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Scenarios for future Earth changes. Age of the Earth: next 5 billion years

Is the past a prologue to the future? As for the Earth, the answer is yes and no.

As in the past, the Earth continues to be a constantly changing system. The planet faces a series of warming and cooling. Ice ages will return, as will periods of extreme warming. Global tectonic processes will continue to move continents, close and open oceans. The fall of a giant asteroid or the eruption of a super-powerful volcano can again deal a cruel blow to life.

Space flight or death. To survive in the distant future, we must colonize neighboring planets. First, we need to create bases on the Moon, although our luminous satellite will remain an inhospitable world for life for a long time.

But other events will also occur, as inevitable as the formation of the first granite crust. Myriads of living beings will die out forever. Tigers, polar bears, humpback whales, pandas, and gorillas are doomed to extinction. There is a high probability that humanity is also doomed.

Many details of earth's history are largely unknown, if not completely unknowable. But studying this history, as well as the laws of nature, provides insight into what may happen in the future. Let's start with a panoramic view and then gradually focus on our time.

Endgame: the next 5 billion years

The earth is almost halfway through its inevitable demise. For 4.5 billion years, the Sun shone quite steadily, gradually increasing in brightness as it burned through its colossal reserves of hydrogen. For the next five (or so) billion years, the Sun will continue to generate nuclear energy by converting hydrogen into helium. This is what almost all stars do most of the time.

Sooner or later, hydrogen supplies will run out. Smaller stars, reaching this stage, simply fade out, gradually decreasing in size and emitting less and less energy. If the Sun were such a red dwarf, the Earth would simply freeze through. If any life were preserved on it, it would only be in the form of especially hardy microorganisms deep under the surface, where there could still be reserves of liquid water.

However, the Sun does not face such a miserable death, since it has enough mass to have a supply of nuclear fuel for another scenario. Let us remember that each star keeps two opposing forces in balance.

On the one hand, gravity attracts stellar matter to the center, reducing its volume as much as possible. On the other hand, nuclear reactions, like an endless series of explosions of an internal hydrogen bomb, are directed outward and accordingly try to increase the size of the star.

The current Sun is in the process of burning hydrogen, having reached a stable diameter of about 1.4 million km - this size has lasted 4.5 billion years and will last for about 5 billion more.

The sun is large enough that after the end of the hydrogen burnout phase, a new, powerful helium burnout phase begins. Helium, the product of the fusion of hydrogen atoms, can combine with other helium atoms to form carbon, but this stage of the Sun's evolution will have catastrophic consequences for the inner planets.

Due to more active helium-based reactions, the Sun will become larger and larger, like an overheated balloon, turning into a pulsating red giant. It will swell to the orbit of Mercury and simply swallow the tiny planet. It will reach the orbit of our neighbor Venus, swallowing it at the same time. The sun will swell a hundred times its current diameter - right up to the orbit of the Earth.

The prognosis for the earthly endgame is very grim. According to some dark scenarios, the red giant Sun will simply destroy the Earth, which will evaporate in the hot solar atmosphere and cease to exist. According to other models, the Sun will eject more than a third of its current mass in the form of an unimaginable solar wind (which will endlessly torment the dead surface of the Earth).

As the Sun loses some of its mass, the Earth's orbit may expand, in which case it may avoid being absorbed. But even if we are not devoured by the huge Sun, all that remains of our beautiful blue planet will turn into a barren firebrand that continues to orbit. In the depths, individual ecosystems of microorganisms may survive for another billion years, but its surface will never again be covered with lush greenery.

Desert: 2 billion years later

Slowly but surely, even in the current quiet period of hydrogen burning, the Sun is warming up more and more. At the very beginning, 4.5 billion years ago, the Sun's luminosity was 70% of what it is today. During the Great Oxygen Event, 2.4 billion years ago, the glow intensity was already 85%. After a billion years, the Sun will shine even brighter.

For some time, perhaps even many hundreds of millions of years, the Earth's feedbacks will be able to soften this impact. The more thermal energy, the more intense the evaporation, hence the increase in cloudiness, which contributes to the reflection of most of the sunlight into outer space. Increased thermal energy means faster weathering of rocks, increased absorption of carbon dioxide and reduced levels of greenhouse gases. Thus, negative feedbacks will maintain conditions for maintaining life on Earth for quite a long time.

But a turning point will inevitably come. The relatively small Mars reached this critical point billions of years ago, losing all liquid water on the surface. In a billion years, the earth's oceans will begin to evaporate at a catastrophic rate and the atmosphere will turn into an endless steam room. There will be no glaciers or snow-capped peaks left, and even the poles will turn into the tropics.

For several million years, life can persist in such greenhouse conditions. But as the Sun warms up and water evaporates into the atmosphere, hydrogen will begin to evaporate into space faster and faster, which will cause the planet to slowly dry out. When the oceans completely evaporate (which will probably happen in 2 billion years), the Earth's surface will turn into a barren desert; life will be on the brink of destruction.

Novopangea, or Amasia: 250 million years later

The demise of the Earth is inevitable, but it will not happen very, very soon. A look into the less distant future paints a more attractive picture of a dynamically developing and relatively safe planet for life. To imagine the world in a few hundred million years, we must look to the past for clues to the future.

Global tectonic processes will continue to play an important role in changing the face of the planet. Nowadays, the continents are separated from each other. Wide oceans separate America, Eurasia, Africa, Australia and Antarctica. But these huge areas of land are in constant motion, and its speed is approximately 2–5 cm per year - 1500 km in 60 million years.

We can establish fairly accurate vectors of this movement for each continent by studying the age of the basalts of the ocean floor. The basalt near mid-ocean ridges is quite young, no older than a few million years. In contrast, the age of basalt near continental margins in subduction zones can reach more than 200 million years.

It is easy to take into account all these age data on the composition of the ocean floor, rewind the tape of global tectonics back in time and get an idea of ​​​​the moving geography of the earth's continents over the past 200 million years. Based on this information, it is also possible to project the movement of continental plates 100 million years into the future.

Taking into account the current trajectories of this movement across the planet, it turns out that all continents are moving towards the next collision. In a quarter of a billion years, most of the earth's land will again become one giant supercontinent, and some geologists are already predicting its name - Novopangea. However, the exact structure of the future united continent remains a subject of scientific controversy.

Assembling Novopangea is a tricky game. It is possible to take into account the current movements of the continents and predict their path for the next 10 or 20 million years. The Atlantic Ocean will expand by several hundred kilometers, while the Pacific Ocean will shrink by approximately the same distance.

Australia will move north towards South Asia, and Antarctica will move slightly away from the South Pole towards South Asia. Africa is also not standing still, slowly moving north, moving into the Mediterranean Sea. In a few tens of millions of years, Africa will collide with southern Europe, closing the Mediterranean Sea and erecting a mountain range the size of the Himalayas at the site of the collision, in comparison with which the Alps will seem like dwarfs.

Thus, the map of the world in 20 million years will seem familiar, but slightly skewed. When modeling a world map 100 million years into the future, most developers identify common geographic features, for example, agreeing that the Atlantic Ocean will overtake the Pacific Ocean in size and become the largest water basin on Earth.

However, from this point on, models of the future diverge. One theory, extroversion, is that the Atlantic Ocean will continue to open and as a result, the Americas will eventually collide with Asia, Australia and Antarctica.

In the later stages of this supercontinent assembly, North America will fold to the east into the Pacific Ocean and collide with Japan, and South America will fold clockwise from the southeast, connecting with the equatorial part of Antarctica. All these parts fit together amazingly. Novopangea will be a single continent, stretching from east to west along the equator.

The main thesis of the extraversion model is that large convection cells of the mantle located under tectonic plates will remain in their modern form. An alternative approach, called introversion, takes the opposite view, citing previous cycles of closing and opening the Atlantic Ocean.

Reconstructing the position of the Atlantic over the last billion years (or a similar ocean located between the Americas in the west and Europe along with Africa in the east), experts argue that the Atlantic Ocean closed and opened three times in cycles of several hundred million years - this conclusion suggests that heat exchange processes in the mantle are variable and episodic.

Judging by the analysis of rocks, as a result of the movements of Laurentia and other continents about 600 million years ago, a precursor to the Atlantic Ocean was formed, called Iapetus, or Iapetus (named after the ancient Greek titan Iapetus, the father of Atlas). Iapetus became closed after the assembly of Pangea. When this supercontinent began to break apart 175 million years ago, the Atlantic Ocean was formed.

According to proponents of introversion (perhaps we shouldn't call them introverts), the Atlantic Ocean continues to expand and will follow the same path. It will slow down, stop and retreat in about 100 million years. Then, after another 200 million years, both Americas will again close with Europe and Africa.

At the same time, Australia and Antarctica will merge with Southeast Asia, forming a supercontinent called Amasia. This giant continent, shaped like a horizontal L, includes the same parts as New Pangea, but in this model the Americas form its western edge.

Now both models of supercontinents (extroversion and introversion) are not without merit and are still popular. Whatever the outcome of this debate, everyone agrees that although the Earth's geography will have changed significantly in 250 million years, it will still reflect the past.

The temporary assembly of continents near the equator would reduce the effects of ice ages and mild sea level changes. Where continents collide, mountain ranges will rise, changes in climate and vegetation will occur, and there will be fluctuations in oxygen and carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere. These changes will repeat throughout Earth's history.

Impact: the coming 50 million years

A recent survey on how humanity will perish reflected a very low rate of asteroid impacts - something around 1 in 100 thousand. Statistically, this coincides with the likelihood of death from a lightning strike or tsunami. But there is an obvious flaw in this forecast.

Typically, lightning kills about 60 people a year. In contrast, the asteroid impact may not have killed a single person in several thousand years. But one day, a modest blow could destroy everyone.

There is a good chance that we have nothing to worry about, and neither do hundreds of subsequent generations. But there is no doubt that one day there will be a major disaster like the one that killed the dinosaurs. In the next 50 million years, the Earth will have to endure such a blow, perhaps more than once. It's just a matter of time and circumstances.

The most likely villains are near-Earth asteroids - objects with a highly elongated orbit that passes close to the Earth's nearly circular orbit. At least three hundred such potential killers are known, and in the next few decades, some of them will pass dangerously close to Earth.

On February 22, 1995, an asteroid discovered at the last moment, which received the decent name 1995 CR, whistled quite close - at several Earth-Moon distances. On September 29, 2004, the asteroid Tautatis, an elongated object approximately 5.4 km in diameter, passed even closer.

In 2029, the asteroid Apophis, a fragment of approximately 325–340 m in diameter, should approach even closer, entering deeply into the lunar orbit. This unpleasant neighborhood will inevitably change Apophis’s own orbit and, perhaps, in the future will bring it even closer to Earth.

For every currently known asteroid crossing the Earth's orbit, there are a dozen or more that have not yet been discovered. When such a flying object is eventually discovered, it may be too late to do anything. If we find ourselves targeted, we may only have a few days to avert the danger.

Dispassionate statistics give us calculations of the probability of collisions. Almost every year, debris about 10 m in diameter falls to Earth. Due to the braking effect of the atmosphere, most of these projectiles explode and disintegrate into small pieces even before contacting the surface.

But objects with a diameter of 30 meters or more, encounters with which occur approximately once every thousand years, lead to significant destruction at the impact site: in June 1908, such a body collapsed in the taiga near the Podkamennaya Tunguska River in Russia.

Very dangerous, about a kilometer in diameter, rocky objects fall to Earth about once every half a million years, and asteroids five kilometers or more can fall to Earth about once every 10 million years.

The consequences of such collisions depend on the size of the asteroid and the location of the impact. A fifteen-kilometer boulder will devastate the planet wherever it lands. (For example, the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs 65 million years ago was estimated to be about 10 km across.)

If a 15-kilometer-long pebble falls into the ocean - a 70% probability, taking into account the ratio of areas of water and land - then almost all the mountains on the globe, except the highest, will be demolished by destructive waves. Everything below 1000 m above sea level will disappear.

If an asteroid of this size hits land, the destruction will be more localized. Everything within a radius of two to three thousand kilometers will be destroyed, and devastating fires will sweep across the entire continent, which will be the unlucky target.

For some time, areas remote from the impact will be able to avoid the consequences of the fall, but such an impact will throw up an immense amount of dust from the destroyed stones and soil into the air, clogging the atmosphere with dust clouds reflecting sunlight for years. Photosynthesis will practically disappear. Vegetation will die and the food chain will be broken. Some of humanity may survive this catastrophe, but civilization as we know it will be destroyed.

Smaller objects would be less destructive, but any asteroid over a hundred meters in diameter, whether it crashed on land or in the sea, would cause a disaster worse than any we know of. What to do? Can we ignore the threat as something distant, not so significant in a world already full of problems that require immediate solutions? Is there any way to deflect large debris?

The late Carl Sagan, perhaps the most charismatic and influential member of the scientific community over the past half century, thought a lot about asteroids. Publicly and privately, and mostly on his famous TV show Cosmos, he advocated for concerted action at the international level.

He began by telling the fascinating tale of the monks of Canterbury Cathedral who, in the summer of 1178, witnessed a colossal explosion on the Moon - a very close asteroid impact less than a thousand years ago. If such an object crashed onto Earth, millions of people would die. “Earth is a tiny corner in the vast arena of space,” he said. “It’s unlikely that anyone will come to our aid.”

The simplest step that must be taken first is to pay close attention to celestial bodies dangerously approaching the Earth - you need to know the enemy by sight. We need precise telescopes equipped with digital processors to locate flying objects approaching Earth, calculate their orbits, and make calculations of their future trajectories. It doesn't cost that much, and some things are already being done. Of course, more could be done, but at least some effort is being made.

What if we discover a large object that could crash into us in a few years? Sagan, and with him a number of other scientists and military officers, believe that the most obvious way is to cause a deviation in the asteroid’s trajectory. If started in time, even a small rocket push or a few targeted nuclear explosions could significantly shift the asteroid's orbit - and thereby send the asteroid past the target, avoiding a collision.

He argued that the development of such a project required an intensive and long-term space research program. In a prophetic 1993 article, Sagan wrote: “As the threat of asteroids and comets touches every inhabited planet in the galaxy, if any, intelligent beings on them will have to band together to leave their planets and move to neighboring ones. The choice is simple - fly into space or die."

Space flight or death. To survive in the distant future, we must colonize neighboring planets. First, we need to create bases on the Moon, although our luminous satellite will remain an inhospitable world for life and work for a long time. Next is Mars, where there are more substantial resources - not only large reserves of frozen groundwater, but also sunlight, minerals and a thin atmosphere.

This will not be an easy or cheap endeavor, and Mars is unlikely to become a thriving colony in the near future. But if we settle there and cultivate the soil, our promising neighbor could very well become an important step in the evolution of humanity.

Two obvious obstacles may delay or even make it impossible for humans to settle on Mars. The first is money. The tens of billions of dollars that will be needed to develop and implement a flight to Mars exceed even NASA's most optimistic budget, and this is under favorable financial conditions. International cooperation would be the only way out, but so far such large international programs have not taken place.

Another problem is the survival of astronauts, since it is almost impossible to ensure a safe flight to Mars and back. Space is harsh, with its countless meteorite grains of sand-projectiles capable of piercing the thin shell of even an armored capsule, and the Sun is unpredictable - with its explosions and deadly, penetrating radiation.

The Apollo astronauts, with their week-long missions to the Moon, were incredibly lucky that nothing happened during this time. But the flight to Mars will last several months; In any space flight, the principle is the same: the longer the time, the greater the risk.

Moreover, existing technologies do not allow supplying the spacecraft with a sufficient supply of fuel for the return flight. Some inventors are talking about processing Martian water to synthesize rocket fuel and fill tanks for the return flight, but for now this is a dream, and in the very distant future. Perhaps the most logical solution so far - the one that hurts NASA's pride, but is actively supported by the press - is a one-way flight.

If we had sent an expedition, providing it with provisions for many years instead of rocket fuel, reliable shelter and a greenhouse, seeds, oxygen and water, and tools for extracting vital resources on the Red Planet itself, such an expedition could take place.

It would be unimaginably dangerous, but all great pioneers were in danger - such was Magellan's circumnavigation of the world in 1519-1521, the expedition to the West of Lewis and Clark in 1804-1806, the polar expeditions of Peary and Amundsen at the beginning of the 20th century.

Humanity has not lost its gambling desire to participate in such risky enterprises. If NASA announces that volunteers are registering for a one-way flight to Mars, thousands of specialists will sign up without a second thought.

In 50 million years, the Earth will still be a living and habitable planet, and its blue oceans and green continents will have shifted but will remain recognizable. Much less obvious is the fate of humanity. Perhaps man will become extinct as a species. In this case, 50 million years is quite enough to erase almost all traces of our brief rule - all cities, roads, monuments will be weathered much earlier than the end date.

Some alien paleontologists will have to sweat to find the smallest traces of our existence in near-surface sediments. However, a person can survive, and even evolve, colonizing first the nearest planets, and then the nearest stars.

In this case, if our descendants go out into outer space, then the Earth will be valued even higher - as a reserve, a museum, a shrine and a place of pilgrimage. Perhaps only by leaving our planet will humanity finally truly appreciate the birthplace of our species.

Remapping the Earth: The Next Million Years

In many ways, the Earth won't change that much in a million years. Of course, the continents will shift, but no more than 45–60 km from their current location. The Sun will continue to shine, rising every twenty-four hours, and the Moon will orbit the Earth in about one month.

But some things will change quite fundamentally. In many parts of the world, irreversible geological processes transform the landscape. The vulnerable contours of ocean shores will change especially noticeably.

Calvert County, Maryland, one of my favorite places, where Miocene rocks with their seemingly endless fossil deposits stretch for miles, will disappear from the face of the Earth as a result of rapid weathering. After all, the size of the entire county is only 8 km and decreases by almost 30 cm every year. At this rate, Calvert County will not last 50 thousand years, let alone a million.

Other states, on the contrary, will acquire valuable land plots. An active underwater volcano not far from the southeastern coast of the largest of the Hawaiian islands has already risen above 3000 m (although still covered with water) and is growing in size every year.

In a million years, a new island will rise from the ocean waves, already named Loihi. At the same time, the extinct volcanic islands to the northwest, including Maui, Oahu and Kauai, will correspondingly shrink under the influence of wind and ocean waves.

As for waves, experts who study rocks for future changes conclude that the most active factor in changing the Earth's geography will be the advance and retreat of the ocean. The change in the rate of rift volcanism will have an effect for a very, very long time, depending on how much more or less lava solidifies on the ocean floor.

Sea levels can drop significantly during periods of lull in volcanic activity, when rocks near the bottom cool and calm down: this is what scientists believe caused the sharp drop in sea levels just before the Mesozoic extinction event.

The presence or absence of large inland seas like the Mediterranean, as well as the cohesion and separation of continents, are causing significant changes in the size of coastal shelves, which will also play an important role in shaping the geosphere and biosphere over the next million years.

A million years is tens of thousands of generations in the life of mankind, which is hundreds of times longer than the entire previous human history. If man survives as a species, then the Earth may also undergo changes as a result of our progressive technological activity, in ways that are difficult to even imagine.

But if humanity dies out, then the Earth will remain approximately the same as it is now. Life will continue on land and sea; the joint evolution of the geosphere and biosphere will quickly restore the pre-industrial equilibrium.

Megavolcanoes: the next 100 thousand years

A sudden, catastrophic asteroid impact pales in comparison to the sustained eruption of a megavolcano or a continuous flow of basaltic lava. Volcanism on a planetary scale accompanied almost all five mass extinctions, including the one caused by an asteroid impact.

The consequences of megavolcanism should not be confused with ordinary destruction and losses during the eruptions of ordinary volcanoes. Regular eruptions are accompanied by flows of lava, familiar to the inhabitants of the Hawaiian Islands living on the slopes of Kilauea, whose homes and everything that gets in its path it destroys, but in general such eruptions are limited, predictable and easy to avoid.

Somewhat more dangerous in this category are ordinary pyroclastic volcanic eruptions, when a huge amount of hot ash rushes down the mountainside at a speed of about 200 km/h, incinerating and burying everything in its path.

This was the case in 1980 with the eruptions of Mount St. Helens, Washington State, and Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines in 1991; thousands of people would have died in these disasters if not for early warning and mass evacuations. An even more formidable danger is posed by the third type of volcanic activity: the release of huge masses of fine ash and toxic gases into the upper layers of the atmosphere.

The eruptions of the Icelandic volcanoes Eyjafjallajökull (April 2010) and Grímsvötn (May 2011) are relatively weak, as they were accompanied by emissions of less than 4 km³ of ash. However, they paralyzed air traffic in Europe for several days and harmed the health of many people in nearby areas.

In June 1783, the eruption of the Laki volcano - one of the largest in history - was accompanied by the release of more than 12 thousand m³ of basalt, as well as ash and gas, which was quite enough to shroud Europe in a toxic haze for a long time. At the same time, a quarter of the population of Iceland died, some of whom died from direct poisoning from acidic volcanic gases, and the majority from starvation during the winter.

The consequences of the disaster reverberated over a thousand kilometers to the southeast, and tens of thousands of Europeans, mostly from the British Isles, died from the lingering effects of the eruption. But the deadliest was the eruption of Mount Tambora in April 1815, which ejected more than 20 km³ of lava.

More than 70 thousand people died, most of them from mass starvation resulting from damage to agriculture. The Tambora eruption released huge amounts of sulfur dioxide into the upper atmosphere, blocking sunlight and plunging the Northern Hemisphere into a “year without sunlight” (“volcanic winter”) in 1816.

These historical events still boggle the mind today, and for good reason. Of course, the number of victims cannot be compared with the hundreds of thousands of people who died from recent earthquakes in the Indian Ocean and Haiti. But there is an important, frightening difference between volcanic eruptions and earthquakes.

The size of the most powerful earthquake possible is limited by the strength of the rock. Hard rock can withstand a certain amount of pressure before it cracks; the strength of the rock can cause a very destructive, but still local earthquake - with a magnitude of nine on the Richter scale.

In contrast, volcanic eruptions are not limited in scale. In fact, geological data irrefutably testifies to eruptions hundreds of times more powerful than the volcanic disasters preserved in the historical memory of mankind. Such gigantic volcanoes could darken the sky for years and change the appearance of the earth's surface over many millions (not thousands!) of square kilometers.

The giant eruption of Mount Taupo on the North Island, New Zealand, occurred 26,500 years ago; More than 830 km³ of magmatic lava and ash were erupted. The Toba volcano in Sumatra exploded 74 thousand years ago and erupted more than 2,800 km³ of lava. The consequences of a similar catastrophe in the modern world are difficult to imagine.

Yet these supervolcanoes, which produced the greatest cataclysms in Earth's history, pale in comparison to the giant basalt flows (scientists call them "traps") that caused mass extinctions. Unlike one-time eruptions of supervolcanoes, basalt flows cover a huge time period - thousands of years of continuous volcanic activity.

The most powerful of these cataclysms, usually coinciding with periods of mass extinction, spread hundreds of thousands of millions of cubic kilometers of lava. The largest catastrophe occurred in Siberia 251 million years ago during the great mass extinction and was accompanied by the spreading of basalt over an area of ​​more than a million square kilometers.

The death of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago, which is often attributed to a collision with a large asteroid, coincided with a gigantic basaltic lava spill in India, which gave birth to the largest igneous province of the Deccan Traps, the total area of ​​which is about 517 thousand km², and the volume of the grown mountains reaches 500 thousand km³ .

These huge territories could not have formed as a result of a simple transformation of the crust and upper part of the mantle. Modern models of basalt formations reflect the idea of ​​​​an ancient era of vertical tectonics, when giant bubbles of magma slowly rose from the boundaries of the hot core of the mantle, splitting the earth's crust and splashing out onto the cold surface.

Such phenomena occur extremely rarely in our time. According to one theory, the time interval between basalt flows is approximately 30 million years, so it is unlikely that we will live to see the next one.

Our technological society will certainly receive timely warning of the possibility of such an event. Seismologists are able to track the flow of hot, molten magma rising to the surface. We may have hundreds of years to prepare for such a natural disaster. But if humanity falls into another surge of volcanism, there will be little we can do to counteract this most severe of earthly tests.

Ice factor: next 50 thousand years

In the foreseeable future, the most significant factor determining the appearance of the earth's continents is ice. Over several hundred thousand years, ocean depth is highly dependent on the global volume of frozen water, including mountain ice caps, glaciers and continental ice sheets. The equation is simple: the greater the volume of frozen water on land, the lower the water level in the ocean.

The past is the key to predicting the future, but how do we know the depth of ancient oceans? Satellite observations of ocean water levels, while incredibly accurate, are limited to the last two decades. Sea level measurements from level gauges, although less accurate and subject to local variations, have been collected over the last century and a half.

Coastal geologists can map features of ancient coastlines—for example, elevated coastal terraces that can be traced back to tens of thousands of years of coastal-marine sediments—that may reflect periods of rising water levels.

The relative position of fossil corals, which typically grow on sun-warmed, shallow ocean shelves, might extend our record of past events back into the centuries, but that record would be distorted as such geologic formations rise, sink, and tilt episodically.

Many experts began to pay attention to a less obvious indicator of sea level - changes in the ratios of oxygen isotopes in small shells of marine mollusks. Such relationships can tell much more than the distance between any celestial body and the Sun. Due to their ability to respond to changes in temperature, oxygen isotopes provide the key to deciphering the volume of the Earth's ice cover in the past and, accordingly, to changes in water levels in the ancient ocean.

However, the relationship between the amount of ice and oxygen isotopes is tricky. The most abundant isotope of oxygen, accounting for 99.8% of the oxygen in the air we breathe, is thought to be light oxygen-16 (with eight protons and eight neutrons). One per 500 oxygen atoms is heavy oxygen-18 (eight protons and ten neutrons).

This means that one out of every 500 water molecules in the ocean is heavier than normal. When the ocean is heated by the sun's rays, water containing light isotopes of oxygen-16 evaporates faster than oxygen-18, and therefore the weight of water in low-latitude clouds is lighter than in the ocean itself.

As clouds rise into cooler layers of the atmosphere, the heavy oxygen-18 water condenses into raindrops faster than the lighter oxygen-16 water, and the oxygen in the cloud becomes even lighter.

As clouds inevitably move toward the poles, the oxygen in their constituent water molecules becomes much lighter than in seawater. When precipitation falls over polar glaciers and glaciers, light isotopes freeze in the ice and seawater becomes even heavier.

During periods of maximum cooling of the planet, when more than 5% of the Earth's water turns into ice, sea water becomes especially saturated with heavy oxygen-18. During periods of global warming and glacier retreat, the level of oxygen-18 in seawater decreases. Thus, careful measurements of oxygen isotope ratios in coastal sediments can provide insight into changes in surface ice volume in retrospect.

This is exactly what geologist Ken Miller and his colleagues have been doing at Rutgers University for several decades, studying the thick layers of marine sediments covering the New Jersey coast. These deposits, which record the geological history of the last 100 thousand years, are rich in the shells of microscopic fossil organisms called foraminifera.

Each tiny foraminifera stores oxygen isotopes in its composition in the proportion that was in the ocean at the time the organism grew. Measuring oxygen isotopes in New Jersey's coastal sediments, layer by layer, provides a simple and accurate means of estimating the volume of ice during a given time period.

In the recent geological past, the ice cover has waxed and waned, with corresponding large fluctuations in sea level every few thousand years. At the peak of the ice ages, more than 5% of the water on the planet turned into ice, lowering sea levels by about a hundred meters relative to today.

It is believed that about 20 thousand years ago, during one of these periods of low standing water, a land isthmus formed across the Bering Strait between Asia and North America - it was along this “bridge” that people and other mammals migrated to the New World. During the same period, the English Channel did not exist, and there was a dry valley between the British Isles and France.

During periods of maximum warming, when glaciers virtually disappeared and snow caps thinned on mountain tops, sea levels rose, becoming about 100 m higher than today, submerging hundreds of thousands of square kilometers of coastal areas across the planet.

Miller and his collaborators have calculated more than a hundred cycles of glacial advance and retreat over the past 9 million years, and at least a dozen of them occurred in the last million - the range of these wild fluctuations in sea level reached 180 m. Each cycle may be slightly different from the next, but the events occur with obvious periodicity and are associated with the so-called Milankovitch cycles, named after the Serbian astronomer Milutin Milankovitch, who discovered them about a century ago.

He found that well-known changes in the parameters of the Earth's movement around the Sun, including the tilt of the Earth's axis, the eccentricity of the elliptical orbit and slight fluctuations in its own axis of rotation, cause periodic changes in climate with intervals of 20 thousand years to 100. These shifts affect the flow of solar energy, reaching the Earth, and thus cause significant climate fluctuations.

What awaits our planet in the next 50 thousand years? There is no doubt that sharp fluctuations in sea level will continue, and it will fall and rise more than once. Sometimes, probably over the next 20 thousand years, the snow caps on the peaks will grow, the glaciers will continue to increase, and the sea level will drop sixty meters or more - a level the sea has dropped to at least eight times in the last million years.

This will have a powerful impact on the contours of continental coastlines. The US East Coast will extend many kilometers eastward as the shallow continental slope is exposed. All major harbors on the East Coast, from Boston to Miami, will become dry inland plateaus.

A new ice-covered isthmus will connect Alaska to Russia, and the British Isles could once again become part of mainland Europe. Rich fisheries along continental shelves will become part of the land.

As for sea level, if it decreases, then it must certainly rise. It is quite possible, even very likely, that within the next thousand years sea levels will rise by 30 m or more. Such a rise in sea level, quite modest by geological standards, would redraw the map of the United States beyond recognition.

A thirty-meter rise in sea level will flood much of the coastal plains on the East Coast, pushing coastlines up to one hundred and fifty kilometers westward. The main coastal cities - Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Washington, Baltimore, Wilmington, Charleston, Savannah, Jacksonville, Miami and many others - will be under water. Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Diego and Seattle will disappear into the sea waves.

It will flood almost all of Florida, and a shallow sea will stretch out in place of the peninsula. Most of the states of Delaware and Louisiana will be under water. In other parts of the world, the damage caused by rising sea levels will be even more devastating. Entire countries will cease to exist - Holland, Bangladesh, the Maldives.

Geological data irrefutably demonstrates that such changes will continue to occur. If warming turns out to be as rapid as many experts believe, water levels will rise quickly, by about 30 cm per decade.

Normal thermal expansion of seawater during periods of global warming can increase sea level rise to an average of three meters. This will undoubtedly be a problem for humanity, but will have very little impact on the Earth.

Still, this won't be the end of the world. This will be the end of our world.

Warming: the next hundred years

Most of us do not look several billion years ahead, just as we do not look several million years or even a thousand years. We are worried about more pressing concerns: how will I pay for higher education for my child in ten years? Will I get a promotion in a year? Will the stock market go up next week? What to cook for lunch?

In this context, we need not worry. Barring an unforeseen catastrophe, our planet will remain almost unchanged in a year or ten years. Any difference between what is now and what will be a year from now is almost imperceptible, even if the summer turns out to be incredibly hot, or the crops suffer from drought, or an unusually strong storm blows up.

One thing is certain: the Earth continues to change. There are many signs of coming global warming and melting glaciers, perhaps accelerated in part by human activity. Over the next century, the effects of this warming will affect many people in a variety of ways.

In the summer of 2007, I participated in the Futures Symposium in the fishing village of Ilulissat on the west coast of Greenland, almost at the Arctic Circle. The choice of place to discuss the future was very successful, since climate change was taking place directly outside the conference room in the cozy Arctic Hotel.

For thousands of years, this harbor, located near the spur of the mighty Ilulissat glacier, was the site of a lucrative fishing industry. For a thousand years, fishermen engaged in ice fishing in the winter when the harbor froze over. That is, they were engaged until the beginning of the new millennium. In 2000, for the first time (at least according to thousands of years of oral history), the harbor did not freeze over in winter.

And such changes are being observed across the globe. The shores of Chesapeake Bay report a steady increase in tide levels compared to previous decades. Year after year, the Sahara spreads further north, turning Morocco's once fertile farmland into a dusty desert.

The ice of Antarctica is rapidly melting and breaking up. Average air and water temperatures are constantly rising. All this reflects a process of progressive global warming - a process that the Earth has experienced countless times in the past and will experience in the future.

Warming may be accompanied by other, sometimes paradoxical, effects. The Gulf Stream, a powerful ocean current that carries warm water from the equator to the North Atlantic, is driven by the large temperature difference between the equator and high latitudes. If global warming reduces the temperature contrast, as some climate models suggest, the Gulf Stream could weaken or stop altogether.

Ironically, the immediate result of this change will be to turn the temperate climate of the British Isles and Northern Europe, currently warmed by the Gulf Stream, into a much cooler one.

Similar changes will occur with other ocean currents - for example, with the current coming from the Indian Ocean into the South Atlantic past the Horn of Africa - this could cause a cooling of the mild climate of South Africa or a change in the monsoon climate that provides parts of Asia with fertile rains.

When glaciers melt, sea levels rise. According to the most conservative estimates, it will rise by half a meter to a meter in the next century, although, according to some data, in some decades the increase in sea water levels may fluctuate within a few centimeters.

Such changes in sea level will affect many coastal communities around the world and pose a real headache for civil engineers and beach owners from Maine to Florida, but in principle a rise of up to one meter in densely populated coastal areas can be managed. At least the next one or two generations of residents will not have to worry about the sea encroaching on the land.

However, certain species of animals and plants may suffer much more seriously. The melting of polar ice in the north will reduce the habitat of polar bears, which is very unfavorable for preserving the population, the number of which is already declining. The rapid shift of climate zones towards the poles will negatively affect other species, especially birds, which are especially susceptible to changes in seasonal migration and feeding zones.

According to some data, an average increase in global temperatures of just a couple of degrees, as most climate models suggest over the coming century, could reduce bird populations by almost 40% in Europe and by more than 70% in the fertile rainforests of north-eastern Australia.

A major international report says that of the approximately 6,000 species of frogs, toads and lizards, one in three will be in danger, mainly due to the spread of a fungal disease that is deadly to amphibians, fueled by a warm climate. Whatever other effects of warming may be revealed in the coming century, it appears that we are entering a period of accelerated extinction.

Some changes in the next century, whether inevitable or only probable, may be instantaneous, be it a major destructive earthquake, the eruption of a supervolcano, or the impact of an asteroid more than a kilometer in diameter. Knowing the history of the Earth, we understand that such events are common and therefore inevitable on a planetary scale. Nevertheless, we build cities on the slopes of active volcanoes and in the most geologically active zones of the Earth in the hope that we will dodge a “tectonic bullet” or a “space projectile.”

Between the very slow and rapid changes are geological processes that usually take centuries or even millennia - changes in climate, sea level and ecosystems that can remain undetected for generations.

The main threat is not the changes themselves, but their degree. Because the state of the climate, the position of the sea level or the very existence of ecosystems may reach a critical level. The acceleration of positive feedback processes can hit our world unexpectedly. What usually takes a millennium to manifest itself in a dozen or two years.

It's easy to be complacent if you misread the rock record. For a time, until 2010, concerns about modern events were tempered by studies looking back 56 million years ago, the time of one of the mass extinctions that dramatically affected the evolution and distribution of mammals. This terrible phenomenon, called the Late Paleocene Thermal Maximum, caused the relatively abrupt extinction of thousands of species.

The study of the thermal maximum is important for our time, since it is the most famous, documented sharp temperature shift in the history of the Earth. Volcanic activity caused a relatively rapid increase in atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide and methane, two inseparable greenhouse gases, which in turn led to a positive feedback that lasted more than a thousand years and was accompanied by moderate global warming.

Some researchers see in the late Paleocene thermal maximum a clear parallel with the modern situation, of course, unfavorable - with a rise in global temperature by an average of almost 10 ° C, a rapid rise in sea level, ocean acidification and a significant shift of ecosystems towards the poles, but not so catastrophic, to threaten the survival of most animals and plants.

The shock of the recent findings by Lee Kemp, a geologist at Pennsylvania State University, and his colleagues has left us with little reason for optimism. In 2008, Kemp's team gained access to drilling material in Norway that allowed them to trace the events of the Late Paleocene Thermal Maximum in detail - sedimentary rocks, layer by layer, captured the finest details of the rate of change in atmospheric carbon dioxide and climate.

The bad news is that the thermal maximum, which for more than a decade was considered the fastest climate shift in Earth's history, was driven by changes in atmospheric composition ten times less intense than what is happening today.

Global changes in the composition of the atmosphere and average temperature, formed over a thousand years and ultimately leading to extinction, have occurred in our time during the last hundred years, during which humanity burned enormous quantities of hydrocarbon fuels.

This is an unprecedentedly rapid change, and no one can predict how the Earth will react to it. At the Prague conference in August 2011, where three thousand geochemists gathered, there was a very sad mood among specialists, sobered by new data on the late Paleocene thermal maximum.

Of course, for the general public, the forecast of these experts was formulated in rather cautious terms, but the comments that I heard on the sidelines were very pessimistic, even frightening. Greenhouse gas concentrations are increasing too quickly, and the mechanisms for absorbing this excess are unknown.

Will this not cause a massive release of methane with all the subsequent positive feedbacks that such a development entails? Will sea levels rise by a hundred meters, as has happened many times in the past? We are entering a zone of terra incognita, carrying out a poorly designed experiment on a global scale, the likes of which the Earth has never experienced in the past.

Judging by the rock data, no matter how resistant to shocks life may be, the biosphere is under great stress at turning points of sudden climate shifts. Biological productivity, in particular agricultural productivity, will drop to catastrophic levels for some time.

In rapidly changing conditions, large animals, including humans, will pay a heavy price. The interdependence of rocks and the biosphere will continue unabated, but humanity's role in this billion-year saga remains incomprehensible.

Perhaps we have already reached a tipping point? Perhaps not in the current decade, perhaps not at all during the lifetime of our generation. But such is the nature of turning points - we recognize such a moment only when it has already arrived.

The financial bubble is bursting. The population of Egypt rebels. The stock exchange is crashing. We only realize what is happening in retrospect, when it is too late to restore the status quo. And there has never been such a restoration in the history of the Earth.

The approximate age of humanity is 200 thousand years, and during this time it has faced a huge number of changes. Since our emergence on the African continent, we have managed to colonize the entire world and even reached the Moon. Beringia, which once connected Asia with North America, has long gone under water. What changes or events might we expect if humanity continues to exist for another billion years?

Well, let's start with the future in 10 thousand years. We will face the problem of the year 10,000. Software that encodes the AD calendar will no longer be able to encode dates from this point on. This will be a real problem, and furthermore, if current globalization trends continue, human genetic variation will no longer be regionally organized by that point. This means that all human genetic traits, such as skin and hair color, will be distributed evenly across the planet.

In 20 thousand years, the world's languages ​​will contain only one in a hundred vocabulary words of their modern counterparts. In fact, all modern languages ​​will lose recognition.

In 50 thousand years, the Earth will begin a second ice age, despite the current effects of global warming. Niagara Falls will be completely washed away by the Erie River and disappear. Due to glacial uplift and erosion, numerous lakes on the Canadian Shield will also cease to exist. In addition, the day on Earth will increase by one second, as a result of which an adjustment second will have to be added to each day.

In 100 thousand years, the stars and constellations visible from Earth will be strikingly different from today. In addition, according to preliminary calculations, this is exactly how long it will take to completely transform Mars into a habitable planet like Earth.

In 250 thousand years, the Lo'ihi volcano will rise above the surface, forming a new island in the Hawaiian island chain.

In 500 thousand years, it is very likely that an asteroid with a diameter of 1 km will crash into the Earth, unless humanity somehow prevents this. And Badlands National Park in South Dakota will completely disappear by this point.

In 950,000 years, the Arizona meteorite crater, considered the best-preserved meteorite impact crater on the planet, will be completely eroded.

In 1 million years, a monstrous volcanic eruption will most likely occur on Earth, during which 3 thousand 200 cubic meters of ash will be released. This will be reminiscent of the Toba super eruption 70,000 years ago, which nearly caused the extinction of humanity. In addition, the star Betelgeuse will explode as a supernova, and this can be observed from Earth even during the daytime.

Context

BBC Russian Service 12/06/2016 In 2 million years, the Grand Canyon will collapse even further, deepen a little and expand to the size of a large valley. If humanity by then colonizes various planets in the solar system and universe, and the populations of each of them evolve separately from each other, humanity will likely evolve into different species. They adapt to the conditions of their planets and, perhaps, will not even know about the existence of other species of their own kind in the Universe.

In 10 million years, much of western Africa will separate from the rest of the continent. A new ocean basin will form between them, and Africa will split into two separate pieces of land.

In 50 million years, Mars' satellite Phobos will crash into its planet, causing widespread destruction. And on Earth, the rest of Africa will collide with Eurasia and “close” the Mediterranean Sea forever. Between the two merging layers, a new mountain range is formed, similar in size to the Himalayas, one of the peaks of which may be higher than Everest.

In 60 million years, the Canadian Rockies will be leveled, becoming a flat plain.

In 80 million years, the entire Hawaiian Islands will have sunk, and in 100 million years, the Earth will likely be hit by an asteroid similar to the one that wiped out the dinosaurs 66 million years ago, unless disaster is prevented artificially. By this point, among other things, the rings around Saturn will disappear.

In 240 million years, the Earth will finally complete a full revolution around the center of the galaxy from its current position.

In 250 million years, all the continents of our planet will merge into one, like Pangea. One of the options for its name is Pangea Ultima, and it will look something like the picture.

Then, after 400-500 million years, the supercontinent will again split into parts.

In 500-600 million years, at a distance of 6 thousand 500 light years from Earth, a deadly gamma-ray burst will occur. If the calculations are correct, this explosion could seriously damage the Earth's ozone layer, causing mass extinction of species.

In 600 million years, the Moon will be far enough away from the Sun to cancel the phenomenon of a total solar eclipse once and for all. In addition, the growing luminosity of the Sun will have serious consequences for our planet. The movements of tectonic plates will stop, and carbon dioxide levels will greatly decrease. C3 photosynthesis will no longer occur, and 99% of the earth's flora will die.

After 800 million years, CO2 levels will continue to fall until C4 photosynthesis stops. Free oxygen and ozone will disappear from the atmosphere, as a result of which all life on Earth will die.

Finally, in 1 billion years, the Sun's luminosity will increase by 10% compared to its current state. The Earth's surface temperature will rise to an average of 47 degrees Celsius. The atmosphere will turn into a humid greenhouse, and the world's oceans will simply evaporate. "Pockets" of liquid water will continue to exist at the Earth's poles, which means that they will likely become the last stronghold of life on our planet.

A lot will change during this time, but a lot has changed over the past billion years. In addition to what we talked about in this video, who knows what could happen in such a long time?

InoSMI materials contain assessments exclusively of foreign media and do not reflect the position of the InoSMI editorial staff.

It has long been known that this end of the world is inevitable; sooner or later, the planet may be overtaken by natural disasters that will contribute to the destruction of the Earth.

It is worth remembering that overconsumption of natural resources and global warming are relentlessly leading us towards the end of the planet's existence. Do not be upset, for the next few thousand years the planet will be relatively safe, despite climate change and the gradual displacement of continents. But still, the world population is already making forecasts about the fate of the planet, thanks to which 10 predictions about the end of the world have been formed. But today we'll talk about 10 sad facts about the future of the Earth.

Fact No. 10. New ice age in 50 thousand years

Humanity will exist for another 50 thousand years. It is unlikely that during this time humanity will die from a lack of resources or another world war. The world population expects new ice age. The last ice age ended about 15 thousand years ago!

Fact No. 9. In 100 thousand years, a supervolcano will melt everyone

According to scientists' forecasts, in 100 thousand years the Earth will suffer from a supervolcano eruption. The volcanic eruption will be so powerful that it will cover 400 cubic kilometers with magma.

There are such volcanoes in the mountains of California, but more than a million years have passed since their last eruption. It should be added that super-eruptions are very different from disasters like earthquakes, tsunamis, storms, floods and asteroid impacts - such an eruption would cause enormous harm to the entire civilization.

Fact No. 8. Meteorite fall after 500 thousand years

The biggest shock in modern history was the fall of the Tunguska meteorite in Russia, which resulted in an explosion of energy approximately 1000 times greater than that of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima. The diameter of the meteorite was up to 190 m in diameter. Scientists have calculated that in 500 thousand years, some space fragments measuring about 1 kilometer in diameter will fall to Earth. As a result, the Earth will be completely destroyed.

Fact No. 7. Collapse of the Grand Canyon and Arizona Crater after 2 million years

If we assume that the Earth is not touched by meteorites or supervolcanic eruptions, nothing happens during the Ice Age, then in two million years everything will collapse on its own. For example, the Grand Canyon appeared due to the erosive effects of water flowing into the Colorado River - in 2 million years there will be an increase in the level of snow and ice, which will lead to the complete destruction of the canyon. The same thing could happen to the Arizona Crater and the rocky desert badlands of South Dakota.

Fact No. 6. Flood in East Africa in 10 million years

The East African Rift tectonic plates may continue to expand. Eventually both the Somali and Nubian plates will break away completely from each other, causing a new ocean basin to divide Africa. Now the Earth is literally being torn apart - new continents and oceans are being created, which is just a cycle of development of the planet.

Fact No. 5. In 80 million years, Hawaii will be underwater

Our planet is constantly changing, and all the continents that exist today were parts of a single continent 300 million years ago. supercontinent - Pangea. Over the next 80 million years, changes to the planet will continue as Africa splits apart and a new ocean forms. Due to rising tides, volcanic activity and the Ice Age, Hawaii will be completely underwater.

The California coast will begin to sink into the ocean due to its location on the San Andreas Fault. The divided African continent will eventually collide with Europe and Asia, thereby closing the Mediterranean basin, resulting in the formation of a mountain range similar to the Himalayas.

Fact No. 4. Depletion of the ozone layer in 500 million years, mass extinction

In 500 million years there will be a surge of gamma radiation, which will cause damage to the ozone layer. Under the influence of global warming, volcanic activity, meteorite falls The ozone layer will be completely destroyed and life on Earth will end.

Fact No. 3. In 800 million years, all remaining life forms will die

A mass extinction does not mean that absolutely everything will die. From this point of view, after the human race, there will be other forms of life on Earth that will be able to adapt and will develop, despite the endless changes in the surrounding world. If they manage to cope with the influence of a supernova, which will destroy almost all life on the surface of the globe, then they will be able to survive for at least another 300 million years. After this, the level of carbon dioxide will drop to levels at which photosynthesis becomes impossible.

In 800 million years, all volcanoes will go out. Will disappear Carbon dioxide is a very important element, necessary both for plant life and for the entire atmosphere as a whole. Its disappearance will not only eliminate the possibility of the further existence of any plants, but will also lead to the disappearance of oxygen and ozone from the atmosphere, which in turn will destroy all multicellular organisms on the planet. In 800 million years, the Earth will be inhabited only by single-celled organisms..

Fact No. 2. In 2.3 billion years, the Earth's core will turn to ice

In 2.3 billion years there will be no life on the planet - everything will be destroyed, covered with magma, craters, and radiation everywhere. The planet's outer crust will freeze and stop the magnetic field, and charged particles of solar energy will destroy all remnants of our atmosphere. By that time, the temperature in the sun will increase significantly, which will lead to the complete evaporation of water from the surface of the Earth.

Fact No. 1. In 8 billion years, our planet will die when it collides with the Sun

In 8 billion years, all life on the planet will burn out under the influence of rising temperatures in the Sun. Even single-celled organisms will die, and the earth's poles will reach an average temperature of 147 degrees Celsius. Freezing the core would throw the planet out of balance, and increasing the distance to the Moon would tilt the Earth dangerously.

The surface of the Earth will resemble the surface of Venus today. When the Sun turns red and becomes 256 times larger, it will engulf the Earth.

All of the above referred to the distant future. But man is a master of harming himself, and is already capable of causing local cataclysms around himself today. Are we too arrogant to think that we can change anything and everything in the environment? The world's scientists are worried.

So, what will happen in 100 years? The following chronology will describe not only the events that await us in the future, but also the inventions that are about to appear.

Earth in 100 years

2013 – Wall Street faces another stock market crash, which will mark the beginning of a new global crisis.

2014 – China deploys its missiles in Sudan, causing unrest in international society.

2015 – The year will be very eventful. Russia will report that the country's natural resources (oil, uranium, copper, gold) have reached a critical minimum. The Algerian-German concern Desertec will begin construction of a solar power station in North Africa. Scientists will be able to find a cure for autism. Bangladesh will claim a catastrophic shortage of fresh water due to rising sea levels and will ask the World Bank for a $9 billion subsidy to purchase desalination plants.

2016 – Cultured meat goes on sale. For the first time in the American presidential election, it will be possible to cast your vote online.

2017 – The first experiment was conducted to create artificial seminal fluid from a woman’s stem cells and subsequent conception without a man.

2018 – Withdrawal of American troops from Afghanistan. Each country considers itself a winner. Afghanistan's sovereignty remains unshakable. In parallel with this event, the lunar program is being resumed. The four-person crew will spend about a month on the lunar surface. The goal of the project is to prove that living on the Earth’s natural satellite using only its resources is quite possible. This same year, a new high-speed railway will be built, crossing 17 countries and designed to connect Europe and Asia. The first train along it will run from Beijing to Paris, its speed will be 300 km/h. The global crisis that began in 2013 will end this year.

2019 – There will be an acute shortage of women in China. The government will allow same-sex marriage. The first prototype of a flying car will also be tested in America.

2020 – Active development of space tourism. The first private spacecraft will send everyone into Earth orbit for a day. Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic's first spaceship will land with tourists on the surface of the Moon. The cost of such a tour will cost about 200 million dollars. The first manned expedition to Mars will also be formed. In the same year, permission will be issued to carry out autonomous work that destroys cancer cells in the human body. Megacorporations will undermine the authority of the governments of leading countries and ultimately deprive them of many powers. State borders in our usual sense will be erased. Cultural differences will still remain in people's memories.

2021-2024 – It becomes possible to implant microchips into the brain that can give their owner the ability to telepathy, increased memory reserves, and it will also be possible to introduce various kinds of controllers into the body that signal the state of a person, and give some kind of bonuses in the form of built-in mobile communications, etc. .d.

2025 - The population will increase to 8 billion people. The globalization of the economy will allow many enterprising people to become rich. The number of dollar millionaires will be 1 billion people, while everyone else will not even have enough fresh water.

2026 – Chips will be implanted up to the skin of all US residents, storing all biometric data and allowing the location of an individual to be determined.

2027 – First successful human cloning. Scientists will be able to understand how genetics influences a person’s character.

2028 – The total number of deaths from AIDS will reach 600 million. A cure has never been found. AIDS becomes the deadliest epidemic in history.

2029 – The appearance of computers 1000 times more powerful than today’s. New chips are also appearing on the market, by implanting which you can have a direct connection with a computer and the Internet.

2030 – All trains, planes, cars and yachts are controlled by a robotic autopilot. Human intervention in their work is required only in extreme cases. Thanks to this technology, it was possible to reduce the number of accidents involving these vehicles to almost a minimum.

2031 – Sex becomes just a form of leisure time. The function of procreation has been simplified to artificial insemination and cloning. Pregnancy will be the lot of the poor and uncultured, as well as third world citizens.

2032 – The appearance of lenses capable of giving a person not only excellent vision, but also eliminating the need to know additional languages. Lenses will be implanted for everyone. They will have built-in face and speech recognition technology, due to which a person will see a translation from any unfamiliar language in the form of text right before his eyes. They will also have built-in zoom, memory of faces, the ability to access the Internet, etc.

2033 – America switches to a fundamentally new type of fuel, getting rid of oil dependence. Oil prices are falling sharply. The Middle East is suffering widespread losses. Russia enters into an alliance with Iran and China and squeezes the EU.

2034 – Micro sensors appear that can record the behavior of the nervous system. Thus, a market for the sale of feelings is organized. Orgasms, happiness, grief, inspiration, etc.

2035 – Firms appear offering artificial cultivation of human organs based on the client’s DNA.

2040 – People monitor their health through genetic therapy. Shower cabins scan the general condition of internal organs, toilets collect tests. The average life expectancy in developed countries reaches 90 years.

2041 – The ban on geological exploration activities in Antarctica will be lifted. World powers will immediately begin to develop the deposits. As a result, the ecology of the White Continent will be destroyed. Next up is the Arctic.

2042 – Humanity crosses the 9 billion mark.

2048 – The number of ocean inhabitants declines sharply. People don't have enough fish.

2049 – “Programmable matter” technologies appear. Millions of microscopic devices will gather into a swarm that will take the desired shape, color, density and texture of any object.

2050 – The world population will reach 10.1 billion. The average life expectancy will be 100 years.

2060 – 95% of the world's population will use only three types of currency. In the struggle for primacy, they will fight, offering better and better conditions, as banks, pension funds and plastic card systems do now.

2070 – The glaciers and permafrost of the North Pole will finally melt, and the Arctic Ocean will become fully navigable. Active development of a new habitable territory will begin. In the same year, many animals that became extinct many thousands of years ago will be cloned from DNA.

2075 – Average life expectancy is 150 years. Humanity is on the verge of a discovery that can give people immortality.

2080 – Due to global warming, the level of the Ocean will rise to such limits that 70 million people in Africa will be inundated.

2090 – The emergence of a new generation network. Now, instead of a computer, the human body acts as a client. All information goes directly to the brain.

2095 – Thanks to the advent of new technology, it is possible to copy a person’s personality onto a chip, which in turn is integrated into any cybernetic shell of one’s choice. Man acquired immortality.

2100 – Due to global warming, a third of the land has become desert. Fresh water is now as valuable as oil once was. Russia, as always, is on horseback - its climate will only benefit from warming, and there is more than enough water here. Due to the huge amount of carbon dioxide. The oceans will have increased acidity, making it unsuitable for the existence of a huge number of microorganisms, which, in turn, serve as food for larger animals. The population will increase from 10 to 15 billion people. Active space exploration will begin. A cure for cancer will be found. Artificial Intelligence will appear. Due to the development of cybernetic technologies, people will look like robots, and those, in turn, will look like people.

Of course, these are just forecasts and the exact answer is what will happen in 100 years It’s difficult, but many have already begun to think - if the outcome of events is exactly this, then does humanity need such a future. On the other hand, people once did not trust cars and computers in the same way, and cinema and radio were generally considered almost magic. Nevertheless, today they are firmly embedded in our lives and are an integral part of it. Therefore, as they say, wait and see what will happen in 100 years.

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Like all living things on Earth, you and I continue to evolve. If you don’t believe me, remember the story of wisdom teeth, which were well developed among our distant ancestors who ate rough food. In our country they were reduced as unnecessary.

We are in website wondered what a person would look like after millions of years of evolution if conditions on planet Earth roughly correspond to emerging trends and probable forecasts.

• Height. Over the past 200 years, the population of developed countries has grown by 10 cm due to improved living conditions and quality nutrition. If this continues, the height of men will reach 2 meters, but hardly higher. (Sources: Mean Body Weight, Height, and body mass index, United States 1960–2002, wikipedia)
• Leather will become darker as the races will intensively mix. And dark skin will better protect against ultraviolet radiation, which will penetrate the Earth in excess. (Source: livescience, nickolaylamm)
• Body. A person will reduce his physical costs with the help of machines and robots. Physical strength will not be in demand, the muscles will shrink. Technology will become an integral part of our body, embedded chips and gadgets will become commonplace. (Source: futurehumanevolution)

• Hands. Constant use of keyboards and touch screens will make your hands and fingers thinner and longer. (Source: the-scientist)

• Legs. The body will change to suit a sedentary lifestyle, long strong legs will not be needed. The fibula is reduced, which is typical for land animals. This bone serves to rotate the foot, which was important for our tree-climbing ancestors. But for us, sideways mobility of the ankle has become rather harmful, often leading to dislocations. (Source: futurehumanevolution, anthropogenez)
• Toes. Our ancestors also used them for climbing trees. In the line from Australopithecus to us, the fingers have noticeably shortened, obviously this is not the limit. Probably their number will also decrease. Land animals always come to a decrease in their numbers, and the horse is the record holder here. (Source: anthropogenez)

• Rib cage. If it becomes increasingly difficult to obtain oxygen from the atmosphere, the lungs will increase in size. The chest will also increase.
• Head. It is still unclear whether the person of the future will have a smaller or larger cranial volume than now. On the one hand, compared to Cro-Magnons, the human brain has become, oddly enough, smaller. It becomes more compact, which only contributes to its faster operation. On the other hand, more and more caesarean sections allow babies with large heads to survive. This will affect the increase in its average size. Therefore, there will probably not be a natural birth in the future. (Sources: anthropogenez, bbc, vox)
• Teeth. Humanity is switching to increasingly soft food. The number of teeth and their size will decrease, this will entail a reduction in the jaw and mouth. (