When you look around you, almost anywhere on earth, you will see life. Earth seems to be an excellent helper of life: we have seen it in the air, in the water, in the land, and even in the deep underground.
But was it inevitable? We know that there have been mass extinctions in the past, some that have taken away most of life on Earth. However, since the beginning of life and spread over the earth, no event has taken place there Absolutely Abolish life. Of course! Else we are not going to think here.
Still, it’s interesting. This means that, despite some serious temporary inconveniences, the Earth’s climate has remained relatively stable for 3-4 billion years.
It’s weird, too. We know that stars like the sun get warmer with their age and a long time ago the sun was about 30% weaker. Either that means the ancient earth should be stable, or assuming it is pure, the earth should be boiling now. Neither is true, which is a mystery.
It’s called the Fant Young Sun Paradox, and many scientists have encouraged scientists to believe that the Earth has a kind of thermostat, a set of conditions that balances the system that gets out of the chunk so it doesn’t get too hot or too cold. . This will be a negative feedback system, where if any situation, anyway, say, warm the earth, things will change the way it cools.
But we know that positive feedback terms also exist. If you release carbon dioxide into the air, the oceans will heat up, releasing more COO.2, And you get a feedback loop that ends badly. As we are seeing now. And if there is very little CO2 The earth will be stationary in the air.
So maybe we were just lucky, and our environment just happened to be stable for all those lifetimes.
So is it by chance, or by mechanism? Or both?
To find out, the scientist performed a clever experiment. He created a simulation of 100,000 planets (!!), where everyone was given a bunch of random climate feedback, some negative and some positive, and traced its temperature for 3 billion years – any other variables (water content, for example, or the breathing atmosphere). )) Was simulated. For simplicity he just wanted to see if a planet the size of Earth could maintain a habitable temperature for long.
To clarify that simulation feedbacks were not based on real issues like CO2 In the air; Instead he randomly assigned planets Mathematical Feedback, Strict numerical conditions to see what happens. He also made large random changes at random times to mimic the external pressures of the same temperature of things like asteroid effects or explosions of supervocals.
To see what happens to the temperature, each planet sim was then run 100 times, the variation in it changed a bit.
The point here was not to create a full-up atmosphere simulation but to see how big a chance the role of the Earth plays in the habitation. He was testing two hypotheses. Hypothesis 1 is that feedback has no effect, so random fluctuations rule the day; If a planet stays in a range of habitable temperatures for billions of years, that is the only pure chance. The second hypothesis is that having a reaction, negative or positive, Guarantees Success or failure, with opportunity playing a role.
In other words, he was hoping to see if the reactions to the climate really did make the earth habitable for so long, or if we were just lucky. A planet would be habitable if its temperature remained relatively stable over a billion-billion-year simulation.
What he found is interesting. Of the 100,000 planets, 9% succeeded at least once (and 1,400 succeeded on the first run out of 100). Some planets succeeded twice, some three times… and in fact, looking at all 100,000 planets, he had 1 and 100 successful runs each.
But, there were only 100 successful runs out of 100 on one planet. It is a strong planet, showing that nothing could stop it from becoming a nice place to live (and at least in temperature).
Overall, given the range of results and how they happened, the conclusion is that both feedback and random chance play a role in the planet’s ability to stay in a favorable temperature range. While the success rate varies from model to model, changing factors over 100 runs still supported the idea that both method and opportunity played a role.
Obviously, luck favors a ready planet.
So we can do extrapolation on this earth, saying that it is the feedback we have and the random opportunity that has kept our righteous world good, Fair? If we rewind the tape and change the circumstances a little bit, will we still have a habitable world to live in?
I will not go that far. This seems to support the idea, but the author himself said in the paper, “The simplicity and uncertainty in the design of the model means that it must be unrealistic in certain respects. Caution is therefore required in extrapolating from model results to reality. ”
In other words, this is a very simple test, and more complex tests should be done. After all, the Earth has come a little closer to the tipping point, so it’s not hard to imagine the impact of large planets or any other factor polluting us. But still, this simulation is an interesting first step!
He predicts: Most exoplanets that are similar to Earth will be desolate, as it runs in most of its tests. Earth-like planets were the exception. It doesn’t happen if we find it to be true Prove it Hypothesis, but Supports That. And if we really find out Is Liveable, well, that would be interesting, wouldn’t it?
And this serves as a precautionary story. We really aren’t Learn How strong the earth is, how well it can succeed and continue. It has been criticized in the past, stalled and shaken things up, but not without some degree of long-term environmental impact. And our own races, our culture, right now keep a balance on the edge of the razor. Even if the earth’s ecosystem somehow survived, it would not take such a big hit to bring us countless disasters.
I have a lot of issues with humans, but I would prefer not to be extinct. Uncontrolled shaking from the feedback already in place strikes me as a pretty horrible idea. The earth may be strong, but we are not.
We need to be more careful. These things are one of the so-called reasons Cautionary tales.
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