Which event will likely end all life on Earth?

Question

1) an asteroid or comet hitting the Earth.
2) The sun becoming a red giant.
3) An explosion from a distant star or some other cosmic event
4)None of the above?

How about global warming? will we self destruct? or a super volcano?

Answer 1

Could be a number of things from a Yellowstone super eruption to an asteroid collision with Earth or nuclear war. Incidentally, an asteroid is scheduled to hit Earth (or enter its atmosphere) on Friday, April 13, 2029.

Answer 2

1) an asteroid or comet hitting the Earth.
2) The sun becoming a red giant.
3) An explosion from a distant star or some other cosmic event

All 3 of these would certainly destroy the Earth.

But the most likely is the sun becomming a Red Giant. Then the world will..... die.... not for 5,000,000,000,000 years however!







JESUS IS COMING!! LOOK BUSY!!

Answer 3

ALL life? That would probably be option #2. When that happens, 5 billion years from now, it will be too hot here for ANY life to survive.

When a distant star explodes, only a few fragments will end up here because they are spread out so much by the distance (imagine a balloon with a large number of dots drawn on it; make the balloon sufficiently large, and all dots will be spaced far apart), and because lots of the fragments will be caught in the gravitation of the Sun, Saturn and Jupiter.

Even a nuclear war will not kill ALL life on earth.

Answer 4

Right now, I'd say the most likely possibility is global warming causing the Greenhouse Effect to go out of control. The Greenhouse Effect is the reason temperatures on Venus are over 400 degrees - hotter than Mercury, which is 1/2 the distance from the sun. Don't think the same thing can't happen on this planet.

Answer 5

The death of the sun is the only real candidate.

Life is now known to have arisen on Earth almost as soon as conditions were stable enough. It was, of course, very primitive for the first few billion years.

Life on Earth has withstood more than one major meteorite impact, so this seems unlikely to be the killer threat.

And while the gamma burst from a nearby supernova could do the job, it would have to be very close (relatively) and pointed in just the right direction (the burst is a directional jet). This is not at all likely.

Answer 6

Actually, a strike from a sufficiently large comet could end all life on earth, since at a large enough mass the delivered energy is sufficient to re-melt the earth's crust. Celestial bombardment likely wiped out early life a few times, and it just grew back. If the stew is right, life finds a way.

As to the other listed threats, because of the presence of deep earth bacteria and such, only the sun's red giant phase would likely end all life.

Answer 7

2) The sun becoming a Red GIant.

This one's pretty much guaranteed to do the job.

An asteroid or comet may wipe out mankind, but will not likely wipe out all life, unless it's a really HUGE asteroid (we're talking size of Texas).

I once read that a super nova 50 light years away would produce enough radiation to wipe out humanity, but again, I'm not sure if it would destroy all life. I could imagine the sulfa-bacteria in deep sea thermal vents surviving this.

...but as for the sun engulfing the Earth - nothing will survive.

Answer 8

I would say an asteroid or comet hitting Earth. There are thousands and thousands of unknown asteroids or comets in the universe. NASA and other astronomers are not able to find all the asteroids that might be heading to Earth. When the large asteroid or comet hit Earth, we will witness the end of Earth.

Answer 9

There is no single event that will end 'all' life on earth. If any thing there will be a series of events that will take place, but not end all life. The Bible even says that the sun will go out, but is only a sign of the Lord's second coming, not an end. But we are told that there will be a new earth and a new heaven made by who else but God himself. Humankind will still exist in a glorified state.

Answer 10

Hello =)

Well...the trick is to get our sorry species colonized into other star systems before any of that happens.........

Massive asteriods and comets have hit the earth before...and have not obliterated all life......but they did obliterate a lot of it...

It takes a lot to totally destroy earth......I'm not even totally sure it can be done, except of course, something to do with changing our sun.

I think, however, that man's destiny is to remove most of our species off of this planet, and leave the rest of the life forms a chance to develop, without our presence......I think we owe them that..... Maybe leave a few scientists and "park rangers"......but beyond that.......we really are making a mess of things, and we should leave.

Namaste,

--Tom