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Asked by stingz321 to Sarah, Laura, Lily, Mark, Paul on 21 Jun 2010 in Categories: General. This question was also asked by iirachel3, aj2311.
Question: what is going to happen to our world
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Sarah Bardsley answered on 18 Jun 2010:
That is very hard to predict. If I knew I would probably be able to make a lot of money!
From an environmental perspective we need to do much more. Most current energy sources that we rely on are polluting and we are using a lot of freshwater up. If these issues (and others) aren’t addressed life will become harder for a lot of people around the world. Our animals and plants are also suffering from the impact of humans and we need to better conserve these.
I have faith we will find ways to address these issues but we need governments to take a lead and for every individual to take responsibility.
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Laura Maliszewski answered on 18 Jun 2010:
The world is full of possibility, there is no one answer. You guys will have as much control over that as we do!
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Lily Asquith answered on 19 Jun 2010:
I think planet Earth and alot of the animals on it have a much higher chance of surviving longer if humans become extinct.
Of course I don’t want humans to become extinct, but the thought of us trashing this planet before moving on into outer space is too much for me to bear!
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Mark Roberts answered on 21 Jun 2010:
Sadly I can’t predict the future so I don’t really know.
Paul might have some better answers about what will happen in terms of the sun as astronomy is not really my field – but in terms of the world I don’t really know.
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Paul Roche answered on 21 Jun 2010:
That’s a big question, and the answer isn’t just down to science unfortunately – politics and business plays a huge part. But if we ignore the things that humans might do (like cause global warming, wars, pollution etc.), and biological things (disease), and stick with just the physics stuff, then we can predict what might happen in a few billion years time based on what we know about what will happen to the Sun.
The Sun is a pretty average star, and should live around 9-10 billion years (thats 9-10,000,000,000 years). It is currently about 4.6 billion years old, so about halfway through it’s life. In another 3-4 billion years it will start to run out of it’s main fuel supply (hydrogen), and will start to expand towards what we call the Red Giant phase of it’s life. It will swell up, engulfing Mercury and then Venus, and eventually it will reach a size not far from the radius of the Earth’s current orbit.
As it expands it’s surface will cool down (it is now ~5,800 degrees, but will cool to ~4,500 degrees as it expands), but it will get much closer to the Earth. Our planet will heat up, the oceans will evaporate and eventually the atmosphere will boil away – so life on Earth will probably be gone in about 4 billion years time.
After this, the Sun’s surface which start to drift away from the star, and form a Planetary Nebula, leaving behind the old “power plant” of the Sun – a dense ball of material that we call a White Dwarf. This might be about the size of the Earth, but with maybe half the mass of the Sun inside it, so it is incredibly dense.
So life on Earth will be gone in maybe 4 billions years time, as our star begins to die – but hopefully humans will have left the Solar system long before that, and so our species might be living on plenats around other stars by then!
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