• Question: how will the world end?

    Asked by khayroonzs to Dilwar, Lou, Rachel, Simon, Susan on 18 Nov 2013. This question was also asked by ghostplayer581, ashraful.
    • Photo: Louise Brown

      Louise Brown answered on 18 Nov 2013:

      That is a scary question!

      I don’t know is the answer, and I don’t think anyone else does.

      Eventually, the sun will die (like all stars) and so we will have no light and not be warm. So that might kill us all (this won’t happen for a very long time and maybe by then we will live in another universe!).

      Or maybe, an asteroid might hit us like what happened with the dinosaurs when it wiped out 90% of all life on earth! But again, we might live somewhere else by then.

      We might be invaded by aliens, or maybe a mass virus will kill us all, like they seem to do on films!

      I could go on forever but really I don’t know and I probably won’t be around to see it! (Don’t know if thats good or bad! I’d like to know now!)

    • Photo: Simon Langley-Evans

      Simon Langley-Evans answered on 18 Nov 2013:

      There are many threats to the planet which have the potential to wipe out humans and many other forms of life. An asteroid strike (like the one that killed the dinosaurs), uncontrolled global warming and nuclear war are all possible ways in which humans will come to an end. None of those things will be the true end of the world though. Earth and its life have shown the ability to resist disaster many, many times over hundreds of millions of years.

      The true end of the world will be when the sun reaches the end of its life. At that point it will swell up to a size that means the Earth will be engulfed and destroyed.

    • Photo: Susan Skelton

      Susan Skelton answered on 19 Nov 2013:

      Great question, khayroonzs!

      I don’t think anyone knows the answer to that question! But personally I don’t think it will happen soon! (I hope not, anyway! :-0 )

      The planet is unlikely to be destroyed soon, but there are a number of things that could make life on Earth much more difficult, or even wipe out all of humanity! These include the Earth getting hit by an asteroid, global warming or global plagues or pandemics.

      But in order to destroy the planet Earth, we need a LOT of energy….and there just happens to be enough, 150 million kilometres away: the sun!

      The sun has been in the main sequence of its life for the last 4.5 billion years and is about halfway through it’s life cycle. In about another 4.5 billion years, when the sun finally runs out of hydrogen to burn it will start expanding outwards becoming a red giant. It will get so big that it will envelope Mercury and Venus.

      Scientists still don’t know whether the sun will also consume the Earth. If it does, that’s time up for Earth. If not, we will have a long and cold future ahead. The sun will shrink down to a white dwarf star and begin cooling down to the background temperature of space – very very cold. The Earth and the other surviving planets in the solar system will continue to orbit the dying sun for trillions of years.

      But by this time humans will be long gone!

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