Elon Musk may be talking about sending humans to Mars and Bill Gates is talking about reversing climate change, but the air we breathe may soon be over.
/ our oxygen-rich atmosphere can only last a billion more years, finds a new study. Published in the newspaper a Geoscience of nature, called “The Future Life of the Earth’s Oxygenated Atmosphere,” explains that even if it doesn’t happen in the near future, when the change comes, it will happen pretty quickly.
This change will cause the planet to return to something like the state it was in before what is known as the Great Oxidation Event about 2.4 billion years ago. “The life of oxygen-based biosignatures in the Earth’s atmosphere remains uncertain, especially for the distant future,” the scientists write in their article.
They also explain what the lack of oxygen will be like, “with atmospheric O2 falling sharply to levels reminiscent of the Earth’s archaea, it will probably be triggered before the creation of humid greenhouses in the Earth’s climate system and before the extensive surface water loss. from the environment ”.
They also explain that it may be inevitable: “Future deoxygenation is an inevitable consequence of the increase in solar fluxes, while its precise timing is modulated by the reducing power exchange flow between the mantle and the ocean-atmosphere-crust system. “.
Scientists have previously predicted that rising solar radiation would clear the ocean waters of our planet’s surface in about 2 billion years, but the new model, based on an average of just under 400,000 simulations , says reducing oxygen will kill you out of life first.
“Oxygen drop is very, very extreme,” said Earth scientist Chris Reinhard of the Georgia Institute of Technology New scientist. “We’re talking about a million times less oxygen than there is today.”
The researchers also stressed that we may need to look for other biosignatures in addition to oxygen to have the best chance of detecting life.