Posted on 12/08/2022 8:42:09 AM PST by Red Badger
For now, life is flourishing on our oxygen-rich planet, but Earth wasn't always that way – and scientists have predicted that, in the future, the atmosphere will revert back to one that's rich in methane and low in oxygen.
This probably won't happen for another billion years or so. But when the change comes, it's going to happen fairly rapidly, according to research published in 2021.
This shift will take the planet back to something like the state it was in before what's known as the Great Oxidation Event (GOE) around 2.4 billion years ago.
What's more, the researchers behind the study say that atmospheric oxygen is unlikely to be a permanent feature of habitable worlds in general, which has implications for our efforts to detect signs of life further out in the Universe.
"The model projects that a deoxygenation of the atmosphere, with atmospheric O2 dropping sharply to levels reminiscent of the Archaean Earth, will most probably be triggered before the inception of moist greenhouse conditions in Earth's climate system and before the extensive loss of surface water from the atmosphere," the researchers explained in their paper.
At that point it'll be the end of the road for human beings and most other life forms that rely on oxygen to get through the day, so let's hope we figure out how to get off the planet at some point within the next billion years.
To reach their conclusions, the researchers ran detailed models of Earth's biosphere, factoring in changes in the brightness of the Sun and the corresponding drop in carbon dioxide levels, as the gas gets broken down by increasing levels of heat. Less carbon dioxide means fewer photosynthesizing organisms such as plants, which would result in less oxygen.
Scientists have previously predicted that increased radiation from the Sun would wipe ocean waters off the face of our planet within about 2 billion years, but the model here – based on an average of just under 400,000 simulations – says the reduction in oxygen is going to kill off life first.
"The drop in oxygen is very, very extreme," Earth scientist Chris Reinhard, from the Georgia Institute of Technology, told New Scientist. "We're talking around a million times less oxygen than there is today."
What makes the study particularly relevant to the present day is our search for habitable planets outside of the Solar System.
Increasingly powerful telescopes are coming online, and scientists want to be able to know what they should be looking for in the reams of data these instruments are collecting.
It's possible that we need to be hunting for other biosignatures besides oxygen to have the best chance of spotting life, the researchers say. Their study is part of the NASA NExSS (Nexus for Exoplanet System Science) project, which is investigating the habitability of planets other than our own.
According to the calculations run by Reinhard and environmental scientist Kazumi Ozaki, from Toho University in Japan, the oxygen-rich habitable history of Earth could end up lasting for just 20-30 percent of the planet's lifespan as a whole – and microbial life will carry on existing long after we are gone.
"The atmosphere after the great deoxygenation is characterized by an elevated methane, low-levels of CO2, and no ozone layer," said Ozaki.
"The Earth system will probably be a world of anaerobic life forms."
The research has been published in Nature Geoscience.
A version of this article was first published in March 2021.
Like human beings will be around a billion years from now!
People have a hard time grasping time on that scale.
If you accept that the earliest hominids showed about a million years ago, then we have only existed for 0.1% of a billion years.
Besides, it’s all over in 8.3 years anyway.
A billion years? That is so insignificant it’s not even measurable in the time flow...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uD4izuDMUQA
Trouble is, I’ve got plans for that day.
I can remember when you could go outside and breathe all you wanted. Free of charge.
I can remember when you could go outside and if it was cold or if it was hot, it was just called ‘weather’, not ‘climate change’....................
“Climate is what you expect. Weather is what you get.” - Robert Heinlein..........
“ We’ll have all the methane we need to heat our homes and the greenies quit their incessant nagging and harping about CO2. ”
The greenies constantly carp about methane as well for two reasons. Number one, though they cry about the 0.04% CO2 in our atmosphere will turn the surface of the earth to molten slag, methane on the other hand is many times more potent of a greenhouse gas so the surface will vaporize if it reaches one tenth the CO2 concentration.
The bigger reason they will be against methane is because our food (animals) produces it, and the worst thing they can imagine is poor people being allowed to eat plentiful rich people food.
Omg! We are all going to die!!
It’s ok, as long as I get to see Jane Fonda and Hillary
Clinton go first...
I predict it won’t happen. Who is going to prove me wrong?
“This probably won’t happen for another billion years or so”
So we have only a billion years to flatten the curve...better start throwing trillions of dollars at it!
In a billion years! Get a life and get another job - science evades them.
We are all going to die! again...
I miss editors. I also miss people who know how to write a sentence.
Cool beans.
Agreed. What the heck does “a millions times less” mean?
I'm bookmarking this article to see if they're correct. I'm going to embarrass them if they're wrong.
The Earth’s oxygen percentage has steadily declined sine the meteor bombardment over 60 million years ago which burned off a considerable percentage of oxygen.
And then again 12,800 years ago, at the onset of the Younger Dryas, were 4% of the Earth’s vegetation burned of during a 100 year long comet debris bombardment.
We need to take action now! Global socialism is the only answer.
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