Human Survival

[Anomalocaris]

It is in the nature of species to go extinct. I'm not particularly concerned about the long term survival of the human species.

From a personal standpoint, the universe - not just our species, the entire universe - is going to end in something less than one hundred years.

Boru

Some species have gone for 3 and a half billion years with not going extinct but evolving into new species.

Congrats!

Name one species that has gone 3 and a half billion years without going extinct.

1. If specie A evolved into another specie B but left no offspring which were still members of specie A, then specie A is extinct.

2. We don't have good enough fossil from 3.5 billion years ago to enable us to even recognize species from 3.5 billion years ago.

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Depends on who you talk to. Estimates on how long the surface of Earth can support life vary greatly. Many think the oceans will only last another 500 million to 1 billion years. If that is true our planet won't be able to support much more than single cell organisms long before that. Some believe complex plant life could have as little as one or two hundred millions years left. When that is gone most of the rest of us will join it.

Recent geochemical and geophysical studies have suggested that compare to benus, the carbon inventory of the earth is sufficiently sequestered, and the evolution of earth's core is sufficiently more advanced, such that earth will never undergo Venus like super greenhouse. At the same time, the volume of water sequestered in earth's mantle far larger than was thought just 10 years ago, and may be 100 time more than the oceans, is sufficiently large so the it's leakage onto the surface via volcanic eruption will reach equilibrium with loss of sea water into space or through subduction, and earth surface will never go completely dry, and sizeable bodies of water, ranging in size from lakes and oasis to oceans, depending on assumptions about level of valcanism and atmosphere pressure, will remain on earth for several billion years at least, possibly until sun turns red giant.

These scenarios foresee multicellular life as being about to continue at higher latitudes on earth for 2-3 billion years more at least, possible all the way tithe red giant stage of the sun.