Human beings, as the only intelligent life forms on the earth, are good at summing up experience and stimulating their own creativity.
There have been 5 major extinction events in the history of the earth. Can humans learn lessons from them and learn how to deal with disasters?
Scientists have combined the approximately 4.6 billion-year history of the entire earth and summarized three types of tests that humans will face in the future.
Will humans in the future really be able to survive all this?
After the disappearance of human beings
Heaven and earth are unkind
Since the birth of the earth, the above disasters have not stopped , and life has been faced with disasters several times, but somehow, life can always find its own The way out is .
Every time there is an extinction, there are always some tenacious lives that survive tenaciously and create the next prosperous and prosperous again.
Among them, there have been five mass extinctions, which have been deeply engraved in the evolution of life and have left their mark to this day.
Death begins
The first mass extinction occurred at the end of the Ordovician 4.44 billion years ago, causing the extinction of about 5% of species. The cause of
is the crazy growth of algae , which drains out the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and the oxygen in the water, causing global cooling, sea levels to fall, and seawater to be hypoxic. The incident of
gave birth to an organ - lungs .
Because Ordovician creatures have not yet landed on land , and many creatures rely on gills to breathe , they have become the biggest victims of this disaster.
A small group of animals among them learned to breathe oxygen directly in the air. This was the early prototype of the lung.
Existing fish with lungs
The second mass extinction occurred at the end of the Devonian , about 365 million years ago , and the cause was the same as the first.
It’s just that the number of species that were extinct this time was not as high as the first time, only about 2%.
Because vertebrates landed, feet appeared on vertebrates for the first time.
Although they can only crawl in the mud at this time, this shows that vertebrates have the ability to leave the water. Even if the sea level drops and the water body is deprived of oxygen, they will have new places to go.
Vertebrate animals login
However, evolution did not endow creatures with invincible abilities, and soon the most serious mass extinction in the history of biology came .
This extinction directly caused about 95% of species to disappear , marine animals were directly wiped out 7%.
This extinction is html the end-Permian mass extinction 4.25 billion years ago. It was caused by the movement between the earth's plates.
All geological disasters that can occur were staged in the end-Permian mass extinction. This is the most hellish time on earth.
The end of the Permian mass extinction
The end of the Triassic mass extinction is the most reference object of global warming . This is the fourth mass extinction in history , which occurred about .2 billion years ago .
After experiencing drought and heat for about 150 million years, the earth ushered in a rainy season that lasted for 2 million years, and was irrigated from deserts to forests.
However, the rainy season brings not new life, but destruction.
The change in ground vegetation allowed a large group of herbivores to starve to death in the midst of prosperity.
This extinction caused 76% of species to become extinct. After that, the earth entered the prosperous Jurassic , officially opening the dinosaur age .
Triassic dinosaurs
The last mass extinction was the famous End Cretaceous mass extinction. About 5% to 80% of all living creatures were extinct, among which Sauriformes were represented by dinosaurs. Creatures suffered heavy losses.
This extinction is the end of dinosaurs, but it is also the new life of mammals. The mass extinction resets the ecosystem .
allowed mammals that had been suppressed by dinosaurs to suddenly lose the suppression of their natural enemies and become the new masters of the earth.
It is this group of animals that eventually gave birth to the only intelligent life form-human beings.
So, what kind of crisis and extinction will mankind face in the future?
Asteroid hitting the earth
Global warming
This is the most likely future disaster that humans can think of because we are experiencing it right now.
According to scientists' statistics, from the 19th century to today, the earth's average temperature has increased by 0.9 to 1.1℃, which is faster than the earth has ever seen.
According to this warming trend, we are likely to encounter an era of drought and heat similar to the Triassic in the future.
The polar glaciers are melting, sea levels are rising 66 meters , and the entire land is submerged 0% to 20% of the land .
Large areas of forests disappeared, replaced by grasslands and deserts, and plants turned into low shrubs .
Global warming
The Sahara Desert will cross the Mediterranean Sea and engulf the entire Southern Europe and West Asia.
The only places suitable for human habitation by then will most likely be the Arctic Circle and the Antarctic Circle.
The long-frozen Antarctic continent will be resurrected, changing from white to green.
Polar bears , penguins and other creatures are extinct, the number of humans will also decrease , because the land area shrinks and the climate becomes no longer suitable for growing food, triggering food crisis .
The ocean has also become acidified due to the increase in carbon dioxide concentration . Coral reefs have disappeared, and the ocean has become lifeless. It is even difficult for humans to catch edible fish.
Coral reefs are dying in large numbers
The earth is no longer suitable for habitation at this time. Human beings can only leave the earth and find another way out.
But, did humans at that time have that ability?
Perhaps humans can wait and wait for the day when the temperature drops.
Because according to the laws of the earth, if gets warmer, there will be cooling . The earth will digest the excess carbon dioxide by itself, but this cycle must be calculated based on million years .
The earth itself is alternating between hot and cold
Celestial bodies impacting
If global warming is the evil fruit planted by human beings and blooming the flowers of evil, then The impact of aliens means that it is impossible to prevent, and a natural disaster will occur.
The dinosaur dynasty back then was ended inexplicably by an asteroid, leaving only those fossils that proved the glory of the dinosaurs.
The earth has been hit by celestial bodies countless times in history. Even the earth's only natural satellite-the moon was also produced by the collision between the earth and a celestial body.
But the impact occurred about 14.5 billion years ago. At that time, there was no life on the earth, so there were no fossils left.
The birth of the moon
The asteroid about 6 million years ago left a profound imprint on the life of the earth. It can be said that without it, human beings would not have been born.
If the earth is hit by an asteroid in the future, who will be extinct in this catastrophe?
Who will usher in a new life in this disaster?
In 1994, , Jupiter collided with a comet . The impact lasted for dozens of hours, leaving impact traces with a maximum diameter of tens of thousands of kilometers .
If that impact was the earth, then the earth would most likely be gone!
Comet wood collision
Celestial body impact, the most terrifying thing is not the moment of impact, but the series of chain reactions triggered afterwards, such as earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, and tsunamis. These disasters may last for tens of thousands of years.
is just like the dinosaurs back then. They were not all extinct at the moment of the impact, but went extinct step by step over the next tens of thousands of years.
This is a torment and torture for the species, especially for thinking creatures like humans. How would it feel to watch ourselves become extinct?
In the future, in addition to the environment and the universe, humans will have to face one of their own creations - artificial intelligence AI.
Humanity may watch itself become extinct
The disaster of artificial intelligence
Although we jokingly call the artificial intelligence products on the market "artificial retardation", because compared with the human brain, these products show very poor thinking ability.
Many people don’t care about Hawking’s warning of “beware of artificial intelligence”.
Many people believe that artificial intelligence is created by humans, and humans are the "creators" of artificial intelligence. They can never surpass the "creator".
However, artificial intelligence AlphaGo defeated some of the smartest Go masters among humans, making people gasp.
AlphaGo beats human chess players
The engineers who built AlphaGo are not Go masters, but it can surpass human chess players.
This illustrates a very scary thing. The wisdom that humans are proud of is being surpassed by artificial intelligence.
Many people are worried about artificial intelligence. What they fear is that artificial intelligence will destroy human beings slowly and " moisturizes things silently".
If people rely too much on artificial intelligence, they may regress in some aspects, and artificial intelligence will gradually replace humans.
Artificial Intelligence Helps Humans
Scientists believe that if artificial intelligence is fully used, most people's jobs will inevitably be replaced by artificial intelligence.
But is the core work of humans, , and artificial intelligence cannot get involved.
Because artificial intelligence is inseparable from energy, for it energy is food , just like humans eat.
If artificial intelligence really attempts to suppress humans as shown in science fiction movies, then humans can directly cut off its energy and see how long it will take.
Artificial Intelligence and Humanity
These disasters that may occur in the future deserve people's attention. They are not just hot-headed nonsense, but what is happening right now.
