When Will Humans Go Extinct?

When's the last time you rode in a car? Or took an extremely long shower just because the warm water felt satisfying? Or forgot to turn off the TV or light when you went somewhere? These may seem like small things but let me break it to you. They are all connected to ... the extinction of humanity!

Yes, you heard that right. This may seem like an absurd thing straight out of a science fiction novel, but it actually isn't that far fetched. I can guess what the first thing that comes to your mind when you hear the word extinction is (and probably my mind, too :) ... dinosaurs!


http://www.dinopit.com/5-awesome-pieces-of-cool-dinosaur-art-from-deviantart/

Sure, the extinction of the dinosaurs was a cool yet horrifying event and is the one you hear most about but it isn't even the largest extinction in the history of Earth. So you might be thinking, who cares what species lived on our planet millions of years ago? They were there, now they're not. So what?!!! I'll get to that in a bit, but just keep this in mind. Dinos dominated the planet for millions of years (so long in fact that T Rex's time was closer to our time than the time of Stegosaurus! 😵) but they died out just like that, in the blink of an eye. OK, fine, all the dinos on Earth didn't just disappear in a second, but still, ask yourself, who are the dominant animals on Earth today?

The Great Dying... sounds ominous, right? But it was real and it happened on the very same planet we now call home. The Permian-Triassic mass extinction event occurred about 250 - 300 million years ago near the end of the Permian period and caused the demise of over 95% of all marine species and 70% of all terrestrial species. That's right, folks. We are descended from the 30% of land species that manages to survive the biggest disaster on the face of our planet. So what caused this terrifying event? We may never know as all the evidence and fossils from that time have been either destroyed or buried deep beneath the Earth under many layers of rock.


http://ufothetruthisoutthere.blogspot.ca/2014/02/giant-mass-extinction-quicker-than.html

However, we do have some idea of the Cretaceous extinction that made most dinosaurs vanish off the planet (if you didn't know, birds are descended from avian dinosaurs, so yes, dinos still exist on Earth in a way). Enormous volcanic eruptions and an asteroid impact may have been key to the fall of dinosaurs and many other species near the end of the Mesozoic era. Some moviemakers (yes, I'm looking at you, Steven Spielberg) and even some scientists claim that dinos and other creatures like wooly mammoths can be brought back to Earth but I'm not even starting on that today.


http://www.koimoi.com/reviews/ice-age-collision-course-review/

So, what does this all have to do with us? Well, I'm sure you all have heard of the greenhouse effect, and no it is not a special effect you can see inside a greenhouse. 😜 Due to our burning of fossil fuels (coal, oil, and natural gas) for energy, greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide, methane, and water vapour are expelled into the atmosphere (larger amounts than ever before in history) and this contributes to more of the heat from the Sun being trapped by Earth's atmosphere and thus warming our globe (hence the term global warming you're all familiar with)! This leads to the melting of polar ice caps, rise in sea levels which results in flooding, and a lot of other terrible, horrible, no good, very bad things you do not even want to think about (catch the reference, anyone?). Many everyday things you might not realize contribute to global warming such as putting the heater/AC on in your house, riding a car, leaving electronic appliances on unnecessarily, not recycling properly, and much, much more. And these are just the small things we do, not to mention deforestation and using fossil fuels to power bigger processes. And eventually these "tiny" things could add up and before we know it, BOOM! Scared yet?



http://misinformation-special-news.info/key/g/words-global-warming-earth-burning.html

I think that we as humans have the responsibility to save our planet, not only for ourselves, but for the millions of other species that call this planet home, at least until the Sun blows up in a billion years.
But on a happier note, every little thing we do counts. So, taking care of Earth is not just the duty of scientists and government leaders, but also of you, of me, of everyone. Living on Earth is not a right, it's a privilege. And abusing that privilege can mean the end of everything. I know, a lot of big words here, but here is what I want to leave you with: Earth isn't going to be around forever, but every one of us can play our part in making sure it's around for as long as possible. That is, don't steal the Sun's job. You wouldn't want another mass extinction happening, would you? Or maybe you would. Wouldn't it be kind of cool actually? Ha ha, just kidding!

So, next time you leave your room, make sure you turn off your laptop, your light, everything. After all, the dinosaurs didn't see that asteroid coming. Your laptop and light can be turned on again, but if Earth's spark is extinguished, it is gone forever, and with it, everything we know.


https://www.britannica.com/science/Permian-extinction

https://www.sciencenewsforstudents.org/article/dinosaurs-extinction-asteroid-eruptions-doom

https://www.sciencenewsforstudents.org/article/clues-great-dying

http://www.businessinsider.com/heres-who-would-go-first-in-the-next-mass-extinction-2016-9

https://www.britannica.com/place/Pangea

How Would You Like to Explore ... the Ancient Earth?

Hey, guys! Welcome back! You've made it to my second post! Last time, we may have gone into the vastness of space but today, we're staying a little closer to home. We are travelling billions of years ago- to when the first rocks formed on Earth!

I know what you might be thinking- rocks? Those pieces of stone and dirt- what could be interesting about them? That's what I've always though too- that rocks are boring and useless. But in reality, the rocks present on Earth can tell us tons of information about how our planet was many billion years ago and even how the Earth formed! So buckle in, everyone, we're going on a grand adventure through time, not space, as the oldest rocks ever may have just been found- right here in Canada!

https://sierraclub.org/sierra/2012-5-september-october/green-life/green-life/9-must-see-natural-rock-formations

It was previously though that all of the rocky material from the initial stages of our planet were lost to time and geologic processes such as plate tectonics and earthquakes. However, that may not be the case! Recently, 2.7 billion year old rocks have been discovered in northeastern Canada by Richard Carlson of the Carnegie Institution for Science in Washington, D.C. This may not sound very cool (it didn't to me at first :) ) but these rocks contain a large amount of neodymium only possible if these rocks are from 4.2 billion years ago, early in Earth's history. This means that plate tectonics did not destroy all early rocks as previously thought. That could even mean there were no earthquakes in the early life of Earth (it's probably more complicated than than but let's be optimistic, shall we?)

http://internetlooks.com/globaltempchange.html

I don't know about you guys but I think that's enough about rocks and plate tectonics for now. Let's take a look at Earth billions of years ago. The picture on top may look like some planet billions of light years away that life could never possibly exist on. Well, guess what? This is Earth. Yep, this gigantic ball of fire and rock is the place we call home! Can you believe it? Who would have ever thought this ball would one day support life? Apparently, minerals trapped within microscopic zircon crystals from this eon (known as the Hadeon Eon) reveal that Earth may even have contained liquid water way back then and was not the hell we may think it to be. This is an artist's depiction of a more possible picture of our planet during that time:

http://www.space.com/26685-early-earth-bombardment-water-oasis.html

Yeah, I know what you're thinking. This planet, with its blue waters and landmasses, doesn't look that much different from our modern world. But you wouldn't survive for very long back then anyhow. Any life that did exist then would have evolved resistant to the very harsh conditions. The main reason we have very few rock samples from that eon is because Earth and other nearby planets were repeatedly hit by large collision and this buried our planet in large volumes of molten rock (which results in the formation of new igneous rocks as you know :) but it does end up destroying what could be useful pictures of the past of our homeland. The good news is, though, that there may have been large time gaps between these collisions where water vaporized near these extremely hot areas and rained back down to Earth as wait for it... liquid water. So, I'm not 100% sure about this but the same collisions that destroyed rock evidence from the Hadean Eon may have been the key to our existence. Mind bowing, right?

But what does this all mean? Yeah, the early Earth was not as bad as we thought. It had liquid water, we don't have rock evidence, but so what? Well, I think perhaps these new discoveries of our own planet could be applied towards other planets in our universe. Far away planets that seem inhabitable now may be a completely different story a billion years from now. All that talk about Goldilocks zones? Well, Goldilocks can grow up and change, right? She isn't always going to be afraid of bears and these planets may not always be afraid of life either! After all, would you have wanted to take your chances on Earth 4 billion years ago? Uh huh, probably not! I'm not saying we should all pack up and move from Earth but some planets may surprisingly support life in the far future. And this is all assuming that life has the same meaning elsewhere in the universe too. I mean, life and death may be concepts that only exist on Earth. Something entirely different may be in other places! 😉 Head exploded yet?

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3627752/Is-haven-t-alien-life-Experts-claim-extraterrestrials-die-young-planets.html

Thanks for coming with me on this fantastic voyage through time. The things you learned today may change our world for the better (or at least give you some good memories!) As we are zooming back towards 2017, I want you to ponder one thing: if something as boring as rocks could reveal so much about our planet and our existence, what could all the fascinating phenomena in our universe divulge? We will never know everything about our past, but the more we learn, the more we can predict our future.

As for whether humans will exist billions of years from now, that's a question we may never be able to answer. Wait, I got it! This plagioclase feldspar tells me that humans will ... Aaaaaaah!!!!!

https://www.sciencenews.org/article/remnants-earths-original-crust-preserve-time-plate-tectonics?mode=topic&context=60

http://www.space.com/26685-early-earth-bombardment-water-oasis.html

Do You Have Time to Read This?

There was once a time when there was no time. Maybe the question you should be asking is not "What is the time?" but "What is time?"


Imagine you make a prediction today with absolutely no way of knowing if it's correct. And then hundred years later, can you believe it, a century later, it's proven to be true! That's essentially what happened to one of the most popular scientists of all time- Albert Einstein. His ideas about space and time continue to mesmerize us even today and will continue far into the future. Or maybe it already has!

Very recently, scientists discovered the existence of yet another thing that changes our perception of time entirely- gravitational waves- ripples in the fabric of space time. Einstein predicted this in 1915 and in 2016, the LIGO (Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory) has confirmed its existence. I can relate to the confusion that many of you may be experiencing right about now. How can there be ripples and waves in space-time? What is space-time anyway? Doesn't make much sense, huh? That's how it felt to me and probably even many of the scientists when they first discovered it. To wrap our minds around it, we may have to change our view of time entirely. Time is simply, or not so simply :) a fourth dimension and can be messed with just like space. The image below might help you start to think about these wondrous things that are going to open to scientists more secrets of the universe than we ever thought.

https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2016/nsf-s-ligo-has-detected-gravitational-waves

Well, to first understand gravitational waves even a bit, we must know how they are formed. Those two balls may look small in the picture but in reality, they are very very super massive objects whose collision releases energy in the form of these waves. So, why haven't we observed these gravitational waves before? So, basically, the colliding objects have to be insanely big for the waves to be significant enough to be observable on Earth. And the objects that produced these waves we have now observed are two black holes about 30 times the mass of our Sun. And for me, I can't even began to comprehend how big that is. Black holes are so extraordinary that apart from changing the space around them, even time behaves differently near them. Anyway, these black holes collided about 1.3 billion years ago. That's right. That was NOT a typo. Yeah, we have finally mastered the science of time travel. Just kidding. Well, actually, those black holes are so far away that the light from their collision has taken so long to reach Earth. It's crazy, right? I think it's pretty cool that we can see something that happened several millennia ago. I can't even begin to think of all the other things we may possibly discover if we look back far enough. Right, so to get back to the topic, when these black holes collided, their mass got converted into tremendous amounts of energy as shown by Einstein's equation, which you have probably heard of: E = mc^2.

https://www.ligo.caltech.edu/news/ligo20160211

This immense amount of energy got emitted as gravitational waves. And look how far we've come with just electromagnetic radiation. What wonders will these new waves uncover? So how exactly were these gravitational waves observed? It's not like it was a tsunami and zooms towards Earth and we just saw it. Nope, not at all. It's not that complicated really. So remember at the beginning of our adventure into space and time, how I talked about LIGO? So, LIGO is a set of two different detectors- one in Hanford, Washington and one in Livingston, Louisiana. So first take a look at these images and see if you can understand what's going on.

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2016/feb/11/gravitational-waves-discovery-hailed-as-breakthrough-of-the-century

If you're anything like me, you probably have no idea what just happened. That's how it looks at first glance but take a closer look and you'll see that it's a pretty basic idea. There are two tubes that laser beams pass through. If there are no disturbances, then the laser beams travel back through the tubes and cancel each other out, so nothing is seen. If something was to change this process, like gravitational waves, then the tubes actually change length (physics stuff so I'm not gonna bore you guys with the details) but the beams come back at different times, are out of sync and light is seen. And this is the story of how the gravitational waves were first seen. As for how Einstein predicted it all those years ago, that involves too much math and physics for my liking and probably some of yours too. He just had a lot of time on his hand (no pun intended!)

http://www.businessfinancenews.com/24487-einstein-promised-gravitational-waves-where-are-they/

Yep, that was a lot of information but gravitational waves are just the beginning- the tip of the iceberg if you will. Perhaps they could even solve one of the biggest cosmic mysteries ever- dark matter and dark energy. And yet again, maybe it already has. There's so much more out there taunting us humans, staying hidden, just out of our sight. And if anything, things like these just show us how truly small and insignificant we humans are in the grand scale of the universe- no matter how much control we give ourselves on this rocky blue and green sphere in a solar system in a galaxy in a universe that's literally in the middle of nothing!

POOOOF!!!

Now let me ask you a question: Does time truly mean something or is it just as meaningless as we are in a cosmos no one can fully understand?

https://www.ligo.caltech.edu/news/ligo20160211

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2016/feb/11/gravitational-waves-discovery-hailed-as-breakthrough-of-the-century

https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2016/nsf-s-ligo-has-detected-gravitational-waves

My First Blog

1. One thing I know about the content in this course: Venus is the only planet that rotates clockwise and Uranus is the only planet that orbits the sun on its side. These changes in rotational direction can probably be traced back to the origins of these planets when asteroids, meteors, or other objects may have crashed into them, resulting in the planets' orbits being switched. I thought this was really cool because  such small objects like asteroids (relative to Venus and Uranus) were able to create such big impacts (literally and figuratively!) :) and change the planets' science and history forever. It also makes me wonder how an asteroid could have hit a gas planet like Uranus and if there are solid components in the makeup of that planet? Perhaps we could even be wrong and clockwise rotation is the original- the other planets could have been the ones that are switched. There is just so much more to research and discover with this topic and that is why this fascinates me!                                                          
2. One thing I don't know/understand that is related to this course and what it is that confuses me about it: I am confused how the universe could have expanded from the size of a dot to its current size in a billionth of a billionth of a second (big bang theory) if the speed of light is the fastest anything can be. Does the universe follow the universal speed limit? This question has pondered me for so long due its connection to physics as well and was specifically on my mind when I was covering the special relativity unit. I hope this course will provide answers to this and more interesting questions as well. It's really interesting for me because I like making connections between the different sciences and asking questions related to one science by incorporating concepts from other sciences and subjects.