Possible artwork of land.
getty
Life thrives on planet Earth thanks to oxygen. Oxygen is a highly reactive element; it can fertilize with almost every other element on the seasonal table, releasing energy in the process. In a process called cellular relaxation, organisms use oxygen to oxidize substrates (for example sugars and fats) and generate energy.
The Earth was formed about 4.6 billion years ago. Intense volcanic activity emitted gases that created a toxic atmosphere, possibly a mixture of carbon dioxide, methane, ammonia, and water vapor. Finds in ancient rocks show that about 2.7 billion to 2.8 billion were returned for the first time oxygen was released into the Earth’s atmosphere, creating new minerals such as iron oxide. Scientists believe that early photosynthetic microorganisms, which were able to use sunlight to break down carbon dioxide molecules into carbon and oxygen, brought down the level of carbon dioxide and increased oxygen. But just around 2.45 billion to 1.5 billion years ago oxygen was becoming an important part of the Earth ‘s atmosphere. Today the Earth’s atmosphere contains about 21 percent oxygen.
Scientists all agree that life can never go on planet Earth. As the sun warms, oceans grow on Earth and the atmosphere goes into space. Eventually, the sun will run out of energy and destroy itself.
A pair of researchers from the University of Toho and NASA Nexus for Exoplanet System Science have found evidence, through simulation, that the Earth will lose its oxygen-rich atmosphere in about 1 billion years. In their paper published in the journal Nature Geoscience, Kazumi Ozaki and Christopher Reinhard describe the factors that went into their simulation and what it showed.
The researchers created a simulation of the Earth that was sensitive to variables that described the climate as well as the geological and biological processes, and more importantly, the activity of the sun.
The simulation shows that as the sun gets warmer, 1 billion years from now, releasing more energy, carbon dioxide levels in the Earth ‘s atmosphere begin to fall because the gas absorbs the heat and breaks down. As the ozone layer advertises more energy coming from the hotter sun, its oxygen molecules will escape the gravity attraction of the Earth and flee into space.
As carbon dioxide levels fall, photosynthetic organisms, such as algae in the sea and higher plants on land, will begin to suffer from less oxygen production. Over a period of just 10,000 years, carbon dioxide levels will drop so much that plant life will become extinct. Without plant life, oxygen levels also fall, causing a severe extinction event in animals.
The result, according to the simulation, is a planet with a scorched surface and without a higher life. Anaerobic creatures, microorganisms that replace oxygen using other elements, such as sulfur and methane, for cellular relief, can survive in underground habitats, such as caves or cracks in rocks. Since microbes are the first life-form on Earth, appearing about 4 billion years ago, they will also be like the last ones.
A stromatolite. Fossil microbial mats are thus the oldest sign of life on Earth.
D.Bressan
The researchers suggest that their simulation could be useful for those looking for life on other planets – the window of opportunity, they note, could be shorter than before. previously expected.