So, what will happen in 100 years? The chronology below will describe not only the events that await us in the future, but also the inventions that should 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 will deploy its missiles on the territory of Sudan, which will cause unrest in the international community.

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 plant in North Africa. Scientists will be able to find a cure for autism. Bangladesh will declare a catastrophic shortage of fresh water due to rising sea levels, and will ask for a subsidy of $ 9 billion from the World Bank to purchase desalination plants.

2016 - Artificially grown meat will go on sale. For the first time in an American presidential election, it will be possible to cast your vote over the Internet.

2017 - The first experiment was carried out on the creation of artificial seminal fluid from the stem cells of a woman and subsequent conception without a man.

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

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

2020 - Active development of space tourism. The first private spacecraft will send everyone into Earth's orbit for a day. The first space liner of the Virgin Galactic company owned by Richard Branson 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 the leading countries and, as a result, will deprive them of many powers. State borders in the sense we are accustomed to will be erased. Cultural differences will still remain in the memory of people.

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 a person’s state, 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 get rich. The number of dollar millionaires will be 1 billion people, while the rest will not even have enough fresh water.

2026 - All US residents will be implanted with chips that store all biometric data and allow determining the location of the individual.

2027 - First successful human cloning. Scientists will be able to understand how genetics affects the character of a person.

2028 - Total AIDS deaths will reach 600 million. A cure has not yet been found. AIDS becomes the deadliest epidemic in history.

2029 - The advent of computers 1000 times more powerful than today's. Also, new chips appear 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 a minimum.

2031 - Sex becomes just a leisure activity. The function of procreation was simplified to artificial insemination and cloning. Pregnancy will be the lot of the poor and uncultured segments of the population, as well as citizens of the third world.

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 by 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 in front of 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 falls sharply in price. The Middle East is suffering extensive losses. Russia steps into an alliance with Iran and China and pushes the EU.

2034 - Micro sensors appear capable of recording 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 services of 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, toilet bowls collect tests. Average life expectancy in developed countries reaches 90 years.

2041 - The ban on exploration activities in Antarctica will be lifted. World powers will immediately begin to develop deposits. As a result, the ecology of the White Continent will be destroyed. The next turn of the Arctic.

2042 - Humanity will cross the 9 billion mark.

2048 - The number of inhabitants of the Ocean is sharply reduced. People don't have enough fish.

2049 - Technologies of "programmable matter" will appear. Millions of microscopic devices will assemble into a swarm that will take on 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 superiority, 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 completely navigable. Active development of a new habitable territory will begin. In the same year, many animals that died out 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 capable of giving people immortality.

2080 - Due to global warming, the level of the Ocean will rise to such an extent that 70 million Africans will be in the flood zone.

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 personality onto a chip, which in turn integrates into any cybernetic shell of one's choice. Man has acquired immortality.

2100 - Due to global warming, a third of the land has turned into a desert. Now fresh water is valued like once oil. Russia, as always, is on horseback - its climate will only benefit from warming, and there is more than enough water here. Because of the huge amount of carbon dioxide. The oceans will become acidic, making it unsuitable for 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 exploration of space 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 predictions and accurately answer, what will happen in 100 years difficult, but many have already begun to think - if the outcome of events is exactly like this, then whether such a future is necessary for humanity. On the other hand, people once just did not trust cars and computers, and cinema and radio were generally considered almost magic. Nevertheless, today they are firmly rooted in our lives, and are an integral part of it. So, as they say, let's wait and see. what will happen in 100 years.

A few years ago, a special scientific project was created that simulated the situation of the complete simultaneous disappearance of humanity from the Earth, the future of the planet and life after people. This study had several weak points - in particular, the potential circumstances of the disappearance of people were completely ignored and the peculiarities of the operation of some iconic engineering structures were not provided. However, in general, this study was considered objective, and its results scientifically sound. So, here are just a few chronological marks of the supposed life of our world without us and the fate of the heritage of mankind:

• one day after the disappearance of people - power outages begin around the world: there is no one to replenish the fuel reserves of power plants, the operation of the turbines stops;
• a week after the disappearance of people - at most nuclear power plants, the water cooling the working zone of the reactors will evaporate, which will lead to accidents similar to the disasters in Chernobyl and Fukushima, and radiation contamination of nearby areas. In cities, on the one hand, fires will rage, on the other hand, real floods will begin due to breaks in water supply and sewer systems;
• a month after the disappearance of people - a new series of large fires, this time provoked by explosions of gas cylinders due to strong internal pressure. Many cities located below sea level and protected from the nearest rivers and lakes by dikes and dams will be partially or completely flooded;
• a year after the disappearance of people - settlements will begin to be actively populated by wild animals, including large predators. The cities themselves will gradually turn into islands of the jungle: grass, bushes and trees will begin to grow in the cracks of city streets, in the walls and on the roofs of buildings and structures;
• five years after the disappearance of people - the streets of cities will be covered with a layer of soil and turn into real thickets. All clock mechanisms (with the exception of atomic ones) will stop;
• fifty years after the disappearance of people - an active process of destruction of stone and concrete buildings, structures made of metal structures will remain, but the process of corrosion will begin. All near-Earth artificial satellites will go out of orbit and fall into the water. There will be no sources of electricity left on Earth - solar panels will be covered with a thick layer of dust and will not be able to capture sunlight. Many cities located close to the sea coast will be flooded with sea water slowly rising through inoperative drainage systems. Due to the destruction of storage facilities for toxic substances, mass poisoning of wildlife will occur;
• one hundred years after the disappearance of people - the collapse of most of the large-scale and especially durable structures of mankind, from the Brooklyn Bridge to Big Ben. Destruction of most items of material culture;
• a thousand years after the disappearance of people - only green hills covered with vegetation, with occasional episodic remains of stone and reinforced concrete structures, will remain from the cities. All modern information carriers - paper, magnetic tapes, laser disks - will cease to exist. The memory of civilization will be destroyed;
• ten thousand years after the disappearance of people - the only traces of the existence of mankind on earth will remain separate large-scale stone structures erected in antiquity using exclusively natural materials: the Egyptian pyramids, sections of the Great Wall of China, and the like.

Global cataclysms, epidemics of terrible diseases, incessant wars... all this leads humanity to the fact that sooner or later it may die. Having worked out this scenario in more detail, we can imagine events in which the entire population of the Earth will die out at the same time. What will the planet be like after the last representative of the human race disappears from it? Let's see.

Energy

A few hours after our disappearance, the lights around the world will begin to go out, as most power plants are powered by a constant supply of fossil fuels. If people do not fill them, they will stop.

After 48 hours, a low level of energy consumption will be noted, and the nuclear power plant will automatically go into safe mode.

Wind turbines will be able to continue working until the lubrication runs out, and solar panels will sooner or later cease to function due to the accumulation of dust on them.

Electricity will be cut off in almost all areas, except those that are recharged by hydroelectric power plants.

2-3 days after the disappearance of people, most of the metro will be flooded, because there will be no one to manage the pump system.

Animals

After 10 days, pets locked at home will begin to die of hunger and thirst. Billions of chickens, cows and other livestock will die.

Some animals will be able to get out into the wild and there they will have to fight for survival.

Ornamental animals, such as cats and dogs, cannot survive without humans and will be the first to die.

Large breeds of dogs will begin to unite in packs, preying on small dogs or other animals. In a few weeks there won't be any small dog breeds left. Many of the dogs that survive will crossbreed with wolves.

But many animals will be happy for the disappearance of people. For example, the big animals of the oceans, such as whales, will prosper, their numbers will go off scale.

Ecology

About a month after our disappearance, the water that cools all the equipment will disappear at nuclear power plants. This will cause explosions and accidents.

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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 is in for a series of warming and cooling periods. 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 severe blow to life.

But there will be other events as inevitable as the formation of the first granite crust. Myriads of living beings will die out forever. Doomed to extinction are tigers, polar bears, humpback whales, pandas, and gorillas. There is a high probability that humanity is also doomed. Many details of the earth's history are mostly unknown, if not completely unknowable. But the study of this history, as well as the laws of nature, gives an idea of ​​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 half way to its inevitable demise. For 4.5 billion years, the Sun shone fairly steadily, gradually increasing in brightness as it burned 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 reserves will run out. Smaller stars, reaching this stage, simply fade away, gradually decreasing in size and radiating 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 be only in the form of especially hardy microorganisms deep below the surface, where reserves of liquid water could still remain. However, the Sun does not face such a miserable death, since it has enough mass to have a reserve of nuclear fuel for another scenario. Recall that each star holds two opposing forces in balance. On the one hand, gravity pulls the stellar matter towards the center, reducing its volume as much as possible. On the other hand, nuclear reactions, like the 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 stage of burning hydrogen, having reached a stable
diameter of about 1,400,000 km - this size lasted 4.5 billion years and will last for about 5 billion years.

The Sun is large enough that after the end of the hydrogen burn-up phase, a new, powerful phase of helium burn-up begins. Helium, the product of the fusion of hydrogen atoms, can combine with other helium atoms to form carbon, but this stage in the Sun's evolution would be disastrous for the inner planets. Due to more active reactions based on helium, the Sun will become more and more, like a superheated balloon, turning into a pulsating red giant. It will swell up to the orbit of Mercury and simply swallow the tiny planet. It will reach the orbit of our neighbor Venus, swallowing her at the same time. The sun will swell a hundred times its current diameter - up to the orbit of the Earth.

The forecasts for the earthly endgame are quite gloomy. According to some black 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 incessantly 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 absorption. 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. Separate ecosystems of microorganisms can remain in the depths for another billion years, but its surface will never be covered with lush greenery.

Desert: 2 billion years later

Slowly but surely, even in the current calm period of burning hydrogen, the Sun is warming up more and more. At the very beginning, 4.5 billion years ago, the luminosity of the Sun was 70% of the current one. At the time of the Great Oxygen Event, 2.4 billion years ago, the glow intensity was already 85%. In a billion years, the Sun will shine even brighter.

For some time, perhaps even many hundreds of millions of years, the Earth's feedback will be able to mitigate this effect. 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. Increasing thermal energy means faster rock weathering, more carbon dioxide uptake, and lower greenhouse gas levels. Thus, negative feedbacks will preserve the conditions for sustaining life on Earth for quite a long time.

But the tipping point will inevitably come. Relatively small Mars reached this tipping point billions of years ago, losing all liquid water on its surface. In some 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, no snow-capped peaks, and even the poles will turn into tropics. For several million years, life can persist in such greenhouse conditions. But as the sun heats up and water evaporates into the atmosphere, hydrogen will begin to escape into space faster and faster, causing the planet to slowly dry out. When the oceans completely evaporate (which will probably happen in 2 billion years), the surface of the Earth will turn into a barren desert; life will be on the brink of destruction.

Novopangea, or Amasia: 250 million years later

Amazia

The death of the Earth is inevitable, but it will happen very, very soon. Looking to a less distant future paints a more attractive picture of a vibrant and relatively safe planet. To imagine the world in a few hundred million years, one should look in the past for clues to understanding the future. Global tectonic processes will continue to play their 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 about 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 ocean floor basalts. The basalt near the mid-ocean ridges is fairly young, no more than a few million years old. In contrast, the age of basalt near continental margins in subduction zones can reach more than 200 Ma. 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 mobile
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 ahead.

Given 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 mass 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 the subject of scientific controversy. Assembling Novopangea is a tricky game. It is possible to take into account the current shifts 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 about 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
stands 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 on the site of the collision a mountain range the size of the Himalayas, in comparison with which the Alps will seem like mere dwarfs. Thus, the map of the world in 20 million years will seem familiar, but slightly skewed. When modeling a world map for 100 million years ahead, most developers identify common geographical features, for example, agreeing that the Atlantic Ocean will overtake the Pacific Ocean in size and become the largest water basin on Earth.

From this point on, however, models of the future diverge. According to one theory, extraversion, the Atlantic Ocean will continue to open up and the Americas will eventually collide with Asia, Australia and Antarctica as a result. In the later stages of this supercontinent assembly, N America will close the Pacific Ocean to the east and collide with Japan, and S America will curl clockwise from the southeast, joining the equatorial part of Antarctica. All of these parts are amazingly combined with each other. Novopangea will be a single continent, stretching from east to west along the equator.

The main thesis of the extraversion model is that the large convection cells of the mantle located under the tectonic plates will be preserved in their present form. An alternative approach, called introversion, takes the opposite view, referring to previous cycles of closing and opening of the Atlantic Ocean. Reconstructing the position of the Atlantic over the last billion years (or a similar ocean located between the two Americas to the west and Europe, along with Africa to 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, the precursor of the Atlantic Ocean was formed, called Iapetus, or Iapetus (after the ancient Greek titan Iapetus, the father of Atlas).

Iapetus turned out to be closed after the assembly of Pangea. When this supercontinent began to break apart 175 million years ago, the Atlantic Ocean formed. According to proponents of introversion (perhaps we should not call them introverts), the continuing expansion of the Atlantic Ocean 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 gigantic L-shaped continent includes the same parts as New Pangea, but in this model both Americas form its western margin.

At present, both models of supercontinents (extroversion and introversion) are not without merit and are still popular. Whatever the outcome of this controversy, everyone agrees that although in 250 million years the Earth's geography will change significantly, it will still reflect the past. The temporary assembly of the continents around the equator will lessen the impact of ice ages and moderate sea level changes. Where continents collide, mountain ranges will rise, climate and vegetation will change, and the levels of oxygen and carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will fluctuate. These changes will be repeated throughout the history of the Earth.

Collision: the coming 50 million years

A recent survey on how humanity will die reflected a very low asteroid impact rate of something like 1 in 100,000. Statistically, this is the same as the probability of death from a lightning strike or a tsunami. But there is an obvious flaw in this prediction. As a rule, lightning kills about 60 times a year, one person at a time. In contrast, an asteroid impact may not have killed a single person in several thousand years. But one far from perfect day, a modest blow can destroy everyone in general.

Chances are good that we have nothing to worry about, and hundreds of generations to come, too. But there is no doubt that one day there will be a major catastrophe like the one that killed the dinosaurs. In the coming 50 million years, the Earth will have to experience such a blow, perhaps even more than one. 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 Earth's near-circular orbit. At least 300 such potential killers are known, and some of them will pass dangerously close to Earth in the next few decades. On February 22, 1995, an asteroid discovered at the last moment, which received the decent name 1995 CR, whistled quite close - several Earth-Moon distances. On September 29, 2004, the asteroid Tautatis, an oblong object approximately 5.4 km in diameter, passed even closer. In 2029, the asteroid Apophis, a fragment approximately 325-340 m in diameter, should get even closer, entering deep into the lunar orbit. This unpleasant neighborhood will inevitably change Apophis' own orbit and, perhaps, bring it even closer to Earth in the future.

For every known asteroid that crosses the Earth's orbit, there are a dozen or more that have yet to be discovered. When such a flying object is eventually discovered, it may be too late to do anything. If we are targeted, we may only have a few days to avert the danger. Dispassionate statistics gives us collision probability calculations. Almost every year, fragments of about 10 m in diameter fall to Earth. Due to the decelerating effect of the atmosphere, most of these projectiles explode and disintegrate into
small parts before touching the surface. But objects with a diameter of 30 meters or more, which occur about once every thousand years, lead to significant destruction at the sites of impact: in June 1908, such a body collapsed in the taiga near the Podkamennaya Tunguska River in Russia. Very dangerous, about a kilometer in diameter, stone 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 falls. (For example, the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs 65 million years ago was estimated to be about 10 km across.) If a 15 km pebble falls into the ocean - 70% probability, taking into account the ratio of water and land areas - then almost all mountains on the globe, except for the highest ones, will be swept away by destructive waves. Everything that is below 1000 m above sea level will disappear.

If an asteroid of this size were to hit land, the destruction would be more localized. Everything within a radius of two to three thousand kilometers will be destroyed, and devastating fires will sweep across the entire mainland, which will turn out to be an unfortunate target. For a time, areas distant from the impact may be able to avoid the consequences of the fall, but such an impact will throw into the air an immense amount of dust from the destroyed stones and soil, littering the atmosphere with dusty clouds reflecting sunlight for years. Photosynthesis will practically come to naught. Vegetation will die and the food chain will break. Part of humanity
may survive this catastrophe, but civilization as we know it will be destroyed.

Small objects will cause less devastating consequences, but any asteroid more than a hundred meters in diameter, whether it crashes onto land or into the sea, will cause a natural disaster worse than we know. What to do? Can we ignore the threat as something distant, not so significant in a world already full of problems that need to be addressed immediately? Is there any way to deflect a large piece of debris?

The late, perhaps the most charismatic and influential member of the scientific community in the last half century, thought a lot about asteroids. In public and private conversations, and mostly in his famous TV show "Cosmos", he advocated 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, an asteroid impact very close to us less than a thousand years ago. If such an object crashed to Earth, millions of people would die. “Earth is a tiny corner in the vast arena of space,” he said. “It is unlikely that anyone will come to our aid.”

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

But what if we find a large object that could crash into us in a few years? Sagan, and with him a number of other scientists and the military, believe that the most obvious way is to cause a deviation in the asteroid's trajectory. If started on time, then even a slight push from a rocket or a few directed 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 program of space research. In a prophetic 1993 article, Sagan wrote: “Since the threat of asteroids and comets affects every habitable 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, it is necessary to create bases on the Moon, although our luminous satellite will remain an inhospitable world for life and work for a long time to come. The next one is Mars, where there are more solid resources - not only large reserves of frozen groundwater, but also sunlight, minerals and a rarefied, but atmosphere. This will not be an easy or cheap undertaking, and it is unlikely that Mars will become a prosperous colony in the near future. But if we settle there and cultivate the soil, our promising neighbor may well become an important stage in the evolution of mankind.

Two obvious obstacles may delay, if not make impossible the settlement of people on Mars. The first is money. The tens of billions of dollars that will be needed to develop and operate a mission to Mars exceed even the most optimistic NASA budget, and this is under favorable financial conditions. International cooperation would be the only way out, but so far no such major international programs have taken place.

Another problem is the issue of the survival of astronauts, since it is practically impossible to ensure a safe flight to Mars and back. The cosmos is harsh, with its countless meteorite grains of sand that can pierce 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 trips to the moon, were unspeakably lucky that nothing happened at that 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 enough fuel for a return flight. Some inventors are talking about processing Martian water to synthesize rocket fuel and fill tanks for a return flight, but so far this is in the realm of dreams, and in a very distant future. Perhaps the most logical solution so far - the one that so hurts NASA's vanity but is actively supported by the press - is a one-way flight. If we had sent an expedition, providing it with food instead of rocket fuel for many years, reliable shelter and a greenhouse, seeds, oxygen and water, tools for extracting vital resources on the Red Planet itself, such an expedition could take place. It would be unthinkably dangerous, but all the great pioneers were in danger - such was the circumnavigation of Magellan in 1519-1521, the expedition to the West by Lewis and Clark in 1804-1806, the polar expeditions of Peary and Amundsen at the beginning of the 20th century. Mankind has not lost its gambling desire to participate in such risky ventures. If NASA announces the registration of volunteers for a one-way flight to Mars, thousands of specialists will sign up without hesitation.

In 50 million years, the Earth will still be a living and habitable planet, and its blue oceans and green continents will shift but remain recognizable. Much less obvious is the fate of mankind. Maybe man will die out as a species. In this case, 50 million years is enough to erase almost all traces of our brief dominion - all cities, roads, monuments will be weathered much earlier than the deadline. Some alien paleontologists will have to work hard to find the smallest traces of our existence in near-surface sediments.

However, a person can survive, and even evolve, colonize first the nearest planets, and then the nearest stars. In this case, if our descendants enter the cosmic space, then the Earth will be valued even higher - as a reserve, museum, shrine and place of pilgrimage. Perhaps only by leaving their planet, humanity will finally truly appreciate the birthplace of our species.

Changing the Map of the Earth: The Next Million Years

In many ways, in a million years, the Earth won't change all that much. Of course, the continents will shift, but not more than 45-60 km from their current location. The sun will continue to shine, rising every twenty-four hours, and the moon will revolve around the earth in about one month. But some things will change quite fundamentally. In many parts of the world, irreversible geological processes are transforming the landscape. The vulnerable contours of the ocean coasts will change especially noticeably. Calvert County, Maryland, one of my favorite places, where the Miocene rocks with their seemingly limitless reserves of fossils 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 annually by almost 30 cm. At this rate, the county of Calvert will not last even 50 thousand years, not like a million.

Other states, on the contrary, will acquire valuable land plots. An active underwater volcano off the southeast coast of the largest of the Hawaiian Islands has already risen above 3000 m (although it is still covered with water) and is growing every year. In a million years, a new island will rise from the ocean waves, already called Loihi. At the same time, extinct volcanic islands to the northwest, including Maui, Oahu, and Kauai, will shrink, respectively, under the influence of wind and ocean waves.

With regard to waves, those who study rocks for future changes conclude that the most active factor in changing the geography of the Earth will be the advance and retreat of the ocean. A change in the rate of rift volcanism will take a very, very long time to affect, depending on how much more or less lava solidifies on the ocean floor. Sea levels can drop significantly during lulls in volcanic activity, when the bottom rocks cool and calm down: scientists believe this is what 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 rallying and splitting of continents, cause significant changes in the size of coastal shelf areas, which will also play an important role in shaping the geosphere and biosphere over the coming million years.

A million years is tens of thousands of generations in the life of mankind, which is hundreds of times greater 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, and in such a way that it is difficult even to 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 the biosphere will quickly restore the pre-industrial balance.

Megavolcanoes: the next 100 thousand years

A sudden catastrophic asteroid impact pales in comparison to a sustained megavolcano eruption or a continuous basaltic lava flow. Volcanism on a planetary scale accompanied almost all five mass extinctions, including the one caused by an asteroid impact. The effects of megavolcanism should not be confused with the mediocre destruction and loss of normal volcanic eruptions. Regular eruptions are accompanied by lava flows familiar to the inhabitants of the Hawaiian Islands who live on the slopes of Kilauea, whose dwellings and everything in their path are destroyed by it, but in general such eruptions are limited, predictable and easy to avoid. Somewhat more dangerous in this category are the ordinary eruptions of pyroclastic volcanoes, 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 eruption of Mount St. Helena, Washington, and Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines in 1991; these disasters would have killed thousands of people if not for the early warning and mass evacuations.

An even more formidable danger is the third type of volcanic activity: the release of huge masses of fine ash and poisonous gases into the upper atmosphere. The eruptions of the Icelandic volcanoes Eyjafjallajokull (April 2010) and Grímsvotn (May 2011) are relatively weak, since they were accompanied by emissions of less than 4 km^3 of ash. Nevertheless, they paralyzed air traffic in Europe for several days and harmed the health of many people from 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 turned out to be quite enough to envelop Europe in poisonous haze for a long time. This killed a quarter of the population of Iceland, some of whom died from direct poisoning by acidic volcanic gases, and most from starvation during the winter. The consequences of the disaster affected more than a thousand kilometers to the southeast, and tens of thousands of Europeans, mostly residents of the British Isles, died from the lingering effects of this eruption.

But the deadliest was the eruption of the Tambora volcano in April 1815, during which more than 20 km3 of lava was ejected. At the same time, more than 70 thousand people died, most of them from mass starvation resulting from the damage done to agriculture. The Tambor eruption was accompanied by the release of huge masses of sulfur dioxide into the upper atmosphere, which blocked the sun's rays and plunged the Northern Hemisphere into a "year without sunlight" ("volcanic winter") in 1816. These historical events still amaze the imagination, and not without reason. Of course, the number of victims is nothing compared to the hundreds of thousands of people who died from the 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 cracking; the strength of the rock can cause a very destructive, but still local earthquake - magnitude nine on the Richter scale.

In contrast, volcanic eruptions have no limits in scale. In fact, geological data irrefutably testify to eruptions hundreds of times more powerful than the volcanic catastrophes 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 for many millions (not thousands!) of square kilometers. The giant Taupo volcano eruption on the North Island, New Zealand, occurred 26,500 years ago; more than 830 km^3 of igneous lava and ash were erupted.

The Toba volcano in Sumatra exploded 74,000 years ago and erupted over 2,800 km^3 of lava. It is difficult to imagine the consequences of a similar catastrophe in the modern world. Yet these supervolcanoes, which created the greatest cataclysms in the history of the Earth, 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 uninterrupted 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 dinosaurs 65 million years ago, which is often attributed to a collision with a large asteroid, coincided with a giant basaltic lava spill in India, which gave rise to the largest igneous province of the Deccan Traps, the total area of ​​\u200b\u200bwhich is about 517,000 km2, and the volume of the grown mountains reaches 500,000 km ^3.

These vast territories could not have formed as a result of a simple transformation of the crust and the upper part of the mantle. Modern models of basalt formations reflect the idea of ​​the ancient era of vertical tectonics, when giant bubbles of magma slowly rose from the boundaries of the red-hot core of the mantle, splitting the earth's crust and splashing onto the cold surface. Such occurrences are extremely rare these days. 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 is little we can do to counter this most severe of earthly tests.

The Ice Factor: The Next 50,000 Years

In the foreseeable future, the most significant factor determining the appearance of the earth's continents is ice. For hundreds of thousands of years, ocean depth is highly dependent on the total volume of frozen water on Earth, 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 the ancient oceans? Satellite observations of ocean levels, while incredibly accurate, have been limited to the last two decades. Sea level measurements by level gauges, although less accurate and subject to local variations, have been collected over the past century and a half. Coastal geologists may be able to map signs of ancient coastlines—for example, elevated coastal terraces that can be identified from coastal marine sediments dating back tens of thousands of years—such elevated areas may reflect periods of rising water levels. The relative positions of fossil corals, which typically grow in the sun-warmed shallow ocean shelf, could extend our record of past events back into the ages, but this record will be distorted as such geological formations sporadically rise, sink, and tilt.

A less obvious indicator of sea level has come to the attention of many experts - changes in oxygen isotope ratios in small shells of marine mollusks. Such ratios can tell much more than the distance between any celestial body and the Sun. Due to their ability to respond to temperature changes, oxygen isotopes provide the key to deciphering the volume of the Earth's ice cover in the past and, accordingly, to changes in the water level in the ancient ocean. However, the relationship between the amount of ice and oxygen isotopes is a tricky one. 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 in 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 the 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 the cooler layers of the atmosphere, heavy oxygen-18 water condenses into raindrops faster than lighter oxygen-16 water, and the oxygen in the cloud becomes even lighter.

In the process of the inevitable movement of clouds to the poles, the oxygen in their constituent water molecules becomes much lighter than in sea water. When precipitation falls over polar glaciers and glaciers, light isotopes solidify in the ice and sea water 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 the retreat of glaciers, the level of oxygen-18 in sea water 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 colleagues at Rutgers University have been doing for decades, studying the thick layers of marine sediments that cover the coast in New Jersey. These deposits, which record the geological history of the last 100,000 years, are saturated with the shells of microscopic fossil organisms called foraminifers. Each tiny foraminifera stores in its composition oxygen isotopes in the same proportion as it was in the ocean at the time when the organism grew up. Layer-by-layer measurement of oxygen isotopes in New Jersey's coastal sediments provides a simple and accurate means of estimating the amount of ice in a given time period.

In the recent geologic past, the ice cover has alternated between shrinking and expanding, accompanied by corresponding large fluctuations in sea level every few thousand years. At the peak of the ice ages, more than 5% of the planet's water turned into ice, lowering the sea level by a hundred meters relative to today. It is believed that about 20 thousand years ago, during one of these periods of low water standing, 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 a dry valley ran between the British Isles and France. During periods of maximum warming, when glaciers practically disappeared and snow caps thinned on the tops of the mountains, the sea level rose, becoming about 100 m higher than the current one, submerging hundreds of thousands of square kilometers of coastal territories all over the planet under water.

Miller and his collaborators have calculated over a hundred cycles of advance and retreat of glaciers over the past 9 million years, and at least a dozen of them occur in the last million - the range of these frenzied sea level fluctuations reached 180 m. One cycle may differ slightly from another, but the events occur with obvious periodicity and are associated with the so-called Milankovitch cycles, named after the Serbian astronomer Milutin Milanković, who discovered them about a century ago. He found that well-known changes in the parameters of the Earth's motion around the Sun, including the tilt of the Earth's axis, the eccentricity of the elliptical orbit, and a slight oscillation of its own axis of rotation, cause periodic changes in climate at intervals from 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 more than once it will fall, then rise. Sometimes, probably over the next 20,000 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 at least eight times in the last million years. This will have a powerful effect on the contours of continental coastlines. The East Coast of the United States will expand many kilometers eastward,
as the shallow continental slope becomes exposed. All the major harbors on the East Coast, from Boston to Miami, will be dry inland plateaus. Alaska will be connected to Russia by a new ice-covered isthmus, and the British Isles may again become part of mainland Europe. Rich fisheries along the continental shelves will become part of the land.

As for the sea level, if it falls, then it must certainly rise. It is quite possible, even very likely, that in the next thousand years the sea level will rise by 30 m or more. Such a rise in the level of the World Ocean, rather modest by geological standards, would unrecognizably redraw the map of the United States. A 30-meter sea level rise will inundate much of the coastal plains on the East Coast, pushing coastlines up to 150 kilometers to the west. 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. It will flood almost all of Florida, and a shallow sea will stretch on the site 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, Maldives. Geological data irrefutably testify that such changes will occur in the future. If warming is rapid, as many experts believe, water levels will rise rapidly, by about 30 cm per decade. The normal thermal expansion of seawater during periods of global warming can increase sea level rise by an average of three meters. Undoubtedly, this will be a problem for humanity, but will have a very small impact on the Earth. Still, it 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 a few billion years ahead, just as we do not look a few million years or even a thousand years. We have more pressing concerns: how will I pay for my child's college education ten years from now? 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 have nothing to worry about. Barring an unforeseen catastrophe, our planet will hardly change in a year, in ten years. Any difference between what is now and what will be in a year is almost imperceptible, even if the summer turns out to be unusually hot, or the crop suffers from drought, or an unusually strong storm comes up.

And such changes are observed all over the globe. From the shores of Chesapeake Bay, tides are reporting a steady rise in tide levels compared to previous decades. Year after year, the Sahara is spreading further north, turning Morocco's once fertile farmland into a dusty desert. The ice of Antarctica is rapidly melting and breaking apart. Average air and water temperatures are constantly rising. All of this reflects a process of progressive global warming - a process that the Earth has experienced countless times in the past and will continue to 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 large temperature differences between the equator and high latitudes. If, as a result of global warming, the temperature contrast decreases, as some climate models suggest, then the Gulf Stream may weaken or stop altogether. Ironically, the immediate result of this change will be the transformation of the temperate climate of the British Isles and Northern Europe, which are now
heated by the Gulf Stream, in a much cooler one. Similar changes will occur in other ocean currents - for example, from the Indian Ocean to the South Atlantic past the Horn of Africa - this may cause a cooling of the mild climate of South Africa or a change in the monsoonal climate that provides part 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 rise in sea water levels can fluctuate within a few centimeters. Such changes in sea level will affect many coastal residents around the world and will be 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 inhabitants may not worry about the advance of the sea on land. However, individual species of animals and plants can suffer much more seriously.

The melting of polar ice in the north will reduce the range of polar bears, which is very unfavorable for the conservation of the population, whose numbers are already declining. The rapid shift of climatic zones towards the poles will adversely affect other species, especially birds, which are particularly susceptible to changes in seasonal migration and feeding areas. According to some reports, the average increase in global temperature of just a couple of degrees, which most climate models of the coming century suggest, could reduce bird numbers by almost 40% in Europe and more than 70% in the fertile rainforests of northeastern Australia. A major international report says that out of about 6,000 species of frogs, toads and lizards, one in three will be at risk, mainly due to the spread of a fungal disease that is deadly to amphibians, provoked by a warm climate. Whatever other effects of warming may be revealed in the coming century, it seems that we are entering a period of accelerated extinction.

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

Between very slow and rapid changes are geological processes that usually take centuries or even millennia - changes in climate, sea levels and ecosystems that can go unnoticed for generations. The main threat is not the changes themselves, but their degree. For the state of the climate, the position of the sea level, or the very existence of ecosystems can reach a critical level. The acceleration of positive feedback processes can hit our world unexpectedly. What usually takes a millennium can
emerge in a decade or two.

It's easy to be in a good mood if you misread the rock record. For some 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 formidable event, called the Late Paleocene thermal maximum, caused the comparatively abrupt extinction of thousands of species. The study of the thermal maximum is important for our time, as it is the most famous, documented temperature shift in the history of the Earth. Volcanic activity caused a relatively rapid increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide and methane, two inseparable greenhouse gases, which in turn led to a positive feedback loop that lasted over a thousand years and was accompanied by moderate global warming. Some researchers see in the Late Paleocene thermal maximum a clear parallel with the current situation, of course, unfavorable - with an increase 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 recent findings by Lee Kemp, a geologist at the University of Pennsylvania, and his colleagues has left us with almost no reason for optimism. In 2008, Kemp's team gained access to materials recovered from drilling in Norway, which made it possible to trace the events of the Late Paleocene thermal maximum in detail - in sedimentary rocks, layer by layer, the finest details of the rate of change in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and climate are captured. The bad news is that the thermal high, which is more than a decade
considered the fastest climate shift in Earth's history, was driven by changes in atmospheric composition ten times as intense as what is happening today. Global changes in the composition of the atmosphere and the average temperature, formed over a thousand years and eventually led to extinction, have occurred in our time during the last hundred years, during which mankind has burned huge amounts of hydrocarbon fuel.

This is an unprecedented rapid change, and no one can predict how the Earth will react to this. At the Prague conference in August 2011, which brought together three thousand geochemists, there was a very sad mood among specialists, sobered by the new data of 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 intimidating. The concentration of the greenhouse gas is increasing too rapidly, and the mechanisms for absorbing this excess are unknown. Won't this cause a massive release of methane with all the subsequent positive feedbacks that such a development entails? Will the sea level rise by a hundred meters, as has happened more than once in the past? We are entering the terra incognita zone, performing a poorly designed experiment on a global scale, the likes of which the Earth has not experienced in the past.

Judging by the rock data, no matter how resilient life may be to shocks, the biosphere is in great tension at the turning points of sudden climatic shifts. Biological productivity, in particular agricultural productivity, will fall to a catastrophic level for some time. In a rapidly changing environment, large animals, including humans, will pay a heavy price. The interdependence of rocks and the biosphere will not weaken, but the role of humanity in this saga, lasting billions of years, remains incomprehensible.

Maybe we have already reached a tipping point? Perhaps not in the current decade, perhaps not in 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 people of Egypt are in revolt. The stock market is crashing. We realize what is happening only in retrospect, when it is too late to restore the status quo. And there was no such restoration in the history of the Earth.

An excerpt from Robert Hazen's book:

Human civilization is developing very quickly. Only five thousand years ago, the first nodular writing appeared - and today we have already learned how to exchange terabytes of information at the speed of light. And the pace of progress is growing.

Predicting what human impact on our planet will look like even in a thousand years is almost impossible. However, scientists like to fantasize about what awaits the Earth in the future if our civilization suddenly disappears. Let us, following them, imagine an unusual situation: for example, in the 22nd century all earthlings will fly away to Alpha Centauri - in this case, what awaits our abandoned world?

global extinction

Through its activities, mankind constantly influences the natural cycle of substances. In fact, we have become another element capable of causing a cataclysm of unprecedented proportions. We are changing the biosphere and climate, extracting minerals and producing mountains of garbage. But, despite our power, it will take only a few thousand years for nature to return to its former "wild" state. Skyscrapers will collapse, tunnels will collapse, communications will rust, dense forest will conquer the territory of cities.

Since emissions of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere will stop, nothing can prevent the onset of a new ice age - this will happen in about 25 thousand years. The glacier will begin to advance from the north, holding down Europe, Siberia and part of the North American continent.

It is clear that the last evidence of the existence of civilization will be buried and ground into fine dust under many kilometers of creeping ice. However, the biosphere will suffer the most damage. Having mastered the planet, mankind practically destroyed natural ecological niches, which led to one of the most mass extinctions of animals in history.

The departure of mankind will not stop this process, because the chains of interaction between organisms have already been broken. Extinction will continue for more than 5 million years. Large mammals and many species of birds will completely disappear. The biological diversity of fauna will decrease. An obvious evolutionary advantage will be received by genetically modified plants, which scientists have adapted to the most severe conditions of existence.

Such plants run wild, but being protected from pests, they will quickly capture the vacant niches, giving rise to new species. Moreover, during these millions of years, two dwarf stars will pass close to the Sun, which will inevitably lead to a change in the planetary characteristics of the Earth, a hail of comets will fall on the planet. Such catastrophic phenomena will further accelerate the pestilence among the species of animals and plants known to us. Who will replace them?

Rebirth of Pangea

It has long been established that the earth's continents move, albeit very slowly: at a speed of several centimeters per year. During a human life, this drift is practically imperceptible, but over millions of years it can radically change the geography of the Earth.

In the Paleozoic era, there was a single continent Pangea on the planet, washed from all sides by the waves of the World Ocean (scientists gave the ocean a separate name - Panthalassa). Approximately 200 million years ago, the supercontinent split into two, which, in turn, also continued to break up. Now the planet is waiting for the reverse process - the next reunification of land into a common colossal territory, which scientists have dubbed Neopangea (or Pangea Ultima).

It will look something like this: in 30 million years, Africa will merge into Eurasia; in 60 million years Australia will crash into East Asia; in 150 million years, Antarctica will join the Eurasian-African-Australian supercontinent; in 250 million years both Americas will be added to them - the process of formation of Neopangea will be completed.

Continental drift and collisions will significantly affect the climate. New mountain ranges will appear, changing the movement of air currents. Due to the fact that ice will cover most of the Neopangea, the level of the World Ocean will noticeably decrease. The global temperature of the planet will fall, but the amount of oxygen in the atmosphere will increase. In regions with a tropical climate (and there will always be such, despite the cooling), an explosive multiplication of species will begin.

Insects (cockroaches, scorpions, dragonflies, centipedes) develop best in such an environment, and again, as in the Carboniferous period, they will become the real "kings" of nature. At the same time, the central regions of Neopangea will be an endless scorched desert, since rain clouds simply cannot reach them. The temperature difference between the central and coastal regions of the supercontinent will cause monstrous monsoons and hurricanes.

However, Neopangea will not last long by historical standards - about 50 million years. Due to powerful volcanic activity, colossal cracks will cut through the supercontinent, and parts of Neopangea will separate, setting off into “free floating”. The planet will again enter a period of warming, and the level of oxygen will fall, threatening the biosphere with another mass extinction. Some chance of survival will remain for those creatures that will adapt to life on the border of land and ocean - first of all, amphibians.

New person

In the press and science fiction, one can come across speculative assertions that man continues to evolve, and in a few million years our descendants will be as different from us as we are different from monkeys. In fact, human evolution stopped at the moment when we found ourselves outside natural selection, gaining independence from changes in the external environment and defeating most diseases.

Modern medicine makes it possible to be born and grow up even to such children who would be doomed to death in the womb. In order for a person to start evolving again, he must lose his mind and return to an animal state (before the invention of fire and stone tools), and this is almost impossible due to the high development of our brain. Therefore, if a new person ever appears on Earth, he is unlikely to come from our evolutionary branch.

For example, our descendants can enter into a symbiosis with a closely related species: when a weaker but smarter monkey controls a more massive and formidable creature, literally living on the back of its neck. Another exotic option is that a person will move to the ocean, becoming another marine mammal, but due to climate change and a lack of resources, he will return to land in the form of a clumsy "aquabiota" crawling in search of food. Or the development of telepathic abilities will direct the evolution of new people in an unexpected direction: there will be communities of "hive" in which individuals will be specialized, like bees or ants ...

After 250 million years, the galactic year will end, that is, the solar system will make a complete revolution around the center of the galaxy. By that time, the Earth will be completely transformed, and any of us, if he gets into such a distant future, is unlikely to recognize his native planet in it. The only thing that will remain at that time from our entire civilization is the small footprints on the moon left by American astronauts.

Paleontologists have established that mass extinctions of animals were a periodic phenomenon in the Earth's past. There are five mass extinctions: Ordovician-Silurian, Devonian, Permian, Triassic and Cretaceous-Paleogene. The most terrible was the "great" Permian extinction 252 million years ago, which killed 96% of all marine species and 70% of terrestrial animal species. Moreover, it also affected insects, which usually manage to avoid the disastrous consequences of a biospheric catastrophe.

Scientists have not been able to determine the causes of the global pestilence. The most popular hypothesis says that a sharp increase in volcanic activity led to the Permian extinction, which changed not only the climate, but also the chemical composition of the atmosphere.

Anton Pervushin