The Earth Doesn’t Need Protection. Surviving It Is A Miracle Itself.
By: Louis Zhu
Tags: Space, Earth, History, Future, Technology

I often hear all kinds of appeals that mankind should protect the Earth. There are even extremists who say that human beings are the “cancer” of the Earth. But in fact, human beings do not possess the ability to destroy the Earth at all. The only thing that we can destroy is probably ourselves. Even destroying all species on Earth is a dream.

This is the first time that I see a type of “cancer” that does not possess the ability to eliminate the patient, but the ability to eliminate itself.

The Earth has experienced far more disasters than human beings have ever experienced, to the point that ordinary and normal people like you and I, cannot imagine it. The Earth doesn’t need your protection — poor humans — protect yourselves. Among the species that have existed in the history of the Earth, 99.999% have been extinct, and humans are just one of the ordinary species that have existed. The Earth did not wipe because it feels unnecessary.

Hydrogen bomb is not even a tickle

The most powerful weapon mankind currently possesses is nuclear weapons. The biggest one was the 50 Megaton Tsar Bomba that the Soviet Union once detonated. After the explosion, the nuclear electromagnetic pulse paralyzed the Earth’s radio communications for 60 minutes. But when all the nuclear weapons in the world are put together, the energy after detonation is only equivalent to a major earthquake.

Atomic bombs can blast craters that are tens of meters deep, and hydrogen bombs can blast craters that are two to three hundred meters deep. These craters are as high as 70 stories, isn’t it scary?

If nuclear weapons are detonated in the air instead of buried in the ground, the damaged area will increase exponentially. But in front of the Earth, this power is really not enough.

Early in the formation of the solar system, the entire solar system collided with a large meteorite belt, and all the planets in the solar system were hit by a large number of super meteorites. This “period of heavy bombardment” ended about 3.9 billion years ago.

The meteorite that once caused the extinction of the dinosaurs can only be regarded as an inconspicuous little ant in front of this big impact event.

The craters on the Moon are densely packed, exploding the beautiful Moon into a pockmarked face.

These craters are well preserved. The largest one called the South Pole–Aitken basin has a depth of 8 kilometers. You think the Tsar Bomba that can explode two or three hundred meters deep crater is very scary. How powerful do you think the large meteorite that can explode 8 kilometers deep crater?

Humans have discovered that the surface of Mars is pocked by more than 635,000 impact craters at least 1 kilometer (0.6 miles) wide.

Both the Moon and Mars were bombed so badly, there is no reason that the Earth can take care of itself. The bombed area on Earth was even larger. Therefore, there will only be more craters on Earth. Each of these meteorites can destroy the Earth’s ecosystem. But for Mother Earth, these meteorites are tickles.

A theory, called the Theia impact, suggests that approximately 4.5 billion years ago, in the early Hadean eon, a Mars-sized planetesimal collided with the Earth, directly blasting a small half of the Earth, skewing the Earth’s rotation axis by 23°26′, resulting in the formation of the Moon and the rest was absorbed by the Earth itself.

Compared with this kind of catastrophic impact, meteorites can only be regarded as tickles, and hydrogen bombs are not even a tickle. But after the collision, the Earth is alive and healthier than before. It will be fine if this kind of collision occurs again, except that the humans living on it may be gone.

The Great Filter Theory

The observable universe is about 90 billion light-years in diameter, and there are at least 100 billion galaxies, and each galaxy has about 100 billion to 1 trillion stars. The number of stars in the entire observable universe is about 10,000 stars per grain of sand on Earth. Next time you go to the beach to play, you will know how many worthless stars are there in the universe.

There are 20 billion stars that are similar in size to the sun in the Milky Way. Many of these stars, and hence their planets, are much older than the Sun and the Earth. If the Earth is typical, some may have developed intelligent life long ago.

Among these 20 billion stars, there is a high probability that some of these stars are habitable planets. Even if only one in a thousand of these planets gave birth to any life form, one million civilizations would appear in the entire Milky Way.

As long as there is a civilization that breaks through the technology of interstellar travel, it does not need a high speed, it only needs to reach the minimum speed to escape the gravitational force of a star. In this kind of slow voyage, after landing on a new planet, the spacecraft can use the material of this planet to replicate itself. Then this civilization can spread to the entire galaxy in a few million years. This developed civilization will become the king of the galaxy and colonize all other low-level civilizations.

And since many of the stars similar to the Sun are billions of years older, the Earth should have already been visited by extraterrestrial civilizations long ago.

But human beings have waited for 4.5 billion years and haven’t seen any traces of aliens. We haven’t even seen any signs of advanced alien civilization transforming their own star system. The entire universe is quiet and dead.

This is the Fermi Paradox.

At present, the most reliable argument used to explain the Fermi paradox is the Great Filter Theory.

The concept originates in Robin Hanson’s argument that the failure to find any extraterrestrial civilizations in the observable universe implies the possibility something is wrong with the arguments from various scientific disciplines that the appearance of advanced intelligent life is probable.

This observation is conceptualized in terms of a “Great Filter” which acts to reduce the great number of sites where intelligent life might arise to the tiny number of intelligent species with advanced civilizations.

Civilizations of our level may be everywhere in the universe, but every time it reaches a certain level, civilization will be destroyed, and countless lives will be stuck to death by this filter. This endless loop repeats itself by bouncing between destruction and rebirth.

So far, no civilization can pass this filter, so we can’t see aliens. This is the Great Filter Theory. The five mass extinctions that have occurred on Earth indirectly support the Great Filter Theory.

The Hadean Eon and Life

After the celestial body comparable to Mars hit the Earth, the entire Earth was covered by a molten surface, and the surface temperature exceeded 1,200 degrees. Much of the Earth was molten because of frequent collisions with other bodies which led to extreme volcanism.

Geologists called the first 500 million years of the Earth’s formation as the “Hadean eon”, the name “Hadean” derives from Hades, Greek for “unseen” or “Hell”, which referred to the conditions on Earth at the time.

As the temperature of space was much lower than the temperature of the Earth, the surface of the Earth was getting cold rapidly, a geological crust started to solidify.

This period of time was as long as 100 million years.

The Earth’s crust may look very thick for humans, but compared to the Earth, it is very thin. If the Earth is compared to an egg, the current crust is almost as thick as the eggshell and everything inside is lava.

A large amount of water vapor broke through the Earth’s crust following the eruption of the volcano, and felt to the surface after cooling, forming the ocean. In countless years of lightning and volcanic eruptions, a large amount of inorganic matter became organic matter and gathered in the ocean.

Life began to conceive slowly.

The Cyanobacteria That Destroy The Earth

In the first billions of years, the Earth was full of highly toxic substances such as methane, carbon dioxide, and hydrogen sulfide. The greenhouse effect was “great”, and the whole Earth was very warm. Active on the surface of the Earth was a group of anaerobic bacteria, such as thermophile, anaerobe, iron-oxidizing bacteria, sulfur bacteria, and methanogens.

At this time, cyanobacteria appeared, the extrajudicial fanatic who “destroyed the Earth”.

Cyanobacteria were the first photosynthetic organisms living on Earth. They consume carbon dioxide and methane through photosynthesis, turning sunlight into sugar and emitting oxygen in the form of exhaust gas. This oxygen was a poisonous gas for the anaerobic bacteria that spread all over the Earth at that time.

What’s more, because the greenhouse effect of methane is 23 times that of carbon dioxide, after a large amount of methane was decomposed into oxygen by these “hateful” cyanobacteria, the temperature of the Earth’s surface dropped drastically, causing the Earth to enter the longest ice age in geological history, the Huronian Glaciation.

The entire Earth was frozen for 300 million years. The temperature was as low as -50 ℃, and life was almost extinct. Nearly the entire planet was covered in thick ice. 99% of species were extinct and only a few bacteria survived off geothermal heat by volcanoes.

The hateful cyanobacteria occupied the Earth and destroyed other bacteria, but after the Earth was frozen, it also destroyed itself.

Earth, “done”.

A mass extinction event, called the Great Oxidation Event by geologists, occurred more than 2 billion years ago.

During the 300 million years of the Huronian Glaciation, relying on the greenhouse gases produced by the continuous eruption of volcanoes, the Earth’s surface finally retained enough solar radiation energy to began to thaw slowly.

In the 1 billion years of the Earth’s recovery, geologists called it the Boring Billion, otherwise known as the Barren Billion, which was about 1.8 billion to 800 million years ago.

At this stage, the Earth, environment, biological evolution, and lithosphere were exceptionally stable.

The amount of oxygen in the atmosphere at that time was about 1/10 to 1/100 of today. Relying on this small amount of oxygen, the Earth has finally formed an ozone layer for the first time, ensuring that the lethality of ultraviolet rays is within a controllable range, which can induce genetic material mutation without being completely destroyed.

During the Earth’s freezing period, many species were isolated near small volcano craters and evolved independently for hundreds of millions of years. When the Earth thawed, they slowly got together and exchanged with each other, resulting in a huge increase in the diversity of genetic material.

This directly led to a major uprising of Cambrian species. The Cambrian Explosion occurred about 541 million years ago. In just tens of millions of years, the species diversity on Earth suddenly rose at exponential growth, resulting in almost all of the “phyla” of the modern “animals” on Earth.

The ancestors of all living things on Earth were born during this period. And the fossil evidence of the Cambrian Explosion is very obvious in the stratum, so we generally call this time the origin of life on Earth.

But after this life explosion, the Earth experienced 5 biological extinctions.

Ordovician–Silurian Extinction Event

About 440 million years ago, the first global biological extinction occurred on Earth. The fossils evidence of many creatures were suddenly interrupted here, and they never appeared again. Nearly 85% of marine species are extinct throughout the Earth. The evidence on the rocks tells us that there were 5 glacier pulses on Earth during this period.

The temperature of the Earth fluctuates between cold and hot, frozen for a while, and thawed for a while. This extreme state would go through a couple of times during this period.

Scientists have speculated that it is possible that some kind of algae evolved on Earth at that time, and adapted to open-air living on land. Their thick cell walls prevented them from drying out, which helps ensure their survival while performing photosynthesis.

When all the greenhouse gases on Earth were consumed, the Earth fell into the ice age and the algae became extinct on a large scale. With the continuous eruption of volcanic gas, greenhouse gases were restored, and the Earth recovered again. Algae populations recovered. Many creatures can’t stand up to this extreme climate of hot and cold and have disappeared in the long course of history. Finally one day, a creature that can eat these algae evolved, and the Earth left this state.

Of course, there may be other theories explaining this extinction, but this catastrophe occurred for sure.

Late Devonian Extinction Event

About 365 million years ago, something more terrifying than algae evolved. They are plants. Plants have a vascular structure and can grow very tall, and the lignin that it grows out of it was not eaten by any creatures on Earth.

Even today, few creatures like to eat lignin, and houses with wooden structures can be preserved for decades without any problems.

The booming of terrestrial plants caused a large amount of carbon dioxide to be fixed in lignin, and there is no way to re-enter the carbon cycle. The carbon dioxide content in the atmosphere was reduced by more than 80%. The massive reduction in carbon dioxide caused the Earth to enter a cold period once again, and the world was frozen, leading to serious species extinction events, including the trees themselves. The frozen trees were buried under the Earth’s crust, eventually forming oil and coal. The carbon burial rate in the rock formations suddenly skyrocketed.

There was also a famous name during this period, called the Ice Age.

The “evil” forest destroyed the Earth’s ecology, destroyed countless creatures, and ultimately destroyed itself. Thanks to the mushrooms and termites, if they hadn’t eliminated those nasty trees, the Earth would still sink into the dark ice age.

We have no definite evidence, but a large amount of underground oil and coal were formed during this mass extinction period. This is currently the most reliable explanation.

Permian-Triassic Extinction Event

About 250 million years ago, between the Permian and Triassic, an extremely terrible species extinction occurred, the most serious of the five mass extinctions. In the entire Earth, 98% of living things have been completely extinct.

At that time, the most terrifying volcanic eruption occurred in Siberia. The crust was exploded with a 50-kilometer-diameter opening, and countless mantle materials spewed out. Half of the plants on the entire planet were directly burned, causing the oxygen content of the atmosphere to plummet. Geological data proved that the oxygen content at that time did not exceed 10%. In today’s plain, the oxygen concentration is 21%, and the oxygen concentration of the Tibetan Plateau is 13%. How does the concept of the oxygen concentration of less than 10% make you feel?

At that time, the carbon dioxide content in the atmosphere raised linearly to 10%, and the sulfur dioxide content raised to 6%. In today’s atmosphere, the carbon dioxide content is 0.05%, which was 1/200 at that time. Sulfur dioxide is almost absent and is classified as “other impurities”.

When this geological evidence is put together, the horror behind it makes everyone take a deep breath even by only thinking about it.

Under the terrifying greenhouse effect, the average temperature of the Earth at that time skyrocketed from 16 degrees Celsius to 40 degrees Celsius in a few decades. Today, the average temperature of the Earth is 14 degrees Celsius.

Thick volcanic ash covered the Earth. For 400,000 years, there was almost night on Earth, and almost all plants died. As much as 6% of the sulfur dioxide in the atmosphere caused acid rain to fall on the entire Earth, turning oceans into a sulfuric acid soup.

Such Earth can be described with one word — Hell. Except for a few sulfur bacteria, I don’t think anyone would like this kind of Earth.

After the volcano was extinguished, it took millions of years for the Earth’s ecosystem to barely recover. 98% of the Earth’s species have also completely disappeared, and no new fossils have been produced.

By the way, in these millions of years, cockroaches have been very active, and the fossils have never been broken. I don’t know how it survived in such a harsh environment, but I think even if the Earth’s species are extinct by 99.8%, nothing will happen to it.

Triassic-Jurassic Extinction Event

About 201.3 million years ago, in the eastern part of the modern-day United States and the Caribbean, the continental plates split, the crust was torn apart, and a large crack 2,500 kilometers long and 50 meters wide appeared.

A large amount of magma, carbon dioxide, and sulfur dioxide spewed out, and the same story of “hell of annihilation” almost repeated itself.

The only difference is that this magma eruption ended very early, within just tens of thousands of years. The overwhelming volcanic ash reduced the amount of sunlight received by the Earth’s surface by half, but this time the emission of greenhouse gases is too small to make up for this gap. Therefore, quickly after the Earth’s temperature rose sharply, it dropped, resulting in 300,000 more years of ice.

In this time of mass extinction, fewer species died, and only about 76% of the species were extinct. However, this time, the mass extinction of living things emptied the terrestrial ecosystem and created opportunities for dinosaurs to dominate the Earth.

Cretaceous-tertiary Extinction Event

About 65 million years ago, a 10-kilometer-diameter planetary asteroid hit the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico, forming the Chicxulub Crater. This impact directly caused a large amount of iridium in the stratum surrounding the crater.

Geologists call this obvious stratigraphic line the Cretaceous-Paleogene boundary.

The impact disturbed the Earth’s crust and caused a large number of volcanic eruptions around the world. A huge amount of volcanic ash, carbon dioxide, and sulfur dioxide entered the atmosphere. The thickness of the cloud reached several kilometers, blocking the sun and causing a sharp drop in global temperature.

The whole Earth was black for 6 months.

Although this disaster is well-known, the actual destructive power is very small. The six-month night and the 400,000-year night are completely different things. This time it did not cause a global ice seal.

It took decades for the Earth’s ecosystem to return to normal. Compared with the previous mass extinction that took hundreds of thousands of years and millions of years, this is nothing.

Not many creatures were extinct this time, but the dinosaurs with huge appetites couldn’t stand it, and decades for the restoration of the Earth were not survivable for dinosaurs.

In fact, almost all large and medium-sized vertebrates on Earth have been extinct. The long land animals of the size of whales all died and the small mammals ushered in the opportunity to rise to the top of the chain.

The Cycle of History

But every once in a while, the biosphere on Earth will be cleaned up for an inexplicable reason. Many creatures were extinct in units of “Phyla”.

In the animal kingdom, what is the concept of a phylum? Domains, kingdoms, phyla, classes, orders, families, genus, species, and the extinction of a phylum is right before the extinction of the kingdoms.

For example, the phylum Chordata: humans, apes, tigers, dogs, cows, sparrows, frogs, crocodiles. All animals with vertebrae belong to the phylum Chordates. Apple, cabbage, watermelon, rapeseed, and other plants with seeds belong to the seed plant phylum. Only if all of these living organisms die, it will “qualify” for the extinction of a phylum.

In a mass extinction, a species of a phylum, as long as a few individuals survive the disaster, and through evolution, pass on the genetic material, it will be regarded as the victory of the entire phylum species. If the next mass extinction, the human race doesn't survive, but there are a total of 5 frogs in the world that survived and eventually reproduced. That would be considered a victory for humans. At least we are relatives. In the future, these frogs will have a few more subspecies, and the phylum Chordate will continue to exist, and there will still be creatures with vertebrae on Earth.

In ancient times, a whole phylum of species died collectively without individual survivors. The extinction of a whole phylum of species was countless, just as the sands on our planet. You will never see these colorful creatures again, you can only glimpse its spirit from the fossils.

In history, the terrible catastrophes that destroyed a large number of phyla changed the Earth’s environment on a large scale every time. The oxygen content skyrocketed thousands of times, the carbon dioxide content skyrocketed 200 times, the average temperature doubled several times, and there were hundreds of thousands of years of pure winter.

If someone travels through time and space to the ancient Earth, you will never think that that place is your Earth.

But what we should pay attention to is that the five recent mass extinctions occurred on an average of every 65 to 135 million years. Among them, the third mass extinction and the fourth mass extinction were 65 million years apart. The fifth mass extinction is exactly 65 million years away from today.

If humans are lucky, the next mass extinction may take tens of millions of years. If we are not lucky, it may happen in thousands or even hundreds of years.

There are many reasons. It may be cracks on the surface of Earth, an asteroid hitting the Earth, or other strange reasons. But no matter which one is, it is far more terrifying than nuclear weapons.

If human beings can’t survive, it means that life on Earth is blocked by the Great Filter, and the Great Filter theory once again destroyed a civilization. The Earth has existed for 4.5 billion years, life has existed for at least 3.6 billion years. It has been 65 million years since the last mass extinction.

And modern human beings, as part of the Eukaryote domain Animal kingdom Chordate phylum Mammal class Primate Order Hominidae Family Homo Genus Sapien Specie, is only 250,000 years old, which is about 0.006% of Earth’s age. Since its birth, more than 90% of the time, humans have been hunting and gathering to survive.

500 years ago, humans believed that the Earth was the center of the universe.

200 years ago, humans were still using manpower as their main energy source.

Only 100 years ago, mankind invented radio communication technology.

On the scale of the universe, human beings can only be regarded as the embryo of a civilization.

Therefore, mankind must race against time to develop science and technology, strive to obtain the ability to protect itself before the next catastrophe, and establish a long-term human base on a foreign planet, which can provide survival for humans for at least several million years.

Don’t expect refuge bases on Earth. The so-called big earthquakes nowadays only shake the Earth by moving the continental plates a few millimeters. But the catastrophe of ancient times made it trivial to move the continental plate a few kilometers. In the face of this level of major changes in the Earth’s crust, all man-made facilities will be torn into pieces. In the face of nature, the current technology of mankind is nothing.

All you can rely on is your own body.

There is basically only one end, and that is death.

500 years after the demise of mankind, all modern man-made buildings will disappear, and nature will cover everything.

After 10,000 years of human disappearance, there are only a few large stone carvings that can prove that humans once existed.

After 50 million years of human disappearance, the new generation of Earth overlords can only appreciate our legacy through fossils, just as we appreciate dinosaurs today.

For Mother Earth, this time was just a nap… Is it dinosaurs that are ruling the Earth or humans that are ruling the Earth? Why does it matter?

Whether the average temperature of the Earth’s surface is -14 degrees Celsius, or 14 degrees Celsius, or doubled to 28 degrees Celsius, why does it matter? Compared with the 6000 degrees Celsius of the core, the temperature of the surface is only a fraction of a fraction.

The Earth did not expect humans to protect it, humans cannot protect it, and the Earth does not need human protection.

For weak creatures like humans, when the next major cleansing comes, it would be a miracle to protect themselves from extinction.

Time is running out, and there will really be no chance if we don’t start developing technology now.

Feel free to connect with me on Linkedin or louiszhu0210@gmail.com