We can breathe calm. Also the grandchildren of our grandchildren’s grandchildren. But the oxygen that supports complex life on Earth will not be eternal. Our oxygen -rich atmosphere has approximately one billion years. So, the change will be drastic.
A rapid dexygenation. An international study published in Nature Geoscience Details the calculations. After making more than 400,000 simulations on the geological and biological evolution of our planet, Japanese and American scientists came to the conclusion that the Earth will experience rapid dexygenation that will return it to an atmospheric state similar to that of the archaic land of about 2.5 billion years ago.
What the sun gives you, the sun takes it away. Until recently, the scientific community estimated the life expectancy of the Earth’s biosphere in another 2,000 million years, when global warming at geological time scales leads to the evaporation of the oceans. But this new model projects a different scenario.
According to researchers, the increase in solar radiation will intensify the cycle of carbonates and silicates. This will cause a drastic decrease in carbon dioxide concentrations. With less co₂, photosynthetic organisms such as plants, the main oxygen producers, will die. The result: a vertiginous fall of atmospheric oxygen.
If perhaps, anaerobic life will remain. With a millionth of the oxygen we have today, complex life forms will be extinguished long before the oceans boil and the planet is left without surface water. For the vast majority of life forms, whose metabolism depends on oxygen, this will be the end of the road.
The model indicates that deoxygenation It will happen at 1,080 million years (with a deviation of ± 140 million years). By then, the earth’s atmosphere will be radically different, with high levels of methane, low carbon dioxide levels, and a total absence of ozone layer. With luck, it will be a world of anaerobic life forms.
And what is this data for us. Although we will not affect us, nor the grandchildren of our grandchildren’s grandchildren, the study, funded by the Nexus for Exoplanet System Science Science project of NASA, has important implications for the search for extraterrestrial life. It suggests that an oxygenated atmosphere is not a permanent characteristic of habitable worlds.
Oxygen, and its photochemical by -product, ozone, are two of the biofirms that seek space agencies in exoplanets. If the oxygen rich atmosphere of the Earth will last between 20 and 30% of the total life of the planet, other planets similar to the Earth could now have weakly oxygenated or anxic atmospheres. The search for life beyond our solar system will have to expand its scope to other biological firms.
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