Earth’s atmospheric escape could turn this planet into a hostile Mars-like world and wipe life off
What a scorching future! The earth might totally abandon with life if the atmosphere would no longer present and our blue planet would turn into reddish just like Mars.
Anjali Tripathi, astrophysicist from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, explained how as reported by Mail Online.
Our planet earth is going through the process called atmospheric escape. Atmospheric escape is the process by which gases leave a planet's atmosphere. Every minute there are at least 400 pounds of hydrogen and almost 7 pounds of helium leaves earth's atmosphere going to outer space. These gases left without coming back.
But don't worry we still have over billions of years until no more of them left.
Anjali further explained that the sun is going to get brighter in the far future. When that would happen the heat that the sun is giving will be more intense, this will cause gas to stream off from our planet. Hydrogen in water will escape also more rapidly. And finally as they all goes out into space the Earth will be reddish and inhospitable just like our neighbor planet Mars.
The gases that composed our atmosphere not just sustain life but also serve as a shield from asteroids, meteors and any other heavenly bodies that could collide with it.
According to World Breaking News, scientists believed that before, Mars was also the same with Earth having atmosphere. But in some very far past it also undergone atmospheric escape just like the Earth is going through today. (Scientists just did not say if Mars was also inhabited with life.) They said Mars is a wetter planet before until it turned out to be a dry land. Since it is a smaller planet it has also lesser capability to hold its atmosphere.
So there is more time for humans to make necessary preparations to prevent our home from turning into a place such as Mars and continue to exist.
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