As for the Earth, the answer is yes and no. As in the past, the Earth continues to be a constantly changing system. The planet is in for a series of warming and cooling periods. Ice ages will return, as will periods of extreme warming. Global tectonic processes will continue to move continents, close and open oceans. The fall of a giant asteroid or the eruption of a super-powerful volcano can again deal a severe blow to life.

But there will be other events as inevitable as the formation of the first granite crust. Myriads of living beings will die out forever. Doomed to extinction are tigers, polar bears, humpback whales, pandas, and gorillas. There is a high probability that humanity is also doomed. Many details of the earth's history are mostly unknown, if not completely unknowable. But the study of this history, as well as the laws of nature, gives an idea of ​​what may happen in the future. Let's start with a panoramic view, and then gradually focus on our time.

Endgame: the next 5 billion years

The earth is almost half way to its inevitable demise. For 4.5 billion years, the Sun shone fairly steadily, gradually increasing in brightness as it burned its colossal reserves of hydrogen. For the next five (or so) billion years, the Sun will continue to generate nuclear energy by converting hydrogen into helium. This is what almost all stars do most of the time.

Sooner or later, hydrogen reserves will run out. Smaller stars, reaching this stage, simply fade away, gradually decreasing in size and radiating less and less energy. If the Sun were such a red dwarf, the Earth would simply freeze through. If any life were preserved on it, it would be only in the form of especially hardy microorganisms deep below the surface, where reserves of liquid water could still remain. However, the Sun does not face such a miserable death, since it has enough mass to have a reserve of nuclear fuel for another scenario. Recall that each star holds two opposing forces in balance. On the one hand, gravity pulls the stellar matter towards the center, reducing its volume as much as possible. On the other hand, nuclear reactions, similar to an endless series of explosions of the internal hydrogen bomb, are directed outward and accordingly try to increase the size of the star. The current Sun is in the stage of burning hydrogen, having reached a stable
diameter of about 1,400,000 km - this size lasted 4.5 billion years and will last for about 5 billion years.

The Sun is large enough that after the end of the hydrogen burn-up phase, a new, powerful phase of helium burn-up begins. Helium, a product of the fusion of hydrogen atoms, can combine with other helium atoms to form carbon, but this stage in the evolution of the Sun will be disastrous for inner planets. Due to more active reactions based on helium, the Sun will become more and more, like a superheated balloon, turning into a pulsating red giant. It will swell up to the orbit of Mercury and simply swallow the tiny planet. It will reach the orbit of our neighbor Venus, swallowing her at the same time. The sun will swell a hundred times its current diameter - up to the orbit of the Earth.

The forecasts for the earthly endgame are quite gloomy. According to some black scenarios, the red giant Sun will simply destroy the Earth, which will evaporate into a hot solar atmosphere and will cease to exist. According to other models, the Sun will eject more than a third of its current mass in the form of an unimaginable solar wind (which will incessantly torment the dead surface of the Earth). As the Sun loses some of its mass, the Earth's orbit may expand - in which case it may avoid absorption. But even if we are not devoured by the huge Sun, all that remains of our beautiful blue planet will turn into a barren firebrand that continues to orbit. Separate ecosystems of microorganisms can remain in the depths for another billion years, but its surface will never be covered with lush greenery.

Desert: 2 billion years later

Slowly but surely, even in the current calm period of burning hydrogen, the Sun is warming up more and more. At the very beginning, 4.5 billion years ago, the luminosity of the Sun was 70% of the current one. At the time of the Great Oxygen Event, 2.4 billion years ago, the glow intensity was already 85%. In a billion years, the Sun will shine even brighter.

For some time, perhaps even many hundreds of millions of years, the Earth's feedback will be able to mitigate this effect. The more thermal energy, the more intense evaporation, therefore, an increase in cloudiness, which contributes to the reflection of most of the sunlight in space. The increase in thermal energy means the acceleration of rock weathering, increased absorption carbon dioxide and reducing greenhouse gas levels. Thus, negative feedbacks will preserve the conditions for sustaining life on Earth for quite a long time.

But the tipping point will inevitably come. Relatively small Mars reached this tipping point billions of years ago, losing all liquid water on its surface. In some billion years, the Earth's oceans will begin to evaporate at a catastrophic rate and the atmosphere will turn into an endless steam room. There will be no glaciers, no snow-capped peaks, and even the poles will turn into tropics. For several million years, life can persist in such greenhouse conditions. But as the sun heats up and water evaporates into the atmosphere, hydrogen will begin to escape into space faster and faster, causing the planet to slowly dry out. When the oceans completely evaporate (which will probably happen in 2 billion years), the surface of the Earth will turn into a barren desert; life will be on the brink of destruction.

Novopangea, or Amasia: 250 million years later

Amazia

The death of the Earth is inevitable, but it will happen very, very soon. Looking to a less distant future paints a more attractive picture of a vibrant and relatively safe planet. To imagine the world in a few hundred million years, one should look in the past for clues to understanding the future. Global tectonic processes will continue to play their important role in changing the face of the planet. Nowadays, the continents are separated from each other. Wide oceans separate America, Eurasia, Africa, Australia and Antarctica. But these huge areas of land are in constant motion, and its speed is about 2-5 cm per year - 1500 km in 60 million years. We can establish fairly accurate vectors of this movement for each continent by studying the age of ocean floor basalts. The basalt near the mid-ocean ridges is fairly young, no more than a few million years old. In contrast, the age of basalt near continental margins in subduction zones can reach more than 200 Ma. It is easy to take into account all these age data on the composition of the ocean floor, rewind the tape of global tectonics back in time and get an idea of ​​​​the mobile
geography of the earth's continents over the past 200 million years. Based on this information, it is also possible to project the movement of continental plates 100 million years ahead.

Given the current trajectories of this movement across the planet, it turns out that all continents are moving towards the next collision. In a quarter of a billion years, most of the earth's land mass will again become one giant supercontinent, and some geologists are already predicting its name - Novopangea. However, the exact structure of the future united continent remains the subject of scientific controversy. Assembling Novopangea is a tricky game. It is possible to take into account the current shifts of the continents and predict their path for the next 10 or 20 million years. The Atlantic Ocean will expand several hundred kilometers while Pacific Ocean narrowed by about the same distance. Australia will move north towards South Asia, and Antarctica will move slightly away from South Pole towards South Asia. Africa is also
stands still, slowly moving north, moving into the Mediterranean Sea.

In a few tens of millions of years, Africa will collide with Southern Europe, closing the Mediterranean Sea and erecting on the site of the collision a mountain range the size of the Himalayas, in comparison with which the Alps will seem like mere dwarfs. Thus, the map of the world in 20 million years will seem familiar, but slightly skewed. When modeling a world map for 100 million years ahead, most developers identify common geographical features, for example, agreeing that the Atlantic Ocean will overtake the Pacific Ocean in size and become the largest water basin on Earth.

From this point on, however, models of the future diverge. According to one theory, extraversion, the Atlantic Ocean will continue to open up and the Americas will eventually collide with Asia, Australia and Antarctica as a result. In the later stages of this supercontinent assembly, North America will close the Pacific Ocean to the east and collide with Japan, and South America will bend clockwise from the southeast, connecting with the equatorial part of Antarctica. All of these parts are amazingly combined with each other. Novopangea will be a single continent, stretching from east to west along the equator.

The main thesis of the extraversion model is that the large convection cells of the mantle located under the tectonic plates will be preserved in their present form. An alternative approach, called introversion, takes the opposite view, referring to previous cycles of closing and opening of the Atlantic Ocean. Reconstructing the position of the Atlantic over the past billion years (or a similar ocean located between the two Americas to the west and Europe, along with Africa to the east), experts argue that the Atlantic Ocean closed and opened three times in cycles of several hundred million years - this conclusion suggests that heat exchange processes in the mantle are variable and episodic. According to the analysis rocks, as a result of the movements of Laurentia and other continents, about 600 million years ago, the precursor of the Atlantic Ocean was formed, called Iapetus, or Iapetus (after the ancient Greek titan Iapetus, the father of Atlas).

Iapetus turned out to be closed after the assembly of Pangea. When this supercontinent began to break apart 175 million years ago, the Atlantic Ocean formed. According to proponents of introversion (perhaps we should not call them introverts), the continuing expansion of the Atlantic Ocean will follow the same path. It will slow down, stop and retreat in about 100 million years. Then, after another 200 million years, both Americas will again close with Europe and Africa. At the same time, Australia and Antarctica will merge with Southeast Asia, forming a supercontinent called Amasia. This gigantic L-shaped continent includes the same parts as New Pangea, but in this model both Americas form its western margin.

At present, both models of supercontinents (extroversion and introversion) are not without merit and are still popular. Whatever the outcome of this controversy, everyone agrees that although in 250 million years the Earth's geography will change significantly, it will still reflect the past. The temporary assembly of the continents around the equator will lessen the impact of ice ages and moderate sea level changes. Where continents collide, mountain ranges will rise, climate and vegetation will change, and the levels of oxygen and carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will fluctuate. These changes will be repeated throughout the history of the Earth.

Collision: the coming 50 million years

A recent survey on how humanity will die reflected a very low asteroid impact rate of something like 1 in 100,000. Statistically, this is the same as the probability of death from a lightning strike or a tsunami. But there is an obvious flaw in this prediction. As a rule, lightning kills about 60 times a year, one person at a time. In contrast, an asteroid impact may not have killed a single person in several thousand years. But one far from perfect day, a modest blow can destroy everyone in general.

Chances are good that we have nothing to worry about, and hundreds of generations to come, too. But there is no doubt that one day it will happen major disaster like the one that killed the dinosaurs. In the coming 50 million years, the Earth will have to experience such a blow, perhaps even more than one. It's just a matter of time and circumstances. The most likely villains are near-Earth asteroids, objects with a highly elongated orbit that passes close to Earth's near-circular orbit. At least 300 such potential killers are known, and some of them will pass dangerously close to Earth in the next few decades. On February 22, 1995, an asteroid discovered at the last moment, which received the decent name 1995 CR, whistled quite close - several Earth-Moon distances. On September 29, 2004, the asteroid Tautatis, an oblong object approximately 5.4 km in diameter, passed even closer. In 2029, the asteroid Apophis, a fragment of approximately 325-340 m in diameter, should get even closer, entering deep into the lunar orbit. This unpleasant neighborhood will inevitably change Apophis' own orbit and, perhaps, bring it even closer to Earth in the future.

For every known asteroid that crosses the Earth's orbit, there are a dozen or more that have yet to be discovered. When such a flying object is eventually discovered, it may be too late to do anything. If we are targeted, we may only have a few days to avert the danger. Dispassionate statistics gives us collision probability calculations. Almost every year, fragments of about 10 m in diameter fall to Earth. Due to the decelerating effect of the atmosphere, most of these projectiles explode and disintegrate into
small parts before touching the surface. But objects with a diameter of 30 meters or more, which occur about once every thousand years, lead to significant destruction at the sites of impact: in June 1908, such a body collapsed in the taiga near the Podkamennaya Tunguska River in Russia. Very dangerous, about a kilometer in diameter, stone objects fall to Earth about once every half a million years, and asteroids five kilometers or more can fall to Earth about once every 10 million years.

The consequences of such collisions depend on the size of the asteroid and the location of the impact. A fifteen-kilometer boulder will devastate the planet wherever it falls. (For example, the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs 65 million years ago was estimated to be about 10 km across.) If a 15 km pebble falls into the ocean - 70% probability, taking into account the ratio of water and land areas - then almost all mountains on the globe, except for the highest, will be demolished destructive waves. Everything that is below 1000 m above sea level will disappear.

If an asteroid of this size were to hit land, the destruction would be more localized. Everything within a radius of two to three thousand kilometers will be destroyed, and devastating fires will sweep across the entire mainland, which will turn out to be an unfortunate target. For a time, areas distant from the impact may be able to avoid the consequences of the fall, but such an impact will throw into the air an immense amount of dust from the destroyed stones and soil, littering the atmosphere with dusty clouds reflecting sunlight for years. Photosynthesis will practically come to naught. Vegetation will die and the food chain will break. Part of humanity
may survive this catastrophe, but civilization as we know it will be destroyed.

Small objects will cause less devastating consequences, but any asteroid more than a hundred meters in diameter, whether it crashes onto land or into the sea, will cause a natural disaster worse than we know. What to do? Can we ignore the threat as something distant, not so significant in a world already full of problems that need to be addressed immediately? Is there any way to deflect a large piece of debris?

The late, perhaps the most charismatic and influential member of the scientific community in the last half century, thought a lot about asteroids. In public and private conversations, and mostly in his famous TV show "Cosmos", he advocated concerted action at the international level. He began by telling the fascinating tale of the monks of Canterbury Cathedral who, in the summer of 1178, witnessed a colossal explosion on the moon, an asteroid impact very close to us less than a thousand years ago. If such an object crashed to Earth, millions of people would die. “Earth is a tiny corner in the vast arena of space,” he said. “It is unlikely that anyone will come to our aid.”

The simplest step that must be taken first of all is to pay close attention to the celestial bodies dangerously approaching the Earth - you need to know the enemy in person. We need accurate telescopes equipped with digital processors to localize flying objects approaching the Earth, calculate their orbits and make calculations of their future trajectories. It doesn't cost that much, and something is already being done. Of course, more could be done, but at least some effort is being made.

But what if we find a large object that could crash into us in a few years? Sagan, and with him a number of other scientists and the military, believe that the most obvious way is to cause a deviation in the asteroid's trajectory. If you start on time, then even a slight push of the rocket or several directed nuclear explosions could significantly shift the asteroid's orbit - and thereby direct the asteroid past the target, avoiding a collision. He argued that the development of such a project required an intensive and long-term program of space research. In a prophetic 1993 article, Sagan wrote: “Since the threat of asteroids and comets affects every habitable planet in the Galaxy, if any, intelligent beings on them will have to band together to leave their planets and move to neighboring ones. The choice is simple - fly into space or die.

Space flight or death. To survive in the distant future, we must colonize neighboring planets. First, it is necessary to create bases on the Moon, although our luminous satellite will remain an inhospitable world for life and work for a long time to come. The next one is Mars, where there are more solid resources - not only large reserves of frozen groundwater, but also sunlight, minerals and a rarefied, but atmosphere. This will not be an easy or cheap undertaking, and it is unlikely that Mars will become a prosperous colony in the near future. But if we settle there and cultivate the soil, our promising neighbor may well become an important stage in the evolution of mankind.

Two obvious obstacles may delay, if not make impossible the settlement of people on Mars. The first is money. The tens of billions of dollars that will be needed to develop and operate a mission to Mars exceed even the most optimistic NASA budget, and this is under favorable financial conditions. International cooperation would be the only way out, but so far no such major international programs have taken place.

Another problem is the issue of the survival of astronauts, since it is practically impossible to ensure a safe flight to Mars and back. The cosmos is harsh, with its countless meteorite grains of sand that can pierce the thin shell of even an armored capsule, and the Sun is unpredictable, with its explosions and deadly, penetrating radiation. The Apollo astronauts, with their week-long trips to the moon, were unspeakably lucky that nothing happened at that time. But the flight to Mars will last several months; in any space flight, the principle is the same: the longer the time, the greater the risk.

Moreover, existing technologies do not allow supplying spaceship enough fuel for the return flight. Some inventors are talking about processing Martian water to synthesize rocket fuel and fill tanks for a return flight, but so far this is in the realm of dreams, and in a very distant future. Perhaps the most logical solution so far - the one that so hurts NASA's vanity but is actively supported by the press - is a one-way flight. If we had sent an expedition, providing it with food instead of rocket fuel for many years, reliable shelter and a greenhouse, seeds, oxygen and water, tools for extracting vital resources on the Red Planet itself, such an expedition could take place. It would be unthinkably dangerous, but all the great pioneers were in danger - such was circumnavigation Magellan in 1519-1521, the expedition to the West by Lewis and Clark in 1804-1806, the polar expeditions of Peary and Amundsen at the beginning of the 20th century. Mankind has not lost its gambling desire to participate in such risky ventures. If NASA announces the registration of volunteers for a one-way flight to Mars, thousands of specialists will sign up without hesitation.

In 50 million years, the Earth will still be a living and habitable planet, and its blue oceans and green continents will shift but remain recognizable. Much less obvious is the fate of mankind. Maybe man will die out as a species. In this case, 50 million years is enough to erase almost all traces of our brief dominion - all cities, roads, monuments will be weathered much earlier than the deadline. Some alien paleontologists will have to work hard to find the smallest traces of our existence in near-surface sediments.

However, a person can survive, and even evolve, colonize first the nearest planets, and then the nearest stars. In this case, if our descendants come out on outer space, then the Earth will be valued even higher - as a reserve, a museum, a shrine and a place of pilgrimage. Perhaps only by leaving their planet, humanity will finally truly appreciate the birthplace of our species.

Changing the Map of the Earth: The Next Million Years

In many ways, in a million years, the Earth won't change all that much. Of course, the continents will shift, but not more than 45-60 km from their current location. The sun will continue to shine, rising every twenty-four hours, and the moon will revolve around the earth in about one month. But some things will change quite fundamentally. In many parts of the world, irreversible geological processes transform the landscape. The vulnerable contours of the ocean coasts will change especially noticeably. Calvert County, Maryland, one of my favorite places, where the Miocene rocks with their seemingly limitless reserves of fossils stretch for miles, will disappear from the face of the Earth as a result of rapid weathering. After all, the size of the entire county is only 8 km and decreases annually by almost 30 cm. At this rate, the county of Calvert will not last even 50 thousand years, not like a million.

Other states, on the contrary, will acquire valuable land plots. An active underwater volcano off the southeast coast of the largest of the Hawaiian Islands has already risen above 3000 m (although it is still covered with water) and is growing every year. In a million years from the ocean waves will rise new island, already called Loihi. At the same time, extinct volcanic islands to the northwest, including Maui, Oahu, and Kauai, will shrink, respectively, under the influence of wind and ocean waves.

With regard to waves, those who study rocks for future changes conclude that the most active factor in changing the geography of the Earth will be the advance and retreat of the ocean. A change in the rate of rift volcanism will take a very, very long time to affect, depending on how much more or less lava solidifies on the ocean floor. Sea levels can drop significantly during lulls in volcanic activity, when the bottom rocks cool and calm down: scientists believe this is what caused the sharp drop in sea levels just before the Mesozoic extinction event. The presence or absence of large inland seas like the Mediterranean, as well as the rallying and splitting of continents, cause significant changes in the size of coastal shelf areas, which will also play an important role in shaping the geosphere and biosphere over the coming million years.

A million years is tens of thousands of generations in the life of mankind, which is hundreds of times greater than the entire previous human history. If man survives as a species, then the Earth may also undergo changes as a result of our progressive technological activity, and in such a way that it is difficult even to imagine. But if humanity dies out, then the Earth will remain approximately the same as it is now. Life will continue on land and sea; the joint evolution of the geosphere and the biosphere will quickly restore the pre-industrial balance.

Megavolcanoes: the next 100 thousand years

A sudden catastrophic asteroid impact pales in comparison to a sustained megavolcano eruption or a continuous basaltic lava flow. Volcanism on a planetary scale accompanied almost all five mass extinctions, including the one caused by an asteroid impact. The effects of megavolcanism should not be confused with the mediocre destruction and loss of normal volcanic eruptions. Regular eruptions are accompanied by lava flows familiar to the inhabitants of the Hawaiian Islands who live on the slopes of Kilauea, whose dwellings and everything in their path are destroyed by it, but in general such eruptions are limited, predictable and easy to avoid. Somewhat more dangerous in this category are the ordinary eruptions of pyroclastic volcanoes, when a huge amount of hot ash rushes down the mountainside at a speed of about 200 km / h, incinerating and burying everything in its path. This was the case in 1980 with the eruption of Mount St. Helena, Washington, and Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines in 1991; these disasters would have killed thousands of people if not for the early warning and mass evacuations.

An even more formidable danger is the third type of volcanic activity: the release of huge masses of fine ash and poisonous gases into the upper atmosphere. The eruptions of the Icelandic volcanoes Eyjafjallajokull (April 2010) and Grímsvotn (May 2011) are relatively weak, since they were accompanied by emissions of less than 4 km^3 of ash. Nevertheless, they paralyzed air traffic in Europe for several days and harmed the health of many people from nearby areas. In June 1783, the eruption of the Laki volcano - one of the largest in history - was accompanied by the release of more than 12 thousand m3 of basalt, as well as ash and gas, which turned out to be quite enough to envelop Europe in poisonous haze for a long time. This killed a quarter of the population of Iceland, some of whom died from direct poisoning by acidic volcanic gases, and most from starvation during the winter. The consequences of the disaster affected at a distance of more than a thousand kilometers towards the southeast, and tens of thousands of Europeans, mostly residents british isles, died from the lingering effects of this eruption.

But the deadliest was the eruption of the Tambora volcano in April 1815, during which more than 20 km3 of lava was ejected. At the same time, more than 70 thousand people died, most of them from mass starvation resulting from the damage caused by agriculture. The Tambor eruption was accompanied by the release of huge masses of sulfur dioxide into the upper atmosphere, which blocked the sun's rays and plunged the Northern Hemisphere into a "year without sunlight" ("volcanic winter") in 1816. These historical events still amaze the imagination, and for good reason. Of course, the number of victims is nothing compared to the hundreds of thousands of people who died from the recent earthquakes in the Indian Ocean and Haiti. But there is an important, frightening difference between volcanic eruptions and earthquakes. The size of the most powerful earthquake possible is limited by the strength of the rock. Hard rock can withstand a certain amount of pressure before cracking; the strength of the rock can cause a very destructive, but still local earthquake - magnitude nine on the Richter scale.

In contrast, volcanic eruptions have no limits in scale. In fact, geological data irrefutably testify to eruptions hundreds of times more powerful than the volcanic catastrophes preserved in the historical memory of mankind. Such gigantic volcanoes could darken the sky for years and change their appearance for many millions (not thousands!) earth's surface. The giant eruption of the Taupo volcano on the North Island, New Zealand, occurred 26,500 years ago; more than 830 km^3 of igneous lava and ash were erupted.

The Toba volcano in Sumatra exploded 74,000 years ago and erupted over 2,800 km^3 of lava. Consequences of a similar disaster in modern world it is hard to imagine. Yet these supervolcanoes, which created the greatest cataclysms in the history of the Earth, pale in comparison to the giant basalt flows (scientists call them "traps") that caused mass extinctions. Unlike one-time eruptions of supervolcanoes, basalt flows cover a huge time period - thousands of years of uninterrupted volcanic activity. The most powerful of these cataclysms, usually coinciding with periods of mass extinction, spread hundreds of thousands of millions of cubic kilometers of lava. The largest catastrophe occurred in Siberia 251 million years ago during the great mass extinction and was accompanied by the spreading of basalt over an area of ​​more than a million square kilometers. The death of dinosaurs 65 million years ago, which is often attributed to a collision with a large asteroid, coincided with a giant basaltic lava spill in India, which gave rise to the largest igneous province of the Deccan Traps, the total area of ​​\u200b\u200bwhich is about 517,000 km2, and the volume of the grown mountains reaches 500,000 km ^3.

These vast territories could not have formed as a result of a simple transformation of the crust and the upper part of the mantle. Modern models of basalt formations reflect the idea of ​​the ancient era of vertical tectonics, when giant bubbles of magma slowly rose from the boundaries of the red-hot core of the mantle, splitting the earth's crust and splashing onto the cold surface. Such occurrences are extremely rare these days. According to one theory, the time interval between basalt flows is approximately 30 million years, so it is unlikely that we will live to see the next one.

Our technological society will certainly receive timely warning of the possibility of such an event. Seismologists are able to track the flow of hot, molten magma rising to the surface. We may have hundreds of years to prepare for such a natural disaster. But if humanity falls into another surge of volcanism, there is little we can do to counter this most severe of earthly tests.

The Ice Factor: The Next 50,000 Years

In the foreseeable future, the most significant factor determining the appearance of the earth's continents is ice. For hundreds of thousands of years, ocean depth is highly dependent on the total volume of frozen water on Earth, including mountain ice caps, glaciers, and continental ice sheets. The equation is simple: the greater the volume of frozen water on land, the lower the water level in the ocean. The past is the key to predicting the future, but how do we know the depth of the ancient oceans? Satellite observations of ocean levels, while incredibly accurate, have been limited to the last two decades. Sea level measurements by level gauges, although less accurate and subject to local variations, have been collected over the past century and a half. Coastal geologists may be able to map signs of ancient coastlines—for example, elevated coastal terraces that can be identified from coastal marine sediments dating back tens of thousands of years—such elevated areas may reflect periods of rising water levels. The relative positions of fossil corals, which typically grow in the sun-warmed shallow ocean shelf, could extend our record of past events back into the ages, but this record will be distorted as such geological formations sporadically rise, sink, and tilt.

A less obvious indicator of sea level has come to the attention of many experts - changes in oxygen isotope ratios in small shells of marine mollusks. Such ratios can tell much more than the distance between any celestial body and the Sun. Due to their ability to respond to temperature changes, oxygen isotopes provide the key to deciphering the volume of the Earth's ice cover in the past and, accordingly, to changes in the water level in the ancient ocean. However, the relationship between the amount of ice and oxygen isotopes is a tricky one. The most abundant isotope of oxygen, accounting for 99.8% of the oxygen in the air we breathe, is thought to be light oxygen-16 (with eight protons and eight neutrons). One in 500 oxygen atoms is heavy oxygen-18 (eight protons and ten neutrons). This means that one out of every 500 water molecules in the ocean is heavier than normal. When the ocean is heated by the sun's rays, water containing the light isotopes of oxygen-16 evaporates faster than oxygen-18, and therefore the weight of water in low-latitude clouds is lighter than in the ocean itself. As clouds rise into the cooler layers of the atmosphere, heavy oxygen-18 water condenses into raindrops faster than lighter oxygen-16 water, and the oxygen in the cloud becomes even lighter.

In the process of the inevitable movement of clouds to the poles, the oxygen in their constituent water molecules becomes much lighter than in sea water. When precipitation falls over polar glaciers and glaciers, light isotopes solidify in the ice and sea water becomes even heavier. During periods of maximum cooling of the planet, when more than 5% of the earth's water turns into ice, sea water becomes especially saturated with heavy oxygen-18. During periods global warming and retreat of glaciers, oxygen-18 levels in seawater are declining. Thus, careful measurements of oxygen isotope ratios in coastal sediments can provide insight into changes in volume surface ice in retrospect.

This is exactly what geologist Ken Miller and colleagues at Rutgers University have been doing for decades, studying the thick layers of marine sediments that cover the coast in New Jersey. These deposits, which record the geological history of the last 100,000 years, are saturated with the shells of microscopic fossil organisms called foraminifers. Each tiny foraminifera stores in its composition oxygen isotopes in the same proportion as it was in the ocean at the time when the organism grew up. Layer-by-layer measurement of oxygen isotopes in New Jersey's coastal sediments provides a simple and accurate means of estimating the amount of ice in a given time period.

In the recent geologic past, the ice cover has alternated between shrinking and expanding, accompanied by corresponding large fluctuations in sea level every few thousand years. At the peak of the ice ages, more than 5% of the planet's water turned into ice, lowering the sea level by a hundred meters relative to today. It is believed that about 20 thousand years ago, during one of these periods of low water standing, a land isthmus formed across the Bering Strait between Asia and North America- it was along this “bridge” that people and other mammals migrated to the New World. During the same period, the English Channel did not exist, and a dry valley ran between the British Isles and France. During periods of maximum warming, when glaciers practically disappeared and snow caps thinned on the tops of the mountains, the sea level rose, becoming about 100 m higher than the current one, submerging hundreds of thousands of square kilometers of coastal territories all over the planet under water.

Miller and his collaborators have calculated over a hundred cycles of advance and retreat of glaciers over the past 9 million years, and at least a dozen of them occur in the last million - the range of these frenzied sea level fluctuations reached 180 m. One cycle may differ slightly from another, but the events occur with obvious periodicity and are associated with the so-called Milankovitch cycles, named after the Serbian astronomer Milutin Milanković, who discovered them about a century ago. He found that the well-known changes in the parameters of the Earth's motion around the Sun, including the tilt earth's axis, the eccentricity of the elliptical orbit and a slight oscillation of its own axis of rotation, cause periodic changes in climate with intervals from 20 thousand years to 100. These shifts affect the flow of solar energy reaching the Earth, and thus cause significant climate fluctuations.

What awaits our planet in the next 50 thousand years? There is no doubt that sharp fluctuations in sea level will continue, and more than once it will fall, then rise. Sometimes, probably over the next 20,000 years, the snow caps on the peaks will grow, the glaciers will continue to increase, and the sea level will drop by sixty meters or more - a level the sea has dropped at least eight times in the last million years. This will have a powerful effect on the contours of continental coastlines. The East Coast of the United States will expand many kilometers eastward,
as the shallow continental slope becomes exposed. All the major harbors on the East Coast, from Boston to Miami, will be dry inland plateaus. Alaska will be connected to Russia by a new ice-covered isthmus, and the British Isles may again become part of mainland Europe. Rich fisheries along the continental shelves will become part of the land.

As for the sea level, if it falls, then it must certainly rise. It is quite possible, even very likely, that in the next thousand years the sea level will rise by 30 m or more. Such a rise in the level of the World Ocean, rather modest by geological standards, would unrecognizably redraw the map of the United States. A 30-meter sea level rise will inundate much of the coastal plains on the East Coast, pushing coastlines up to 150 kilometers to the west. The main coastal cities - Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Washington, Baltimore, Wilmington, Charleston, Savannah, Jacksonville, Miami and many others - will be under water. Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Diego and Seattle will disappear into the sea. It will flood almost all of Florida, and a shallow sea will stretch on the site of the peninsula. Most of the states of Delaware and Louisiana will be under water. In other parts of the world, the damage caused by rising sea levels will be even more devastating.

Entire countries will cease to exist - Holland, Bangladesh, Maldives. Geological data irrefutably testify that such changes will occur in the future. If warming is rapid, as many experts believe, water levels will rise rapidly, by about 30 cm per decade. Normal thermal expansion sea ​​water during periods of global warming, it can increase sea level rise by an average of three meters. Undoubtedly, this will be a problem for humanity, but will have a very small impact on the Earth. Still, it won't be the end of the world. This will be the end of our world.

Warming: the next hundred years

Most of us do not look a few billion years ahead, just as we do not look a few million years or even a thousand years. We have more pressing concerns: How can I pay higher education for a child in ten years? Will I get a promotion in a year? Will the stock market go up next week? What to cook for lunch? In this context, we have nothing to worry about. Barring an unforeseen catastrophe, our planet will hardly change in a year, in ten years. Any difference between what is now and what will be in a year is almost imperceptible, even if the summer turns out to be unusually hot, or the crop suffers from drought, or an unusually strong storm comes up.

And such changes are observed throughout the globe. From the shores of Chesapeake Bay, tides are reporting a steady rise in tide levels compared to previous decades. Year after year, the Sahara is spreading further north, turning Morocco's once fertile farmland into a dusty desert. The ice of Antarctica is rapidly melting and breaking apart. Average air and water temperatures are constantly rising. All of this reflects a process of progressive global warming - a process that the Earth has experienced countless times in the past and will continue to experience in the future.

Warming may be accompanied by other, sometimes paradoxical, effects. The Gulf Stream, a powerful ocean current that carries warm water from the equator to the North Atlantic, is controlled big difference temperatures between the equator and high latitudes. If, as a result of global warming, the temperature contrast decreases, as some climate models suggest, then the Gulf Stream may weaken or stop altogether. Ironically, the immediate result of this change will be the transformation of the temperate climate of the British Isles and Northern Europe, which are now
heated by the Gulf Stream, in a much cooler one. Similar changes will occur with other ocean currents - for example, with the current coming from the Indian Ocean to South Atlantic past the Horn of Africa - this could cause a cooling of the mild climate of South Africa or a change in the monsoonal climate that provides part of Asia with fertile rains.

When glaciers melt, sea levels rise. According to the most conservative estimates, it will rise by half a meter to a meter in the next century, although, according to some data, in some decades, the rise in sea water levels can fluctuate within a few centimeters. Such changes in sea level will affect many coastal residents around the world and will be a real headache for civil engineers and beach owners from Maine to Florida, but in principle, a rise of up to one meter in densely populated coastal areas can be managed. At least the next one or two generations of inhabitants may not worry about the advance of the sea on land. However, individual species of animals and plants can suffer much more seriously.

The melting of polar ice in the north will reduce the range of polar bears, which is very unfavorable for the conservation of the population, whose numbers are already declining. The rapid shift of climatic zones towards the poles will adversely affect other species, especially birds, which are particularly susceptible to changes in seasonal migration and feeding areas. According to some reports, the average increase in global temperature of just a couple of degrees, which most climate models of the coming century suggest, could reduce bird numbers by almost 40% in Europe and more than 70% in the fertile rainforests of northeastern Australia. A major international report says that out of about 6,000 species of frogs, toads and lizards, one in three will be at risk, mainly due to the spread of a fungal disease that is deadly to amphibians, provoked by a warm climate. Whatever other effects of warming may be revealed in the coming century, it seems that we are entering a period of accelerated extinction.

Some transformations in the next century, inevitable or only likely, may be instantaneous, whether it be a large devastating earthquake, a supervolcano eruption, or the impact of an asteroid with a diameter of more than a kilometer. Knowing the history of the Earth, we understand that such events are common, and therefore inevitable on a planetary scale. Nevertheless, we are building cities on the slopes of active volcanoes and in the most geologically active zones of the Earth in the hope that we will dodge the “tectonic bullet” or “space projectile”.

Between very slow and rapid changes are geological processes that usually take centuries or even millennia - changes in climate, sea levels and ecosystems that can go unnoticed for generations. The main threat is not the changes themselves, but their degree. For the state of the climate, the position of the sea level, or the very existence of ecosystems can reach a critical level. The acceleration of positive feedback processes can hit our world unexpectedly. What usually takes a millennium can
emerge in a decade or two.

It is easy to be in a good mood if you misread the history of the rocks. For some time, until 2010, concerns about modern events were tempered by studies looking back 56 million years ago, the time of one of the mass extinctions that dramatically affected the evolution and distribution of mammals. This formidable event, called the Late Paleocene thermal maximum, caused the comparatively abrupt extinction of thousands of species. The study of the thermal maximum is important for our time, as it is the most famous, documented temperature shift in the history of the Earth. Volcanic activity caused a relatively rapid increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide and methane, two inseparable greenhouse gases, which in turn led to a positive feedback loop that lasted over a thousand years and was accompanied by moderate global warming. Some researchers see in the Late Paleocene thermal maximum a clear parallel with the current situation, of course, unfavorable - with an increase in global temperature by an average of almost 10 ° C, a rapid rise in sea level, ocean acidification and a significant shift of ecosystems towards the poles, but not so catastrophic, to threaten the survival of most animals and plants.

The shock of recent findings by Lee Kemp, a geologist at the University of Pennsylvania, and his colleagues has left us with almost no reason for optimism. In 2008, Kemp's team gained access to materials recovered from drilling in Norway, which made it possible to trace the events of the Late Paleocene thermal maximum in detail - in sedimentary rocks, layer by layer, the finest details of the rate of change in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and climate are captured. The bad news is that the thermal high, which is more than a decade
considered the fastest climate shift in Earth's history, was driven by changes in atmospheric composition ten times as intense as what is happening today. Global changes in the composition of the atmosphere and average temperature, formed over a thousand years and eventually led to extinction, in our time occurred during the last hundred years, during which mankind burned huge amounts of hydrocarbon fuel.

This is an unprecedented rapid change, and no one can predict how the Earth will react to this. At the Prague conference in August 2011, which brought together three thousand geochemists, there was a very sad mood among specialists, sobered by the new data of the Late Paleocene thermal maximum. Of course, for the general public, the forecast of these experts was formulated in rather cautious terms, but the comments that I heard on the sidelines were very pessimistic, even intimidating. The concentration of the greenhouse gas is increasing too rapidly, and the mechanisms for absorbing this excess are unknown. Will this not cause a massive release of methane with all subsequent positive feedback that this development entails? Will the sea level rise by a hundred meters, as has happened more than once in the past? We are entering the terra incognita zone, performing a poorly designed experiment on a global scale, the likes of which the Earth has not experienced in the past.

Judging by the rock data, no matter how resilient life may be to shocks, the biosphere is in great tension at the turning points of sudden climatic shifts. Biological productivity, in particular agricultural productivity, will fall to a catastrophic level for some time. In a rapidly changing environment, large animals, including humans, will pay a heavy price. The interdependence of rocks and the biosphere will not weaken, but the role of humanity in this saga, lasting billions of years, remains incomprehensible.

Maybe we have already reached a tipping point? Perhaps not in the current decade, perhaps not in the lifetime of our generation. But such is the nature of turning points - we recognize such a moment only when it has already arrived. The financial bubble is bursting. The people of Egypt are in revolt. The stock market is crashing. We realize what is happening only in retrospect, when it is too late to restore the status quo. And there was no such restoration in the history of the Earth.

An excerpt from Robert Hazen's book:

The end of the world is a popular topic for science fiction films and novels, but there are very real threats to our existence that could become reality.

Humanity could be wiped off the face of the earth by an asteroid impact or a highly infectious pandemic that could wipe out virtually the entire population of the planet. And despite the fact that many of the apocalyptic scenarios sound a bit fantastic, there are very real risks that we should be wary of today.

Apocalypse Now

If humanity still avoids the end of the world in the near future, whether it be an asteroid or a nuclear catastrophe, scientists still argue that people will still disappear in 500 million years, and in 6 billion years all life on planet Earth will disappear, because it is too get very close to the sun. Our star, which is growing and tending to become a red giant, will almost melt the Earth over time.

Well, 500 million years is a long time for a species of mammals, but the assumptions of scientists often agree that the end of the species of reasonable people will come much sooner, through the fault of the reasonable themselves.

Most of all, scientists fear natural disasters caused by very intense global warming. Pandemics such as swine and bird flu and ebola are another threat to humanity. Last but not least, especially in connection with today's political tension, it is worth mentioning the threat of nuclear war.

More distant threats to the prosperity of the human race on the planet include biological weapons, failures in geoengineering and the development of hostile artificial intelligence.

If we take all this into account, the question arises: if the end of the world came right now, what would become of a planet without people? It won't take long for the Earth to "reset," but the process will be brutal.

Here is the timeline and changes that will take place on Earth if humanity disappears.

A few hours later

The planet will become dark. The electric lights will no longer be lit at night as the power plants run out of fuel. Even solar panels will quickly become covered with dust, and windmills running out of lubrication for the turbines.

The only stations that will continue to operate are hydroelectric. Many grandiose dams will be able to work for several months and even years.

Two or three days later

Most stations and subway tunnels will be flooded because pumps shutting off water will stop working.

ten days later

Domestic and farm animals will die of starvation and dehydration. Animals on remote farms will be eaten by predators. At the same time, hungry dogs will huddle together and prey on other animals.

A mounth later

The reactor-cooling water in nuclear power plants will evaporate. This will lead to a series of nuclear disasters more devastating than Fukushima and Chernobyl. But in general, the planet will quickly and easily recover from radioactive contamination.

One year later

Satellites in orbit around the Earth will begin to fall, illuminating the sky with a strange glow of "shooting stars".

twenty five years later

Vegetation will almost completely cover the once concrete streets and alleys of megacities. Some cities like Dubai and Las Vegas will be buried in the sand.

Over time, the vegetation growing in the cities will attract herbivores, and predators will follow.

Without humans, endangered animal and plant species such as whales, snow leopards, tigers and others will thrive and multiply. Perhaps there will be new species.

The swamps that once covered large parts of the planet will reappear in the place of cities like London and St. Petersburg. Nature will take over.

Three hundred years later

Metal buildings, bridges and towers will begin to corrode and collapse, falling to the ground and becoming covered with vegetation or sinking under water.

Ten thousand years later

The only evidence of the existence of people on earth will be grandiose stone structures, such as the Egyptian pyramids, the Great Chinese Wall and Mount Rushmore.

Yes, 18,000 years ago there was a more highly developed civilization on planet Earth than it is now. But 18,000 years ago, our land of Mitgard was occupied by the Ebrov civilization from the 4th star of Sur in the constellation Ursa Major. This is a technically highly developed civilization, but in spiritual development they have reached their ceiling and they decided to capture our planet, on which spiritual development is under the influence of high energy happened at an accelerated pace. The constellation Ursa Major appeared in our galaxy 6,000,000 years ago from some other dimension. For 5.5 million years, the Ebrs studied our universe until they found an object they considered worthy of occupation. Before the occupation, there were higher energy vibrations on our planet and life expectancy was up to 1000 years, and for those who reached the level of high spiritual development, life expectancy was up to 30,000 years. There were cosmodromes on the land of Mitgard and communication tubes were created with the nearest constellations for Whiteman flights. Also on Mitgard there were gates of the multi-world, through which it was possible in emergency cases to move to other planets. Whitemars is a large intergalactic ship, which could accommodate up to 150 small interplanetary Whiteman spacecraft. The Whitemans were flown by 1-2 pilots, and the Whitemars by 6-8 pilots. If communication tubes were not created between the planets, then the pilots could synchronously tune into space and quickly move to the desired space.
The Ebrs, having captured our land of Mitgard, wanted to incarnate through the physical bodies of people (having previously thrown out the human soul from the human physical body and inserting their soul) and thus supposedly enter the reasonable civilization of our universe.
All the moons that are in the solar system (earlier it was the planetary system of the earth “Mitgard”) are an enemy fleet, including the planet Sun and driven to us from the constellation Ursa Major to occupy our planetary system. The Sun is the same size planet as the Earth, not a star. Around the planet the Sun at a distance of 1.5 million km. an energy corona has been created, which, through communication tubes, is powered by the energy of the Earth with lower vibrations than they were before the occupation of the planetary system Mitgard, and due to this, the Ebrs lowered our abilities and life expectancy. During the occupation of our planetary system, the planet Diya was destroyed (now it is an asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter), and the atmosphere was blown away from Mars by a blast wave and part of the Martians who did not have time to evacuate to other planets went to live underground on Mars. There is underground life on Mars even now, but there are very few of them left, about 60,000, now the atmosphere has begun to recover on Mars and it will recover very quickly in 20-30 years. In 2011, our planetary system, with the help of other alien civilizations, was completely liberated from the occupation of the Ebrs. They lived on the planet Sun (the Sun is hollow inside and the temperature inside is + 20 degrees C) and were completely destroyed. Now everything is returning at an accelerated pace to the pre-occupation period. Only the Illuminati parasites and other creatures created by the Ebras with the help of the genetic intervention of their servant remained on Earth. All of them, under the influence of higher vibrations, will go to another world, and captive human souls in their physical bodies will be released. All wars, violence, bondage, parasitism will stop, and all this will happen before 2025. The Earth of Mitgard will be recovering at a very fast pace, energy is no longer supplied to the Sun and it will gradually fade, and the energy crown of the Earth of Mitgard will gain strength. The light will be softer, saturated with brighter colors without harmful radioactive radiation, and the whole land of Mitgard will be illuminated and heated evenly all year round, winters will disappear and the HELL created on our planet will begin to turn into PARADISE. Do not believe any official scientists and media anymore - all media are created by parasites for our deception, and all academies and scientific research institutes controlled by the Illuminati in the face of the Jews. If you want to know more, read the works of B.V. Makov, A.M. Khatybov, N.V. Levashov.

The earth is in a state of constant change. Whether as a result of human activity or solar disturbances, Earth's future is guaranteed to be more than interesting, but not without chaos. The following list presents ten major events that the Earth is predicted to experience over the next billion years.

1. New ocean
~10 million years
One of the hottest places on Earth, the Afar Basin - located between Ethiopia and Eritrea - is on average 100 meters below sea level. At this point, there is only 20 km between the surface and boiling hot magma, and the earth is slowly thinning due to tectonic movements. Comprised of murderous arrays of volcanoes, geysers, earthquakes, and toxic heated water, the depression is unlikely to become a resort; but in 10 million years, when this geological activity stops, leaving only a dry pool, this place will eventually fill with water, and a new ocean will form - an ideal place for water skiing in the summer.

2. An event with a huge impact on the Earth

~100 million years
Given Earth's rich history and the relatively large number of random debris circulating in space threatening planets, scientists predict that in the next 100 million years the Earth will be impacted by some kind of event comparable to the event that caused the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction 65 million years ago. This, of course, is bad news for any life on planet Earth. And while some species will no doubt survive, this impact will most likely spell the end of the Age of Mammals—the current Cenozoic Era—and the Earth will instead enter a new era complex life forms. Who knows what kind of life will flourish on this newly cleansed Earth? Maybe one day we will share the universe with intelligent invertebrates or amphibians. At the moment, we can only imagine what will happen.

3. Pangea Ultima
~250 million years
Over the next 50 million years, Africa, which has been migrating north over the last 40 million years, will eventually start to encounter southern Europe. This movement will seal the Mediterranean Sea for 100 million years, and create thousands of miles of new mountain ranges to the delight of climbers around the world. Australia and Antarctica also aspire to be part of this new supercontinent, and will continue to move north to merge with Asia. While all this is going on, America will continue its course west, away from Europe and Africa, towards Asia.
What happens next is still being discussed. It is believed that while the Atlantic Ocean is growing, a subduction zone will form on the western border, which will stretch from the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean deep into the earth. This will effectively change the direction in which America is moving, and eventually bring it to the eastern border of the Eurasian supercontinent within about 250 million years. If this does not happen, we can expect both Americas to continue their journey west until they merge with Asia. In any case, we can hope for the formation of a new hypercontinent: Pangea Ultima - 500 million years after the creation of the previous continent, Pangea. After that, it will probably split again and start a new cycle of drift and merger.

4 Gamma Ray Burst
~600 million years
If an event with a huge impact on the Earth, repeating every few hundred million years, does not seem like a bad option to you, then know that the Earth constantly has to contend with rare gamma-ray bursts - streams of ultra-high energy radiation, usually emitted by supernovae. Despite the fact that we experience faint gamma-ray bursts on a daily basis, an explosion occurring in the neighboring solar system - within 6500 light years from us - has enough potential to wreak havoc in its path.

With more energy than the sun has produced in its entire life cycle, which will hit the Earth in minutes and even seconds, gamma rays will burn most of the Earth's ozone layer, causing drastic climate change and extensive environmental damage, including mass extinctions.
Some believe this burst of gamma rays triggered the second largest mass extinction in history: the Ordovician-Silurian extinction event 450 million years ago, which wiped out 60% of all life on Earth.
Like all events in astronomy, exact time for the set of events that trigger a gamma-ray burst directed towards Earth, it is very difficult to predict, although according to typical estimates, this period is 0.5-2 billion years. But this time can be reduced to a million years if the threat of the Eta Carina Nebula is realized.

5. Unfit for life
~1.5 billion years
As the Sun gets hotter as it grows in size, the Earth will eventually become uninhabitable due to its proximity to the hot sun. By this time, all, even the most stable forms of life on Earth, will perish. The oceans will dry up completely, leaving only deserts of burnt land. As time goes on and the temperature rises, the Earth may follow the path of Venus and turn into a toxic wasteland as it heats up to the boiling point of many poisonous metals. What remains of humanity will have to vacate this place in order to survive. Fortunately, Mars will have entered the habitable zone by then and will be able to serve as a temporary home for the remaining humans.

6. Disappearance magnetic field
~2.5 billion years
Some believe, based on today's ideas about the Earth's core, that within 2.5 billion years, the Earth's outer core will no longer be liquid, but will begin to freeze. As the core cools, the Earth's magnetic field will slowly decay until it ceases to exist altogether. In the absence of a magnetic field, there will be nothing to protect the Earth from solar winds, and earth atmosphere will gradually lose its light compounds - such as ozone - and gradually turn into a pitiful remnant of itself. Now with a Venusian-like atmosphere, Earth will experience the full force of solar radiation, making an already inhospitable earth even more treacherous.

7. Internal catastrophe of the solar system
~3.5 billion years
In about 3 billion years, there is a small but significant chance that Mercury's orbit will stretch in such a way that it intersects the path of Venus. At the moment, we cannot predict exactly what will happen and when it will happen, but in best case Mercury will simply be swallowed up by the Sun or destroyed in a collision with its older sister Venus. And in the worst case? Earth could collide with any of the other non-gaseous planets whose orbits would be radically destabilized by Mercury. If somehow the inner solar system remains intact and continues to function uninterruptedly, then within five billion years the orbit of Mars will intersect with the Earth, once again creating the possibility of catastrophe.

8. New night sky painting
~4 billion years
Years will pass, and any life on Earth will be pleased to observe the steady growth of the Andromeda galaxy in the picture of our starry sky. It will be a truly magnificent sight to see the full majesty of a perfectly formed spiral galaxy glowing in the sky, but it will not last forever. Over time, it will begin to terribly distort and merge with milky way, throwing the stable star arena into chaos. Even though a direct collision celestial bodies unlikely, there is a small chance that our solar system could be extracted and thrown into the abyss of the universe. Either way, our night sky will be, at least temporarily, adorned with trillions of new stars.

9. Garbage Ring
~5 billion years
Despite the Moon constantly receding by 4 cm per year, the Sun has entered a red giant phase and it is likely that the current trend will stop. The extra force acting on the Moon from the huge bloated star would be enough to bring the Moon down directly onto the Earth. When the moon reaches the Roche limit, it will begin to disintegrate as the force of gravity exceeds the force holding the moon together. After that, it is possible that a ring of debris will form around the Earth, giving any life on earth a beautiful view, until the debris falls to the ground after many millions of years.
If it doesn't, there is another way the Moon could fall back onto the parent planet. In the event that the Earth and Moon continue to exist in their current form with their unchanged orbits, then in about 50 billion years the Earth will become tidally locked with the Moon. Shortly after this event, the height of the Moon's orbit will begin to decay, while the rate of rotation of the Earth will increase rapidly. This process will continue until the Moon reaches the Roche limit and breaks apart, forming a ring around the Earth.

10. Destruction
unknown
The likelihood that the Earth will collapse within the next ten billion years is very high. Whether in the cold grip of an insidious planet, or suffocated in the arms of our dying Sun, this will no doubt be a sad moment for all human survivors - even if they don't remember which planet it is.

The approximate age of mankind is 200 thousand years, and during this time it has faced a huge number of changes. Since its appearance on African continent we managed to colonize the whole world and even reached the moon. Beringia, which once connected Asia with North America, has long gone under water. What changes or developments could we expect if humanity lasts another billion years?

Well, let's start with the future in 10 thousand years. We will face the problem of the 10,000th year. Software that encodes the AD calendar will no longer be able to encode dates from now on. This will be a real problem, and besides, if modern tendencies globalization will continue, human genetic variation will by this point no longer be organized along regional lines. This means that all human genetic traits, such as skin and hair color, will be distributed evenly across the planet.

In 20,000 years, the languages ​​of the world will contain only one of a hundred vocabulary words of their modern counterparts. In essence, everything modern languages lose their recognition.

In 50,000 years, the Earth will begin a second ice age, despite the current effects of global warming. Niagara Falls will be completely washed away by the Erie River and disappear. Due to glacial uplift and erosion, the numerous lakes of the Canadian Shield will also cease to exist. In addition, a day on Earth will increase by one second, which will add a leap second to each day.

In 100,000 years, the stars and constellations visible from Earth will be strikingly different from today. In addition, according to preliminary calculations, this is how long it will take to completely transform Mars into a habitable planet like the Earth.

In 250,000 years, the Loihi volcano will rise above the surface, forming a new island in the Hawaiian Islands chain.

In 500 thousand years, an asteroid with a diameter of 1 km will very likely crash into the Earth if humanity does not somehow prevent this. A national park The Badlands in South Dakota will be completely gone by now.

After 950 thousand years meteorite crater in Arizona, believed to be the best-preserved meteorite impact crater on the planet, will be completely eroded.

In 1 million years, the Earth is likely to experience a monstrous volcanic eruption, which will throw out 3,200 cubic meters of ash. It will be reminiscent of the 70,000-year-old Toba super-eruption that nearly wiped out humanity. In addition, the star Betelgeuse will explode as a supernova, and this can be observed from Earth even in the daytime.

Context

Russian service BBC 06.12.2016 In 2 million years, the Grand Canyon will collapse even more, deepen a little and expand to the size of a large valley. If humanity has colonized various planets by that time solar system and the Universe, and the population of each of them will develop separately from each other, humanity will probably evolve into different kinds. They adapt to the conditions of their planets and, perhaps, will not even know about the existence of other species of their own kind in the Universe.

In 10 million years, much of West Africa will separate from the rest of the continent. A new ocean basin will form between them, and Africa will be divided into two separate pieces of land.

In 50 million years, Mars' moon Phobos will crash into its planet, causing widespread destruction. And on Earth, the rest of Africa will collide with Eurasia and “close” the Mediterranean Sea forever. Between two connected layers, a new one is formed mountain range, similar in size to the Himalayas, one of the peaks of which may be higher than Everest.

In 60 million years, the Canadian Rockies will be leveled to the ground, turning into a flat plain.

In 80 million years, all the Hawaiian Islands will sink, and in 100 million years, the Earth will probably collide with an asteroid similar to the one that destroyed the dinosaurs 66 million years ago, unless, of course, the catastrophe is artificially prevented. By this time, among other things, the rings around Saturn will disappear.

In 240 million years, the Earth will finally complete a complete revolution around the center of the galaxy from its current position.

In 250 million years, all the continents of our planet will merge into one, like Pangea. One of the variants of its name is Pangea Ultima, and it will look something like in the picture.

Then, after 400-500 million years, the supercontinent will again be divided into parts.

In 500-600 million years, a deadly gamma-ray burst will occur at a distance of 6,500 light-years from Earth. If the calculations are correct, this explosion could seriously damage the Earth's ozone layer, causing a mass extinction of species.

In 600 million years, the Moon will move away from the Sun at a sufficient distance to cancel once and for all such a phenomenon as a complete solar eclipse. In addition, the growing luminosity of the Sun will have serious consequences for our planet. The movement of tectonic plates will stop, and the level of carbon dioxide will drop dramatically. C3 photosynthesis will no longer occur, and 99% of the earth's flora will die.

After 800 million years, CO2 levels will continue to fall until C4 photosynthesis stops. Free oxygen and ozone will disappear from the atmosphere, as a result of which all life on Earth will perish.

And finally, in 1 billion years, the luminosity of the Sun will increase by 10% compared to its current state. The temperature of the Earth's surface will rise to an average of 47 degrees Celsius. The atmosphere will turn into a humid greenhouse, and the world's oceans will simply evaporate. "Pockets" of liquid water will still exist at the poles of the Earth, which means that they will probably become the last stronghold of life on our planet.

During this time, much will change, but much has changed over the past billion years. In addition to what we talked about in this video, who knows what can happen in such a long time?

The materials of InoSMI contain only assessments of foreign media and do not reflect the position of the editors of InoSMI.