Scientist issues chilling warning over 'perfect storm' that could wipe out humanity
AT the core of our solar system lies the Sun—a perfect sphere of blazing plasma that serves as the most vital energy source for life on Earth. Roughly three-quarters of its mass consists of hydrogen, with the bulk of the remainder being helium.
Although it hasn't changed dramatically in over four billion years, NASA scientists believe the Sun is currently about halfway through its lifespan.
At present, it converts approximately 600 million tonnes of hydrogen into helium every second, turning four million tonnes of matter into pure energy in the process.
Yet, Brian Cox delivered a sobering warning during his BBC show "Empire of the Sun" about what the future holds. He explained in 2010: "The Sun will spend most of its life on the main sequence, steadily burning its vast reserves of hydrogen fuel.
"This will last for at least another five billion years. But eventually, the fuel will run out and its core will collapse. Then, something remarkable will happen: the Sun's outer layer will expand and its colour will shift. Mercury will be little more than a memory as it's engulfed by the expanding red Sun," reports the Daily Star.
Dr Cox described how the Sun will swell into a red giant, consuming everything in its path.
He added: "It will grow to 200 times its size today, stretching all the way out to the Earth's orbit, where our own planet's prospects are dim. The wonder that has remained so constant throughout all of its 10 billion years of life will end its days as a red giant.
"For a few brief instances it will be 2000 times as bright as it is now, but that won't last for long. Eventually it will shed its outer shell and all that will be left is its cooling core. In all its wonders, the aurora that danced through the atmosphere of the planets in the Solar System, and the light that sustains all of life here on Earth, will be gone."
Yet Dr Rolf Schmidt, from the Invertebrate Palaeontology Melbourne Museum in Australia, thinks a different catastrophe could eliminate humanity far earlier.
Speaking on Amazon Prime's "The Next Extinction Event", he warned that climate change isn't the only threat we should worry about. He said: "There is a solid link between carbon levels, especially carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere, and climate.
"Now it's not always the carbon dioxide that causes the climate change to start with, but it's either the first thing - that changing carbon dioxide up or down - that is very closely associated with massive climate change. So sometimes carbon dioxide changes ahead of time, so things like massive volcanism can cause warming.
"At other times, it can be other causes, like the Earth's orbit can change its shape; it regularly predictably does that, and then those changes from the Sun's radiation cause a start in a shift towards warmer or colder. Rapid climate change often leads to species not be able to adapt quickly enough."
Dr. Schmidt then delivered a sobering warning about the future of life on Earth. He continued, "If that goes above what we call the background extinction rate, we start seeing sort of the clear markers of mass extinction.
"There is the thought that at the moment the change is exceeding the rate at which species can adapt. It's not like with the other mass extinctions; it's more of a perfect storm of conditions, not just one like climate change or an asteroid, but a host of things we have.
"It's not just climate change induced by humans at the moment, but we have deforestation or urban sprawl or habitat fragmentation, things like that, which are stopping species from adapting at a fast enough rate. So it's worrying to see where we are heading, knowing what's happened in the past."
