Happy Earth Day: Here Are 8 Ways Life on Our Planet Could Be Wiped Out

Let's take a look at the ways life on Earth could be wiped out by our own hands, and by forces out of our control.

Apr 22, 2015
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Image via Complex Original
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Image via Complex Original

Happy Earth Day, Earthlings.

April 22 was designated as a day to bring attention to environmental protection in 1970, and has since become the one day you definitely feel guilty for letting the water run too long while you're in the shower (looking at you, Californians). The awareness raised during the event is important, and any event that informs the public about the damage our everyday activities do to the planet, and the urgency to live our lives more sustainably is a good one in my book. Unfortunately, for some climate change deniers, oil lobbyists, and politicians, there might as well not even be an Earth Day. 

But companies like Apple are getting the word out about recycling electronics, Jessica Alba's startup is promoting the Toxic Substances Control Act, and Leonardo DiCaprio is promising to build an eco-friendly resort on his private island. The NSA is even celebrating the day with this mascot they plucked from some six-year-old's nightmare.

We thought we'd do things a bit differently today, and take a look at the ways life on Earth could be wiped out by our own hands, and by forces out of our control. Even though we're a tiny sphere cruising through the intergalactic highways, Earth is our home (for now), and should be treated with care. We may very well be obliterated one day by some distant force, so let's make the time we have here the best we can for humans, animals, and nature.

Here are just a few of the potential threats that could wipe out humanity as we know it.

The Big Crunch

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During the Big Bang, all the material that comprises the Universe was compressed into a tiny point (some say about the size of a briefcase), then, BANG! Matter shot out and the Universe expanded. And expanded. And expanded. Billions and billions of years passed, and the Universe cooled, galaxies formed, solar systems spouted up, and, hey, here we are in the midst of all of it.

The Big Crunch is a theory about what happens once the expansion of the Universe reverses, and everything starts closing back in on itself. Gravity pulls on matter, the Universe contracts, and either ends up as a black hole singularity (think Interstellar), or another Big Bang happens. Of course, Earth, humans, and any other life in the Universe wouldn't survive.

Gamma-Ray Bursts

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Gamma-ray bursts are the considered the most powerful electromagnetic explosions in the Universe—from what we know.

They can last as long as several minutes, or be over in a couple of milliseconds. The beams (as seen in the illustration above) are released during a supernova or hypernova. They've only been observed in distant galaxies, luckily for us. Scientists believe if one went off in our galaxy, it could wreck havoc if the beams were pointed in Earth's direction, even if it was thousands of light-years away. Earth wouldn't explode into a million fragments, like how Alderaan was destroyed by the Death Star in Star Wars, but the radiation from a Gamma-ray burst would damage a large section of the planet's atmosphere, and would lead to a mass extinction.

It's already believed that a gamma-ray burst sometime in the last billion years may have sparked a mass extinction, such as Ordovician extinction 440 million years ago. 

Super-Volcano Eruptions

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Super-volcano eruptions, while rare, have a significant affect on the Earth's climate that can last for years.

The most recent eruption, only 200 years ago in Indonesia by way of Mount Tambora, threw so much material into the planet's atmosphere that it cooled Earth for several years after. Go back nearly 70,000 years, in Indonesia's Lake Toba, and you'll find the site of one of the largest eruptions to have ever occurred. The Toba super-volcanic eruption caused a volcanic winter that lasted almost a decade, and cooled the planet for close to a 1,000 years. But to really grasp the magnitude of a super-volcano's power, let's look at the Siberian Traps eruption, which occurred 250 million years ago and started an era of Earth's history known as "The Great Dying." The eruption was violent enough that the climate fluctuated between extreme heat and cold for so long that 95 percent of all life died. 

If you've heard of super-volcanoes recently, than you probably heard of the volcano caldera located in Yellowstone National Park—which could blow centuries into the future and cause immense destruction of life on the planet. 

Asteroids

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Perhaps the most popular example of extinction, the dinosaurs were taken out by an asteroid 65 million years ago—a gargantuan asteroid that may have been six miles long. But our atmosphere causes enough friction that the vast amounts of meteorites (asteroids are known as meteorites when they enter the atmosphere) that hit our atmosphere everyday burn up into nothingness, or cause spectacular events, like this one:

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That is from the Chelyabinsk blast over Russia in February 2013. The explosion from this meteorite equaled a half-million tons of TNT exploding in the sky, which shattered windows and injured hundreds of people in the area. That meteorite is said to have been about the size of a house. While meteorites, on average, are about the size of a small car when they enter the atmosphere and make nice shooting stars on a clear night, an asteroid a mile in size would be enough to wipe out our civilization if it hit. 

Observatories around the globe are scanning the skies to look out for threats, and so far, there's been a few guys that have gotten pretty close, but nothing that has caused global alarm. 

The Death of the Sun

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This is the "slow burn" of the many ways our planet could be destroyed.

Our star is growing, and will continue to grow until its death in 5 to 10 billion years—but, we may only have a billion years of that left until the sun grows to a size that makes life here a living hell. Still, that's a long time for us to get our heads together to find another planet to call home. Any humans or and animals on the planet during this period will have died out from the sheer heat of the sun long before it grows to a size that will crush the planet in full. 

As long as some extinction event doesn't take humans out before this happens, we will have likely sought out other planets to survive on, but for those hipsters of the future who may want to save Earth, it may be possible to move it to a safer orbit until the sun dies.

Methane Released From Permafrost Melting

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Permafrost is frozen ground that stays frozen all year—and roughly 25 percent of the Northern Hemisphere is covered in this frozen layer of ice. Yet, as the planet warms, the permafrost melts, and the dead plants beneath are exposed to microbes that'll feast on the material. Either carbon dioxide or methane will be released during the process, and while much of it will be carbon dioxide, a small but powerful amount of methane is all that is needed to warm the planet significantly. As this surge in warming causes the rest of the permafrost to melt more quickly, more methane is released, temperatures rise, and rise, and rise.

Explosions from methane released from melting permafrost are said to have caused dozens of craters, like this one that recently went viral:

Nuclear War

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According the Physics Today, it would take 100 Hiroshima-sized bombs to plunge the world into a nuclear winter due to a damaged ozone layer and leave humans to deal with the lowest temperatures in a 1,000 years. If 1,000 bombs were deployed, the results would be catastrophic. Aside from the blasts and effects to the climate, radioactive particles carried around the globe would take out much of anything that survived.

While this is something that we shouldn't worry about now—it just wouldn't make sense for any country, economically or otherwise, to ignite a nuclear war (and that's considering the powers that actually have the capabilities to do so)—this was a very real threat in the 1980s. There are close to a dozen countries that have the technology at their disposal, such as China, America, Russia, North Korea, India, and Pakistan. 

Rogue Black Hole

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Rogue black holes are the lonely, hungry wanderers of the Universe. While galaxies had massive black holes at their centers, and gobbled up smaller black holes in their vicinity, there are some black holes that were kicked and tossed around during the merger of smaller galaxies which ejected them from their home galaxies. So, yes, there are black holes moving through space, eating up planets and other galactic bodies that happen to be in their path.

 

There could be hundreds of these black holes in the Milky Way alone (UC Santa Cruz estimated that their could be upwards 2,000 of them), and the first one ever detected is estimated to be 600 million times the mass of the sun and is traveling through space at 5.9 million mph. Scientists may have figured out a way to detect them, but, like mile-long asteroids, there may be one light-years away that could one day be too close for comfort.

 

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