Although the Earth is a sphere, its surface is made up of many plates. These plates do not have a fixed position, but instead float like planks above the mantle fluid. About every 400 million to 600 million years, drifting plates come together to form a supercontinent. This supercontinent will open again, and then reunite, and the cycle repeats.
The Earth is also in a supercontinent cycle, and the next supercontinent is expected to be in 2Formed after 500 million years. At that time, will there still be human beings?
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A team led by Dr. Alexander Farnsworth, a senior research associate at the School of Geographical Sciences at the University of Bristol in the United Kingdom, used a computer simulation to create 2Earth's climate in 500 million years. Simulations show that volcanoes will become very active as continental plates move and collide, and they will spew large amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, warming the planet. In the worst-case scenario, carbon dioxide concentrations would be more than double current levels. At that time, the earth was facing high temperatures of 40 to 70 degrees Celsius every day, which was very unfavorable for the survival of mammals, including humansAt that time, the vast majority of mammals, including humans, and even other types of life forms such as plants, will be threatened with mass extinction, except for a few mammals. The findings were recently published in Nature Geoscience.
The study statesIn addition to the increase in carbon dioxide concentration, the cause of the increase in the earth's temperature is the increase in solar radiation. The sun continues to burn from now on2After 500 million years, more hydrogen in the inner core has been consumed, its core will shrink, and the speed of nuclear fusion will increase, which will increase the brightness of the sun by 25%, and this result will further exacerbate the warming of the planet. At that time, the central part of the land, far from the ocean, will become a desert, lacking the food and water needed by mammals, and much of the rest of the planet will no longer be suitable for humans and other mammals.
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Mammals first appeared in about 3100 million years ago, after several extreme climate changes and mass extinctions on Earth, all of them survived tenaciously and became the dominant species on Earth, thanks to the mammals' super adaptability to climate change. But it seems,Mammals are better adapted to cold environmentsThey can survive on their fur and hibernation, and they are helpless when faced with extreme heat that continues to be above 40 degrees Celsius.
Although according to **,The Earth is going to be in 2It took 500 million years before it became uninhabitableIt is still far from now, but we should not ignore the fact that the climate crisis is currently taking shape, and the massive emissions of greenhouse gases by human beings have caused the planet to warm. In the study, the researchers also calculated the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere in the future, and the results showed that in the next few million years, the amount of carbon dioxide could rise from about 400 parts per million today, to more than 600 parts per million. And that's on the assumption that humanity will stop using fossil fuels immediately, and that day will come sooner if humanity continues to use fossil fuels.
What we need to do is to act as soon as possible to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, reduce global warming caused by human activities, and make the earth a more habitable home for all living things.
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This article is a work of popular science China-Star Project.
Produced by the Department of Science Popularization of the China Association for Science and Technology.
Producer: China Science and Technology Press***, Beijing Zhongke Galaxy Culture Media***
Author丨Zeng Xinyue, Science Popularization Creator Review丨Huangfu Jingliang, Institute of Atmospheric Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Associate Researcher, Editor-in-charge丨Zhong Yanping, Qi Yuan (intern).