Scientists from NASA and Toho University in Japan have found that the Earth will lose its oxygen-rich atmosphere in the next billion years, causing the death of almost all life on the planet. The life span of the biosphere was determined through modeling, the results of which were published in the journal Nature Geoscience.
The researchers created a simulation of the Earth taking into account factors such as climate, geological activity, biological processes and solar activity. It turned out that as the sun gets hotter, the content of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will begin to fall due to the absorption of heat by the molecules of carbon dioxide and their destruction. The ozone layer will also disappear.
When the level of carbon dioxide falls below the critical value, which will take about 10 thousand years, the plants will no longer be able to support the process of photosynthesis and will die out. The oxygen in the atmosphere will also decrease, which will be detrimental to all land and marine animals. At the same time, methane will begin to be released, which will accelerate the disappearance of living things. Only anaerobic microorganisms will remain on Earth, which is similar to the biosphere before the emergence of complex organisms.
