Poll of the Day > why haven't we had a near extinction event yet?

(+) Yeah! (+)

back in the day a near extinction event would happen every few million years. it's been over 60,000,000 years since the last time the Earth was almost completely vacant of life.

It's on its way I think.

If gamers don't take a shower we will have one soon

Asteroid 2010 RF12 has a 1 in 10 chance of hitting the Earth... in 2095. But it's impact energy will only be about 8.6 kt, equal to a small fission bomb

2024 YR4 has a 1 in 83 chance of hitting the Earth in 2032, and with an impact energy of 8 Mt, equal to a typical hydrogen bomb. This is the only asteroid being tracked by Sentry with a non-zero Torino scale value, currently 3. A near extinction event would be a 10.

2022 PX1 would have an impact energy of 360 Mt, equal to 7 Tsar Bombas, but the impact odds are only 1 in 310,000 in 2040.

29075 would have an impact energy of 75 Gt, or about 10,000 hydrogen bombs or 1,500 Tsar Bombas, and the impact odds are 1 in 2,600, but it won't be a danger until the year 2880.

Beveren_Rabbit posted...

back in the day a near extinction event would happen every few million years. it's been over 60,000,000 years since the last time the Earth was almost completely vacant of life.

Five major extinction events in 500 million years.

And if it makes you feel any better, the prevailing opinion is that we're currently in the beginning of the sixth major extinction event. The first five were caused by vulcanism, ocean anoxia, glaciation, asteroid impact, and/or various combinations thereof (none of them are completely settled, even the most recent one). The current probable extinction event is being caused by human activity.

I'm working on it.

We are the next extinction event or what will prevent any of them for the very far future.

Basically in the next 100-200 years, humanity will either get itself together and have the science/ability to protect this planet from just about anything, not to mention colonize other planets/moons in our solar system, or we will destroy ourselves and probably all life on this planet.

Technology will continue to increase and even now, if we had less total people and consolidated the resources of this planet, we could colonize other planets and basically live like gods. In 20 years, more than likely we will continue to increase technologically, and if the past is anything to go by, it will continue to speed up. This planet 20 years from now will probably look totally different than it does now.

20 years after that, or lets just say 30, and make it 50 years total, and we either will control our environment totally, colonized other planets/moons etc, or we will be either totally extinct or mostly (with just a very small % of our current population living on).

If we survive humanity (which has far more potential for destroying everything than any previous event), we should be able to handle anything else that happens up till the sun expanding past our orbit in the waaaay distant future. Even that really wouldn't be a game breaker by that time considering even now we could in theory create planetary space ships if we figured out cold fusion and had enough time to work on them (basically converting entire planets/moons etc into a ship that can travel the stars).

Anyway if you look at how long humans have been around (let alone recording history etc), it's a TINY amount of time compared to the distance between events, so yeah, makes sense we have not had any in the last 5000 years or so.

ParanoidObsessive posted...

I'm working on it.

I thought you stopped eating at taco bell!??!

wolfy42 posted...

I thought you stopped eating at taco bell!??!

If by stopped, you mean never started, then sure.

I have never once eaten at Taco Bell.

And I feel I can safely say at this point that I never will.

We're literally already there

ParanoidObsessive posted...

If by stopped, you mean never started, then sure.

I have never once eaten at Taco Bell.

And I feel I can safely say at this point that I never will.

Oh yeah that was Jen *hehe* (actually not sure if she ate it, but there was something taco bell related with her back in the past).

Anyway it was just a joke, as in after eating taco bell, the resulting explosion would destroy the world:)

We're at the start of one. It doesn't happen in an instant, it happens over time. Even the last one, a massive asteroid slamming into the planet, didn't instantly wipe out all life.

We're due for a supervolcano explosion, the ones in Europe being the most likely. Asteroids can also come at any time along with any other celestial events (gamma radiation killing all life).

The one thing humans seem to have forgotten due to their stupid xenophobia is in order to survive, we need to spread out. All of us being on one fucking planet is stupid and guarantees our extinction, we need to spread out to the stars.

KingInBlack posted...

We're due for a supervolcano explosion, the ones in Europe being the most likely.

Despite the name, a supervolcano is not nearly large enough to change climate enough to cause a mass extinction. Yellowstone is estimated to have released 6500 cubic kilometers of lava and ash spread over 3 major eruptions and countless smaller eruptions over 2 million years or so. The Siberian Traps flood basalt event is estimated to have released 4 billion cubic kilometers of lava over roughly the same 2 million year time scale, which is believed to have been the primary cause of the End Permian Extinction Event, the most severe mass extinction to have occurred.

You cant call it stupid when its not even possible now to live outside of earth

AI is the prelude to the disaster.

Beveren_Rabbit posted...

back in the day a near extinction event would happen every few million years. it's been over 60,000,000 years since the last time the Earth was almost completely vacant of life.

Don't be reminding the creator, okay? Keep it quiet. Thank you!

There are greedy, willfully ignorant shitstains who are doing their damndest to destroy the planet. So if it happens, blame them.

Also, extinction events are more like cascade effects, then OHKOs. There's always multiple issues that lead to it. Mother Earth is sick and feverish, because humans are the disease causing it. It makes me angry because viruses and bacteria are just doing what they're supposed to do. We have a choice to be less harmful to our only habitable planet. That is not to say, that there aren't people who have always been trying to make nature healthier. It's just the greedy shitstains who make me angry.