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Rare Earth was succeeded in 2003 by the follow-on book The Life and Death of Planet Earth: How the New Science of Astrobiology Charts the Ultimate Fate of our World, also by Ward and Brownlee, which talks about the Earth's long-term future and eventual demise under a warming and expanding Sun, showing readers the concept that planets like Earth ...
Some climate change effects: wildfire caused by heat and dryness, bleached coral caused by ocean acidification and heating, environmental migration caused by desertification, and coastal flooding caused by storms and sea level rise. Effects of climate change are well documented and growing for Earth's natural environment and human societies. Changes to the climate system include an overall ...
It took 4.5 billion years before humanity appeared on Earth, and life as we know it will see suitable conditions for 1 [94] to 2.3 [95] billion years more. Red dwarfs, by contrast, could live for trillions of years because their nuclear reactions are far slower than those of larger stars, meaning that life would have longer to evolve and survive.
The long-term effects of climate change on oceans include further ice melt, ocean warming, sea level rise, ocean acidification and ocean deoxygenation. [208] The timescale of long-term impacts are centuries to millennia due to CO 2 's long atmospheric lifetime. [ 209 ]
Examples of extreme environments include the geographical poles, very arid deserts, volcanoes, deep ocean trenches, upper atmosphere, outer space, and the environments of every planet in the Solar System except the Earth. Any organisms living in these conditions are often very well adapted to their living circumstances, which is usually a ...
Earth's surface temperature will reach around 420 K (147 °C; 296 °F), even at the poles. [78] [94] 2.8 billion High estimate until all remaining Earth life goes extinct. [78] [94] 3–4 billion The Earth's core freezes if the inner core continues to grow in size, based on its current growth rate of 1 mm (0.039 in) in diameter per year.
Earth's atmosphere contains 78% nitrogen and 21% oxygen, which is the result of the presence of life. [103] [104] The planet has a complex climate and weather system, with conditions differing drastically between climate regions. [105] The solid surface of Earth is dominated by green vegetation, deserts and white ice sheets.
The history of life on Earth traces the processes by which living and extinct organisms evolved, from the earliest emergence of life to the present day. Earth formed about 4.5 billion years ago (abbreviated as Ga, for gigaannum) and evidence suggests that life emerged prior to 3.7 Ga. [1] [2] [3] The similarities among all known present-day species indicate that they have diverged through the ...