I Have Some Bad News, We Only Have 1.7 Billion Years Left To Live!

Trust those pesky scientists to ruin my morning by telling me when we are all going to die! Or more importantly the latest estimate of when the earth will become uninhabitable for humans.

Basically this is the first call for us all to start planning our future, building space ships and populating the galaxy (see: Star Trek). With 1.75 billion years to spare before we have to move out we certainly have enough time to invest in the future or to 3D print something suitable to live on.

The new study by the University of East Anglia in Norwich has said that in that time, moving to Mars would become our best chance of survival. Although personally after such a long time I hope and expect we will have developed better technology that we don’t just feel forces to move house to the nearest dusty rock.

Andrew Rushby, from the university’s school of environmental sciences, said: “We estimate Earth will cease to be habitable somewhere between 1.75billion and 3.25billion years from now. After this point, Earth will be in the “hot zone” of the Sun, with temperatures so high the seas would evaporate.’ Well before this, conditions for humans and other complex life would become impossible as a result of man-made climate change. We would be in trouble with even a small increase in temperature, and near the end, only microbes in niche environments would be able to endure the heat.”

Astrobiologists are already looking ahead to space for new home worlds for the human race, or at the very least they’re looking for usable resources and aliens. Recently discovered Gliese 581d looks like it will last another 54.7 billion years and could make a nice home for us, but current technology would mean a journey of hundreds of thousands of years to get there. Given that Mars offers a habitable zone until 6 billion years from now, it’s certainly a tough call.

Thank you Metro for providing us with this information.

Image courtesy of Trunews.