• Question: Will the world end because of us, or would it end anyway?

    Asked by to Alan, Deepak, Francesca, Lilly, Nick on 18 Mar 2014. This question was also asked by .
    • Photo: Francesca Day

      Francesca Day answered on 18 Mar 2014:

      We don’t know! At the moment, humans don’t have the technology to literally destroy the Earth (unless perhaps we set off all our nuclear bombs at once…), but there is a very real risk that we will make it uninhabitable for humans, through climate change for example. In the further, as technology develops further, it will become more and more important to make sure it does not fall into the wrong hands!

      In about 5 billion years, the sun will explode and the Earth will be destroyed in the fire ball. Hopefully humans will have travelled to another solar system by then!

    • Photo: Nick Wright

      Nick Wright answered on 18 Mar 2014:

      Well the world will certainly end one day when our Sun dies. In about 5 billion years our Sun will run out of hydrogen and it will start expanding. It will probably expand so much that it will engulf the Earth, which will destroy the entire Earth.

      Its also possible that we will damage the Earth before then, either by global warming, or by over-polluting the atmosphere so that nothing can survive on the Earth. Hopefully that won’t happen because it would be a shame if we destroy the world.

    • Photo: Alan Fitzsimmons

      Alan Fitzsimmons answered on 18 Mar 2014:

      Well, we couldn’t destroy our planet even if we let off all our nuclear bombs at once. We know that because the asteroid that killed off the dinosaurs had about a million times more energy than that, and our planet hardly noticed.

      But we can make the surface of it very hard to live on. That’s why we need to look after our environment, and try to stop the global warming we are making.

      So the world won’t end until the Sun dies, and that won’t be for another 5,000 million years!

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