woodsman25 wrote:
It is very likly life on Earth will continue to survive dispite likly doomsday scinarios like astroids, Nuclear war, and climate change. Life is tough, it can adapt and survive. Life changes and over time new species replace old ones that cant survive the new climate.
Earth will have to get really REALLY bad and change VERY VERY quickly in order to wipe out all life on it. Even nuclear war, a man made disaster I highly doubt would kill off most of the life on Earth, sure it would kill lots, and distroy human civilization, but it may even be likly some humans can even survive that.
A billion years even on a cosmic scale is not exactly a blip in time, well if you beleive in the big bang anyways. If not I suppose time is infinite, and so like second a billion years would only be a blip I guess. I think our nearest star could go thru drastic changes and life can still adapt, and survive, at least for a while anyways.
I know many of the people I used to go to high school with, those of us who had this similar interest beleived stars burned hydrogen and produced helium + energy. The truth is stars can burn other elements also such as carbon, and oxygen. This is possible because all stars have different amounts of mass, heat and pressure. It only taks a small difference in heat or pressure or mass to make a HUGE difference in how the star burns the different types of fuel they posess.
Early stars did not have fuel like oxygen and carbon, The early universe only have hydrogen as the only element and over time helium and other elements occured in the nuclear reactioons during the stars main sequence and even after it died, releasing even MORE energy then the start could produce in its entire lifetime of nuclear fusion.
According to the Big Bang scenario, some helium and even a trace of lithium was formed before the first stars lit up. As for life, there are limits as to how much it can adapt. High temps can really put the kibosh on complicated chemistry.
28 Feb 2008, 3:44 pm
