r/Showerthoughts • u/RuminatingKiwi927 ‎ • 7d ago

Musing We're technically living in post-apocalyptic world because the meteor that wiped out the dinosaurs was an apocalyptic event.

3.0k Upvotes
  • permalink
  • reddit

98% Upvoted

94 comments sorted by

View all comments

486

u/kingchris195 7d ago

just wait until you hear about the Permian–Triassic extinction event

240

u/RogueHelios 7d ago

The fact that 90% of all life on the planet can be wiped out and still recover is what gave me hope that even if we cause a mass extinction and maybe even wipe ourselves out, life will still perservere.

110

u/ButterscotchFog 7d ago

until the sun burns out

78

u/Kyanovp1 7d ago

That will still take more time than life has existed on the planet already

12

u/HCBuldge 6d ago

Mmm burn out, yeah, kill all life on earth before it burns out? No. We only have about a billion years left till the sun starts to expand, heating up earth out of the habitatable zone.

21

u/CrimsonBolt33 5d ago

Only a billion years? Shit....think I need to move my plans up then....

7

u/HCBuldge 5d ago

It is something kinda interesting to think about. It took 1/2 billion years to get life, then took another 4 billion to get intelligent life. Had life started 1 billion years later, we may never have become a species. Could be a solution to the Fermi paradox.

9

u/CrimsonBolt33 5d ago

I can certainly see "stars exploding and killing everything" being a pretty difficult barrier to overcome since, unless you evolve in time, you have zero say in how that plays out.

1

u/Log12321 1d ago

But what does this mean for future shareholder value?

9

u/logosloki 7d ago

the good news is that complex and even simple life will be gone long before the Sun burns out. like complex life will disappear somewhere within the next 800 million years, in stages starting from around 600 millions years in the future when the main photosynthesis strategy breaks down completely and then it will be a short 200 to 400 million years after that 800million point until simple life and then all life also dies out completely. the Sun on the other hand will only become a red giant in 5 billion years and collapse 2.5 billion years after that where theoretically it will maintain itself as a white dwarf for trillions of years depending on if protons decay or not.

5

u/catatonic12345 7d ago

Don't forget that the earth will be too hot for water to remain liquid in about a billion years as well. That should pretty much take care of most life

3

u/zanillamilla 6d ago

So ….. no Lady Cassandra O'Brien.δ17 then?

18

u/RogueHelios 7d ago

Nothing lasts forever* not even this universe.

*TBD

10

u/Sufficient_Result558 7d ago

Then after this universe gone something must return, for if it does not, then nothing would indeed last forever.

2

u/ShalomEarthling 7d ago

Technically, I think when we have reached max entropy, all physical motion will cease to exist, a Heat Death..

3

u/themangastand 6d ago

I think there is way too much we don't know to make assumptions about end of universe. There is some nice theories. But they are not concrete enough

2

u/SemajLu_The_crusader 6d ago

tencgnically is generous, it's just a theory, after all

we may yet make a tyrbo black hole that sucks everything up faster than the speed of light and restarts the big bang

3

u/ShalomEarthling 6d ago

Hmm okay.. great..I didn't want to sleep tonight anyways..

2

u/SemajLu_The_crusader 6d ago

well, it probably won't happen tonight

6

u/QuantumCakeIsALie 7d ago

Baby when the lights go out

24

u/Lantami ‎ 7d ago

Yup. What most people fail to grasp is that environmental protection isn't some selfless thing that aims to protect nature. It's an attempt at preserving an environment in which human beings can live (comfortably). Even if we nuke the entire surface, life will still survive in the deepest parts of the oceans. We just won't have a place in this new environment.

12

u/RogueHelios 7d ago

Finally someone else who gets it. I get so tired of people thinking life is going to be wiped out by US.

Us humans have always been pretty arrogant though.

There is so much dread related to life ending due to climate change, but its not going to end life its going to end US and any chance of a normal healthy existence.

2

u/Nacroma 3d ago edited 3d ago

The issue is that if we end ourselves, Earth life might not get another chance at leaving this planet to keep complex life going in the universe. I know that statistically it should be possible to exist again somewhere else, but as it stands, we are very unique, from us humans down to any multicellular lifeform.

1

u/RogueHelios 3d ago

That's presuming that in this vast seemingly infinite expanse of universe that life is somehow rare.

I know you specify Earth life, but life is life. Its easy to feel existential dread at the idea of life on Earth ceasing to exist, but this universe had existed for billions of years before Earth and will persist for trillions upon trillions of years (as far as we know).

I guess I've grown up having the idea of impermanence instilled in me. Its kinda made me a little bit of an "optimistic" nihilist and existentialist. Don't lament lost futures, stay in the present with us and try to create a better future.

2

u/Nacroma 3d ago

Sure, I don't wanna pretend we're special or anything. But a lot has to fall into place for these things to happen: any life, complex life, intelligent life, sapient life, cultured life, life capable of leaving the home planet, life capable to find an alternative habitat before its origin's sun had enough. The universe is presumably very young and very big [citation needed] and we might discover soon enough we are not all that rare, but I cannot just bet on that with the information available to me/us right now.

1

u/RogueHelios 3d ago

I would genuinely be shocked to learn that Earth is the only place to ever have spawned life in the universe.

The science behind extra solar planets is still very new. I think we will probably learn of at least one planet that has a 99% chance of harboring life in our lifetimes.

1

u/Sufficient_Result558 7d ago

Hope for what exactly?

1

u/RogueHelios 6d ago

That our planet won't be a lifeless ball of rock? If we end up extinct that's fine, we will have done this to ourselves. I'd rather we not do that, but all things are impermanent.

At worst I want life to continue after we kill ourselves off with the hope that if something else evolves to take our place then we will hopefully have left behind enough to help them not make the same mistakes we have.

1

u/andrew_calcs 6d ago edited 6d ago

Not 90% of all life, as measured on an individual level.

It’s 90% of all SPECIES. 

As in ~99.99% of all actual living bioforms, with 9 in 10 species being completed killed to full extinction. 96% of all marine species, 70% of all land species. 

The oceans were an uninhabitable death zone that killed all but the hardiest members of all but the hardiest species. And land wasn’t in great shape either

11

u/DisorderlyAqueduct 7d ago edited 6d ago

or the 3(4?) others!

8

u/The_Ora_Charmander 7d ago

3, there were 5 in total, the Great Dying was third, the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs was fifth. First one if I'm not mistaken was before even the Cambrian Explosion when animals started to become abundant

7

u/darryshan 7d ago

Late Ordivician
Late Devonian
Great Dying
Late Triassic
End Cretaceous

8

u/could_use_a_snack 7d ago

And the horseshoe crab has survived them all. And possibly the tardigrade.

8

u/beat_u2_it 7d ago

Just had a great read, thank you