Researchers found evidence of how long Earth has left before its oxygen-rich atmosphere begins to diminish and life begins to out.
Most people are aware that our time on Earth is limited, as the Sun will eventually run out of fuel and destroy itself.
Researchers have discovered through stimulation that Earth’s oxygen-rich atmosphere will expire before the Sun destroys itself.
According to researchers from the Toho University and NASA Nexus for Exoplanet System Science, there is evidence that Earth will lose it’s oxygen-rich atmosphere in approximately 1 billion years.
The researchers published the paper in the journal Nature Geoscience, and according to Kazumi Ozaki, “We find that the Earth’s oxygenated atmosphere will not be a permanent feature”.
However, Earth’s atmosphere will have high levels of oxygen for quite some time before it begins to drop off to levels similar to that of the Great Oxidation Event that occurred around 2.4 billion years ago.
Christopher Reinhard, one of the researchers on the paper, said, “The drop in oxygen is very, very extreme – we’re talking around a million times less oxygen than there is today. The biosphere cannot adapt to such a dramatic shift in environmental change.”