As you might expect , scientists incline to be jolly interested in a variety show ofdoomsday scenarios . Two aficionados of the Book of Revelation , astrophysicists Michael Hahn and Daniel Wolf Savin , have joined forces to stir up several scientifically - founded plans to survive theend of the worldwhen it necessarily occurs .
Writing forNautilus , they bet to the far time to come , wherein a swelling Sun will render Earth too hot to live on . Their solutions ? Genetically modifying crop to keep them live , pushing Earth by from the Sun , and work us into immortal robots .
“ In a paltry 500 million year or so , no humans will stay on the surface of the Earth – at least , not outside of some hypothetical controlled environment , ” they write . “ 1.5 billion years from now , even the pole will be too hot . Not even cockroaches will outlast . ”
When the Sun burns up all its atomic number 1 and helium , it will begin to tumesce and cauterise heavier elements . Lev Savitskiy / Shutterstock
Every billion years , the Sun swellsand increases in brightness by 10 percent . This lead to a temperature increment back here on Earth , which initiates geological and world-wide processes that removecarbon dioxide , our principal high temperature insulation bed , from our atmosphere .
Without this warming layer today , Earth ’s median temperature would be roughly-18 ° C(-0.4 ° F ) ; instead , it ’s about 17 ° C ( 62.6 ° atomic number 9 ) . Assuming thatcatastrophic mood changedoesn’t kill us off first , the Sun will eventually clear up and swell to such a size that much of the atmospherical carbon copy dioxide will have disappear .
Plants need atomic number 6 dioxide to photosynthesize . Most plants – including almostall of our crops – are C3plants , in that they use the most common material body of C mote around , one that contains three atomic number 6 mote . In about 200 million long time , when the atmospherical carbon dioxide concentration drops below 150 part per million , C3plants will disappear .
C4plants , which include some Elmer Reizenstein , will survive a little longer , and the two researchers suggest that we should amp up our efforts to expend genetic modification to change C3plants into C4if we still want edible crop far into the future . Sadly , the Sun ’s cover elaboration will make even these more resilient plant to prick the fastball 300 million years from now .
Without any photosynthesis , the creation would be starved of oxygen , and life will start out to decease across all ecosystems . Perhaps with the exception of someextremophiles , in 1.5 billion years , the integral creation will be completely uninhabitable . Do n’t fret , though : we could always casually exchange the orbit of the Earth .
By using rocket - powered asteroid , we could theoretically perturbEarth ’s orbitjust enough that it will be drag further away from the Sun . If we ’re worried about those asteroids actuallysmashing into the planet , then we could always use a solar sheet – one that is 20 times the diameter of Earth – to capture the incoming solar wind andpull us awayfrom our local star .
Who needs biology when you have robots ? Vasilyev Alexandr / Shutterstock
There is one more option available to us , and for a while , it involves us doing nothing at all . In a billion years from now , the world will be bathed in light , which mean that solar cell will be all we need to power a wealth of advanced machinery .
If we upload ourconsciousnessinto these machines , we could live on asimmortal , solar powered being . This may sound impossible – and at present tense , it is – but in a hundred million years , we should be able to hash out a workable programme . That way of life , we can enjoy the scorched Earth for another 5 billion year before the Sun becomes a red giant and gobbles it up .
