From the darkness of our solar system we see a beautiful blue planet; one teeming with life. Massive bodies of water, large pieces of land, lush forests, and billions of evolved life forms. Earth, a planet that sounds
quite wonderful, but is it? Each day the unexplainable happens to question our existence. Each day we are faced with probabilities that could wipe out the human race as we know it.
Let's face the facts, this big blue marble planet of ours has been around longer than we have, it has a mind of its own and can pull the plug on our happy little existence. Anything can happen; scientists and researchers have come up with hundreds of theories of just exactly how our demise could be from. One thing that people tend to forget is that there are different ways you can define the end of the world. Many say it is the end of all life on Earth, others say the actually of the phrase, the literally put end of the world, as in the end of the planet Earth itself.
I want to take a look into the topic of six ways that life on Earth could end. Yes, I know that there are hundreds and each one of them has a round about, inside out way of making sense, but, I want to analyze the theories that hold a significant amount of truth; theories that do not have to have a methodical analysis to them.
The first theory that I believe will cause a definite hard blow to our life as we know it, is the obvious; Global Warming.
Global Warming has been around ever since the dawn of time. Mother Nature always has to take its course. Long before us humans took over; Mother Nature threw Ice Ages and Heat Waves at the world in moderate and extreme
levels. The Earth has always had it's cycle of events, but now, with human interference, we have been escalating the process. We are already feeling the wrath. An example of that would be today, January 8, 2008; it is 70 degrees in Pittsburgh, PA. Before the Industrial Era hit the world, the climate seemed to go through certain patterns of events in a stable way. Yeah of course there were deep freezes that killed off most of the life on Earth, but there was a method to the madness. Before humans evolved into industrialized being, the climate changes were based upon the Earth's orbit around the sun, the changes in the sun's intensity, volcanic eruptions, greenhouse gas concentrations, and also the change in the ocean's currents.
Just a quick run down of what these occurrences do. The Earth's orbit isn't always in a circular form, because the Earth is turning as it is orbiting around the Sun, it's tilt and how close it gets to the Sun and also how far away it gets from the Sun determines how much sunlight is received.
The Sun's intensity is an obvious change in climate on our part, if the sun isn't putting out strong solar signals, then we are going to feel the coolness. Then of course you have the continuous volcanic eruptions that are pouring aerosols and carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. These emissions cool and warm the Earth for short terms, as long as the eruptions aren't super eruptions.
Carbon Dioxide is also released by the oceans, the Earth's orbit and the oceans work hand in hand to control the concentrations of greenhouse gases as well as distributing the amount of heat around the globe. Any slight disruption or change can significantly effect the climate regionally as well as globally.
Ever since the Industrial Era, carbon dioxide levels have increased almost 40%, methane release into the atmosphere has gone up over 140% since before the Industrial Era, and Nitrous Oxide is up 18%. I think we also have to consider that we have mixed and matched so many different solids, liquids, and gasses that many things that are emitted into our atmosphere has never been seen or dealt with before on Earth. So needless to say we are contributing to a lot of the Global Warming that is going on. If the climate change continues, the effects would be deadly.
Many living things have evolved and survived through extreme climate changes and we may be lucky, however if evolution determines that its time for this problematic species to not exist anymore...it will happen.
Global Warming may be, in my opinion may be the number one reason of how life on Earth could cease as we know it, but volcanism is a close runner up.
Volcanoes have created the grounds that we walk on and they have helped to regulate our Earth's temperatures, but as helpful as they can seem to be, they can be the end of our existence. Explosive eruptions from
volcanoes as well as super eruptions from super volcanoes can easily drop temperatures, block out sunlight, wipe out the possibility of thriving agriculture, and kill millions of lives.
The biggest super volcanic threat is that of Yellowstone National Park, it's not just a park, but a 34 mile by 45 mile highly active volcanic caldera. Yellowstone has been part of a series of eruptions over the last two million years, each eruption occurring every 600,000 years...the last eruption was 640,000 years ago. Obvious calculations state that we are overdue. Researchers have pointed out that the threat of a super eruption is almost ten times more likely than an asteroid hitting the Earth. Considering the amount of asteroid and meteor debris flying around the universe that threat level is pretty threatening.
Under the entire caldera of Yellowstone there is a chamber of magma that is rising. Since 2004 the caldera's floor has risen about 7 inches, Yellowstone Lake temperatures have raised, even tourist pathways have closed due to the land boiling. The numbers of earthquakes at the park are rising, and scientists have determined that significant activity is continuing.
Researchers and scientists have danced around the possibility of an eruption any time soon. Seems like no one wants to give a definite answer and cause a worldwide panic. Personally, I feel as though we will see some form of eruption from Yellowstone in our lifetime. It may not be super, but it will be enough to let us know that Yellowstone isn't finished yet.
If we are faced with an eruption from the park, it will chance civilization as we know it. The clouds of ash will spread worldwide; the volcanic sulfurs will block sunlight for months, maybe years depending on the size of the eruption. Our sources of water would become contaminated; breathing in ash if mixed with rain creates cement like substance in our lungs, which would cause millions of deaths. All transportation will stop, once ash builds up in engines, they stop. Acid rain has a high probability of occurring, and we can't forget about all the magma that is under the park has to come out somewhere.
Yellowstone National Park is a ticking time bomb that is right under our noses, with its past almost clockwork eruption timing, this overdue eruption could be death looking at us in the eyes.
The third theory is many theories in one. The main theory; human error. Just because we are human doesn't make us perfect, mistakes are inevitable. Not to mention, all of us have within that urge to do things we aren't
supposed to do. For example: we have hundreds of military weapons of mass destruction ready to be launched with a code and or push of that red button that says "DO NOT PRESS". All it would take is a press of a button or a few numbers and something is launched to another country or even within our own. A chain reaction of mass destruction would be on our hands.
Another way of human error would be the production of bad medication. Sure we do have the capacity to create recalls and notice when something is a miss or if something has a wrong ingredient, but what if we missed something? I'm not talking about prescription medication, but over the counter medications that most of America takes on a regular basis. Medications such as Tylenol, Ibuprofen, Advil, or various cold medications.
What about bad products or technology? Too much of our production staff these days are done by computerized staff, we created the computer, so in turn there can still be errors. Many people want to launch the world into being implanted with biochips; this type of technology could be very dangerous to the population. The brain is a very fragile thing, one short circuit or one wrong signal could release an overflow of the bodies' natural chemicals and cause mental diseases, suicides, and even mass hysteria. This error would cause us to exterminate our own kind.
The fourth possibility would be a Global Epidemic. This is pretty much self explanatory. We haven't found every bug, disease, or virus that is out there. Just as we haven't found a cure for every illness out there as well. An airborne virus, or a virus spread by our water system could take out millions of lives before the finest of doctors could figure out what it even is that is causing the deaths.
My opinion on the fifth possibility usually ranks a lot higher on other's lists; Asteroid Collision. Many scientists lean on this theory as the global death 65 million years ago of the Dino and all of his dinosaur
friends. It's a good theory; there is a lot of debris floating around in the universe and obviously some of it is going to collide with a planet or two. Odds of a collision are estimated about 1 in 6,250. With those kinds of odds, number-wise it's something to be concerned about. For an asteroid to cause significant damage to our existence, it would have to be pretty darn big. NASA has been focusing on locating asteroids that are larger than 460 feet in diameter, which they feel would be big enough to destroy an entire city. So if 460 feet can wipe out a city, think of how big the asteroid would have to be to affect the entire planet.
The affect of an asteroid collision would launch us into another ice age. No matter where this colossal ball of rock would land, it would kick up so much of the ground into the atmosphere that it would contribute to extreme global cooling. Minus the ash, lava and toxic fumes, you're looking at the same chain of events you would for a volcanic eruption. You also have to think about what this great impact would trigger. The quake caused by the landing could sever fault lines, cause volcanic eruptions, or even depending on how big and fast it landed, dig a crater so deep that it releases the magma that flows under our feet.
By the end of 2008, scientists are stating that they will be releasing a list of asteroid threats... 1 in 6,250 huh?
And last but certainly not least...the last major possibility that I believe we have to fear for our lives is Earth's Magnetic Field.
The Earth has a Magnetosphere that expands tens of thousands of kilometers into space. This acts as a shield to protect us from the solar winds, and this thick shield has been decaying over the last hundred years. Studies have indicated that this magnetic field actually reverses in intervals that on average have occurred about 250,000 years. It's been 780,000 years since the last reversal. Again, another event that is overdue. The cores of the Earth control the electric current of the planet, which in turn affects the planets spin as well as the spin of the weather systems. As the poles start to reverse polarities, our magnetic shield is vulnerable to the sun's rays. The powerful amounts of radiation that would penetrate the atmosphere would trigger vast disruptions in climate, destruction of satellites, not to mention animals would be confused and wouldn't be able to migrate.
If the Earth's magnetic field would begin to deplete due to the reversal, no one really knows how long this devastation would last. Some scientists have been dwelling on failed magnetic field reversals that they feel had happened on other planets that caused the atmosphere to be eliminated due to the sun's rays instead of any predictable effects on Earth.
In conclusion, these are just six major ways that our world would be turned upside-down, at one point maybe literally, and most situations are out of our control. So get ready, on of the above will happen. It may not
happen in my lifetime, or our kid's lifetime, but it will happen. Brace yourself, people, its going to be a bumpy life.
Taken from here. [url=http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/531035/six_ways_life_on_earth_will_end.html?cat=47]
