The sun is getting hotter and the oxygen content of the earth's atmosphere drops dramatically.
Researchers have now calculated when the earth will finally run out of air.
Funabashi / Atlanta - The earth is doomed.
And that, if not earlier due to climate change *, certainly later, because the sun * virtually "burns away" the oxygen supply on our home planet in the long term.
Two researchers from the US space agency NASA, who now want to install their own Internet on the moon by 2024 *, have calculated that the earth's oxygen-containing atmosphere will therefore not last.
In the distant future, the scientists predict, all life in the world will be wiped out, reports 24hamburg.de *.
US space agency: | National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) |
Head office: | Washington, DC, |
Founding: | July 29, 1958 |
Budget volume: | $ 22.6 billion |
Staff: | 17,000 |
NASA calculations predict when the earth will run out of air
Kazumi Ozaki from Toho University in Funabashi, Japan, and Chris Reinhard from the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta modeled the earth's climatic, biological and geological systems to predict how atmospheric conditions on earth will change.
The research was carried out as part of a NASA * project on the habitability of planets.
"We found that the earth's oxygen-containing atmosphere will not last," Ozaki told the science magazine "Newscientist.com".
Oxygen apocalypse: the sun destroys life on earth
The researchers calculated that in a billion years the earth's atmosphere will contain so little oxygen that the earth will become uninhabitable for complex aerobic life.
Our atmosphere will then contain less than one percent - in contrast to its current oxygen content of around 21 percent - oxygen.
The main reason for the dramatic development: the sun will get hotter and hotter in the future - and thus also release a lot more energy.
The experts have determined that this will lead to a dramatic decrease in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere as CO2 absorbs heat and then breaks down.
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The sun will extinguish oxygen and thus life on earth in the distant future.
(Symbol image)
© Sergey Nivens / Imago
NASA researchers: Falling carbon dioxide levels make photosynthesis impossible
Ozaki and Reinhard estimate that future carbon dioxide levels will be so low that photosynthetic organisms - including plants - will no longer be able to produce oxygen and will no longer be able to survive.
The mass extinction of these photosynthetic organisms will be the main cause of the huge decline in oxygen.
At the same time, according to the calculations, the methane content of the air increases ten thousand times, which increases the greenhouse effect.
So it gets even hotter.
"The decline in oxygen is very, very extreme - we're talking about a million times less than today"
The authors of the work published in the science magazine "Nature Geoscience" assume that the earth's atmosphere will initially retain a high oxygen content before it dramatically falls back to the level of the "Great Oxygen Disaster" about 2.4 billion years ago reminds: "The decrease in oxygen is then very, very extreme - we are talking about a million times less oxygen than today," Reinhard told newscientist.com.
Once the changes in the earth's atmosphere have begun, they will advance rapidly: The team's calculations suggest that the atmosphere could then lose its oxygen in the course of only about 10,000 years.
Fortunately, according to NASA calculations, the oxygen apocalypse is still in the distant future
The good: This horror scenario is still a long way off.
Unlike the tangible threats from climate change or possible impacts from asteroids, which, like Apophis, change their trajectory * or whose trajectory has to be recalculated * by NASA, such as the asteroid Bennu.
And who knows where humanity has evaded until then.
After all, scientists have been looking for other habitable planets for years, but they could be very different from Earth.
And soon NASA will finally be able to answer the old question of whether there is life on Mars *.
Because samples from the next Mars mission will reach Earth by the end of 2030 at the latest.
* 24hamburg.de is an offer from IPPEN.MEDIA
List of rubric lists: © Sergey Nivens / Imago
