Oxygen is one of the many ingredients that make life possible on Earth. But a new study says the extreme drop in oxygen could one day suffocate most life on our planet. There is no need to worry right away. Because we have at least one billion more years for this to happen. Here are the details…
If the Earth’s oxygen level drops, it could endanger life on Earth!
A new study was published in Nature Geoscience in March 2021. The study pointed out that an extreme drop in oxygen levels would threaten life on Earth. This event is called the Great Oxidation Event (GOE). This is not the first time the world has encountered this incident. Approximately 2.4 billion years ago, the Earth became airless as the amount of oxygen decreased.
If this theory proves true, oxygen levels on Earth will drop dramatically. Then more methane will fill the atmosphere. This would of course make life on Earth much less likely. It will also lead to the extinction of life on the planet due to suffocation. Of course, this isn’t the first time we’ve heard about Earth’s bleak future. The world is quite old. Unfortunately, good things do not await us in the future.
Gamma rays coming from 2 billion light years away affected the Earth’s ionosphere!
A long-ago gamma-ray burst manages to impact Earth’s ionosphere from 2 billion light years away.
In fact, we know that the Sun will eventually die. The sun will explode outwards. It will then destroy many planets around it. When this happens a few billion years from now, it will destroy the atmosphere Earth left behind, leaving only a shell of what it once was.
At this point, scientists are trying to discover other habitable planets. The thought that the aging blue planet will be affected by this tragic end worries the scientific world. For this reason, they are accelerating their efforts to establish colonies on the Moon and Mars. Scientists continue to work to ensure that some life forms, such as microbial life, can survive even without oxygen.
Fortunately, the implications of this theory are still several billion years away. So this isn’t something we have to worry about in our lifetime. But even the possibility of this happening is quite scary.