There is now a saying that humans are the cancer of the earth, and this calls on human beings to protect the earth.
To be honest, this is the first time I've seen this kind of cancer that can kill myself before I can kill a patient at any time.
The earth has never needed human protection, and what human beings really need to worry about is how to protect themselves.
<h1 class="pgc-h-center-line" > are we capable of destroying Earth? </h1>
Some people say that the disorderly development of human beings, the expansion of the population, will eventually consume the resources of the earth.
Don't make a fuss, for the earth, it doesn't matter whether there are more humans or more stones. Even if the surface of the earth is full of people, it is like a pile of moving stones to the earth.
Not to mention that before the standing full, humans are estimated to have starved themselves to death because they did not have food.
Others worry that humanity now has nuclear weapons and that if nuclear war breaks out, it could destroy the earth.
In fact, it is not polite to say that this also belongs to the unfounded worry, the o is not right, and it should be accurate to say that it should be unfounded.
Mankind's most powerful nuclear weapon at present is the Tsarist hydrogen bomb.
In 1961, the Soviet Union tested the explosion of the Tsar's hydrogen bomb in the Arctic Ocean, and a large fireball with a diameter of about 5 kilometers exploded in the air, and the churning mushroom cloud was about 40 kilometers in diameter and about 64 kilometers in height, higher than the seven Mount Everest combined. Hundreds of kilometers from the center of the explosion can also cause tertiary burns, thousands of miles away in Finland, the glass of houses has been shattered, the global radio communication has been interrupted for an hour, and even the entire Eurasian continent has been pushed south by 1 centimeter.
The hydrogen bomb exploded
It's powerful enough, with an explosive yield of about 50 million tons of TNT, equivalent to more than 3,800 Hiroshima atomic bombs. Today, the total number of nuclear bombs on the books of countries around the world is about 14,500, plus some secrets, all of which are estimated to be 500 tsarist hydrogen bombs.
When a tsarist hydrogen bomb destroyed the world and the earth, could those 500 tied together destroy the earth?
One equivalent of 50 million tons of TNT, 500 is 25 billion tons of TNT, can 25 billion tons of TNT destroy the earth? Let's compare the 1960 Chile earthquake, about 35 billion tons of TNT; in 1815, the Indonesian volcano Tambora erupted, about 100 billion tons of TNT; and 65 million years ago, an asteroid fragment hit the earth, leaving a crater of about 180 kilometers so far, with an impact capacity of about 100 trillion tons of TNT, equivalent to 2 million tsar hydrogen bombs!
So worrying about the nuclear weapons that humans currently possess will destroy the earth is like digging a pit in your own garden to plant flowers, worrying about digging your entire village to collapse.
Today we humans think we have conquered the earth and begun to look at the universe, just as ridiculous as we once thought we were the center of the universe.
In fact, human beings are very small in front of the earth, and civilization is very fragile. A random earthquake or tsunami on the earth can destroy a large number of cities on the earth and take the lives of countless people, and human beings have no power to resist.
Not only are we incapable of destroying the planet, but we can't even wipe out other species. Like the virus, this year everyone should feel very obvious, we can't make them completely disappear from this world, at most we can only figure out how to live with it.
What human beings should really worry about is their own fate. We say that human civilization is fragile, which is not unfounded, in fact, the earth has experienced 5 mass extinctions of life.
<h1 class= "pgc-h-center-line" > the Ordovician mass extinction</h1>
The Ordovician climate was warm and the oceans were vast, and most of the earth was covered by shallow oceans at that time, and marine life developed unprecedentedly.
At that time, marine invertebrates were the hegemons of the world, and the ferocious carnivores represented by the penstone ruled the ocean, and in the late Ordovician period, primitive fish began to emerge.
About 440 million years ago, the first mass extinction occurred on Earth, and this time the victim was the marine overlord at that time, the marine invertebrates.
At that time, as the climate began to cool, a large number of glaciers were formed, and the sea level declined, the shallow sea on which life depended disappeared in large areas, the ecology was seriously damaged, and about 85% of life was extinct.
The cause of this mass extinction is generally speculated by scientists to be an explosion of a supernova in the Milky Way, triggering a gamma-ray storm that swept across the Earth.
Ordovician Ocean Overlord: Penstone
Primitive fish survived this mass extinction and replaced invertebrates as a new generation of ocean overlords.
< h1 class = "pgc-h-center-line" > the Devonian mass extinction</h1>
It is mentioned above that primitive fish survived the Ordovician mass extinction, and in the Devonian period, they became the world of fish completely.
During the Devonian period, vertebrates achieved unprecedented development, fish flourished, and various species of fish began to appear, so the Devonian period is also known as the "age of fish".
Some fish further evolved to become tetrapods (ancestors of reptiles, amphibians) and began to leave the ocean and land.
But at the same time, a creature that was even more terrifying at the time appeared on land— plants.
Don't be ridiculous, at that time there were almost no other creatures feeding on plants, plants flourished unprecedentedly, and because photosynthesis absorbed a lot of carbon dioxide, it led to a rapid decrease in the Earth's temperature in the late Devonian Period, about 365 million years ago, when the Earth's temperature dropped rapidly, glaciers appeared in large numbers, the oceans retreated again, and marine life was once again hit hard.
Our important energy source today, oil, was mainly formed in this period.
Devonian ocean overlord: Dunn's fish
< h1 class = "pgc-h-center-line" > The Permian mass extinction</h1>
The Permian is the last epoch of the Paleozoic, during which the movement of the earth's crust was extremely active, and the ancient plates combined with each other to form mountains and large lands, which is often referred to as orogeny, and the ocean area further declined.
At the same time, coupled with the supervolcano eruption, the formation of a greenhouse effect, frequent acid rain, ocean hypoxia and other factors combined, resulting in the largest biological extinction event ever.
The year before 250 million, the largest ever extinction took place, with about 96 percent of the planet's species going extinct, including 90 percent of marine life and 70 percent of land vertebrates.
Trilobites, sea scorpions, and important coral taxa all disappeared. Terrestrial monobots and many reptiles were also extinct.
This extinction caused the main creatures that occupied the ocean for nearly 300 million years to disappear, and the invertebrates on land were wiped out, laying the way for the subsequent appearance of dinosaur reptiles.
It is worth saying that the other energy source that we mainly use today, coal, was mainly formed during this period.
Mass extinction of marine life
<h1 class= "pgc-h-center-line" > Triassic mass extinction</h1>
This time is similar to the last extinction, like a repeat of history. The Earth is still in the orogenic period, the land area has further increased, the sea level has first fallen and then risen, there have been large areas of oxygen-starved seawater, and the mid-Atlantic supervolcano eruption, and the organism has once again encountered the end of the world.
At the end of the Triassic Period, 195 million years ago, about 76% of the earth's organisms went extinct, and the first to bear the brunt of it was marine life.
After this mass extinction, dinosaurs began to take over the land; crocodiles succeeded phytoosaurs as the overlords of the freshwater system; fish began to transform from ancient to modern populations, and sharks officially began to appear, gradually taking over the ocean.
Early mammals began to emerge and would suffer from dinosaur oppression for a long time for more than 100 million years.
Crocodile's predecessor: Phyto-dragon
< h1 class = "pgc-h-center-line" > the Cretaceous (dinosaur) mass extinction</h1>
At the end of the Cretaceous Period, about 65 million years ago, one or more asteroids hit the Earth, the impact stirred up dust that covered the sky, the sunlight could not reach the earth's surface, plants could not photosynthesize, gradually withered, dinosaurs suffered from food shortages, and died in despair and cannibalism, almost all large terrestrial animals and ammonites in the ocean were spared.
Only small land animals, such as small mammals, survived the darkest periods with residual food, and finally ushered in a new round of life explosions, gradually forming the civilization we have today.
Tyrannosaurus rex
<h1 class = "pgc-h-center-line" > Fermi paradox</h1>
Some people say that we humans have achieved an unprecedented civilization today, and we will not be so easily knocked down, and our future science and technology will continue to develop, and we can avoid mass extinction.
Even if you're right, follow your logic.
The universe we can observe is about 90 billion light-years in diameter, has at least 100 billion galaxies, and has 1,000 to 1 trillion stars per personality.
As for stars the size of the Sun, there are about 20 billion stars in the Milky Way, of which about 20% have terrestrial stars in their habitable belts, even if there is only a one in ten thousand chance of forming life, there are about 400,000 civilizations in the Milky Way.
The Milky Way has been formed for 13.8 billion years, and the Earth has only been formed for 4.5 billion years, and if there really are other civilizations, we can't be the most advanced, let alone so lonely.
This is the Fermi Paradox, and the best explanation for the Fermi Paradox is that all civilizations will eventually go to ruin.
< h1 class= "pgc-h-center-line" > whether there is a future</h1>
Of course, the Fermi paradox is only a conjecture, whether there is a future for mankind, whether it is science or philosophy, there is no conclusion.
But the crisis of our survival is indeed visible to the naked eye, the greenhouse effect, ecological destruction, these crises caused by human activities themselves, threaten our survival every minute.
In 2021, the country is about to introduce the strictest "plastic ban", and many people feel that we are doing this to protect the planet, no, we are saving ourselves.
Speaking of plastic, I am reminded of a speech by George Carlin, see the picture below (long picture warning).
I still hope that humanity has a future, don't think about how to protect the earth, and quickly think about how to protect ourselves.
Do less self-excavation, seize the development of science and technology, the future of mankind, and perhaps there is a glimmer of life.