Home » Technology » that people live on earth is pure happiness – Wel.nl

that people live on earth is pure happiness – Wel.nl

It took evolution three to four billion years to produce Homo sapiens. If at some point in that process the climate had failed even once, we probably never would have existed. A scientist demonstrates this in an exciting simulation.

Thermostat
Models have shown that in a few million years the Earth’s climate can deteriorate to temperatures well below zero or towards boiling point. We also know that the sun gives 30 percent more light since the first life on Earth. In principle, the oceans should have evaporated as a result. That did not happen.

There are two possible explanations for this. The first is that Earth somehow has some sort of thermostat, a mechanism that prevents the climate from rising or falling to fatal temperatures. The second option is that Earth made it through sheer luck. Of the many millions of planets out there, there is very occasionally one that makes it.

Computersimulatie
Toby Tyrrell, professor of Earth System Sciences at the University of Southampton put in a computer simulation to show that it is a bit of both. He generated 100,000 planets with any set of climate mechanisms. These are processes that can strengthen or weaken climate change. Consider, for example, polar ice that melts, so that it can no longer reflect sunlight, but instead turns into sunlight-absorbing water, causing the earth to warm up further, which in turn causes more ice to melt.

The professor had the planets ‘start over’ a hundred times with a different initial temperature and different climate processes, such as volcanic eruptions and meteorite impacts. All 100 simulations tracked the planet’s temperature until it became too hot or too cold for life or until it survived 3 billion years, potentially providing room for intelligent life.

Of the 100,000 simulated planets, only one managed to pass all 100 simulations. So he had enough climate stabilizers and enough luck. Most planets that remained habitable at least once succeeded less than ten times out of a hundred.

Luck
It always took luck to make it to the finish line, but that in itself was not enough. After all, planets without corrective climate processes never remained habitable.

Our planet itself has some climate mechanisms that have a stabilizing effect, but without a good portion of luck we would not have been there for a long time. For example, if a solar flare or asteroid had been just a little bigger or had struck at a more vulnerable time, the world would probably have looked very different.

Bron (nen): Science Alert

– .

Leave a Comment

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.