During the last 540 million years, simulations demonstrated that such an impact rate is sufficient to cause 5–6 mass extinctions and 20–30 lower severity events. This period would normally be expected to end in about 25,000 years. This matches the geologic record of significant extinctions during the Phanerozoic Eon.
However, the long-term trend is for plant life to die off altogether.
In such a scenario, the oceans would freeze solid within several million years, leaving only a few pockets of liquid water about 14 km (8.7 mi) underground.
This will result in a higher rate of weathering of silicate minerals, which will cause a decrease in the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
What is the rising action of faith love and dr lazaro? [3] This has resulted in a widespread, ongoing mass extinction of other species during the present geological epoch, now known as the Holocene extinction. As a consequence, volcanic activity may increase. A supernova explosion at a distance of 26 light years will reduce the ozone column density by half. [72][73], The rate of weathering of silicate minerals will increase as rising temperatures speed up chemical processes. [7] In turn, technology may result in the extinction of humanity, leaving the planet to gradually return to a slower evolutionary pace resulting solely from long-term natural processes.
[51], Christopher Scotese and his colleagues have mapped out the predicted motions several hundred million years into the future as part of the Paleomap Project. However, underground life could last longer. The Moon formed 4.51 billion years ago, some 60 million years after the origin of the Solar System. In their work The Life and Death of Planet Earth, authors Peter D. Ward and Donald Brownlee have argued that some form of animal life may continue even after most of the Earth's plant life has disappeared. [45] The production of heat through radiogenic processes is sufficient to maintain mantle convection and plate subduction for at least the next 1.1 billion years. The atmosphere will become a "moist greenhouse" leading to a runaway evaporation of the oceans. [36], Historically, there have been cyclical ice ages in which glacial sheets periodically covered the higher latitudes of the continents. [30][31] During the same interval, the odds that the Earth will be scattered out of the Solar System by a passing star are on the order of one part in 105. These water molecules will be broken down through photodissociation by solar UV, allowing hydrogen to escape the atmosphere. This is expected to occur between 1.5 and 4.5 billion years from now.