About 4.5 billion years ago in the endless darkness of space, our planet Earth was born as a clot of hot magma. This was just the beginning of its remarkable evolution.
Throughout the following eras, significant transformations took place. The once lifeless red-hot ball gradually cooled, shaping the initial tectonic plates that would later form continents. After billions of years of extraordinary geological processes, Earth took on the appearance we recognize today: supercontinents emerging from raging oceans and the wondrous origin of diverse life forms.
Despite its extensive history, Earth is relatively young from a cosmological perspective, having only completed around a third of its projected lifespan, leaving numerous changes on the horizon.
However, survival in the future may prove challenging. A recent study utilized supercomputers for climate modeling over the next 250 million years, projecting the formation of a new supercontinent and rendering it nearly uninhabitable for mammals.
“Forecasts for the distant future are very grim,” confirmed Alexander Farnsvort, a senior researcher at the Environmental Institute of the Council at Bristol University and the primary author of the study.
“The anticipated levels of carbon dioxide could double compared to current levels,” Farnsvort explained. “With the sun emitting about 2.5% more radiation, the supercontinent is expected to be predominantly located in hot, wet tropics, resulting in temperatures ranging from 40 to 70 °C.”
The emerging supercontinent, named PANGEA Ultima, presents a triple threat: a surge in CO2 levels, increased solar radiation, and the vast size of the supercontinent, rendering it nearly uninhabitable. This phenomenon is attributed to the effect of more extreme temperatures in the interior due to being cooler and wetter than coastal regions.