Is the Earth a living organic being or just a bunch of dirt? Will it die? How?
I’m just curious whether or not others feel like I do. I wholeheartedly believe that the earth is a living being that like everything else will eventually die just like other planets have. She might even just shake us off like a dog shakes off water after a bath if we irritate her too much (pollution). We are sooooo small in the scheme of things yet sooooo arrogant…
The earth is, mostly, a ball of molten iron hanging in space.
Life only inhabits a tiny portion of the earth: the skin on an apple is thicker than the earth’s crust, relative to the diameter – and organisms only live *on top* of that crust.
Eventually the earth will “die” when the sun dies and expands – boiling-off the earth’s atmosphere and water.
The interdependence of organisms in the biosphere means that by altering the levels of different substances in and on the earth, humans are playing havok with the balance. But I seriously doubt that humans could ever wipe out all life on earth – even if we really tried (which we aren’t: we’re only doing it by accident). Bacteria and simple organisms will always survive, but we might wipe out a lot of the larger organisms, including ourselves. The earth has both been a lot hotter and a lot colder at different points in the past, and life got on fine (albeit many species became extinct every time the climate changed dramatically)
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December 29th, 2009 at 1:23 am
The Gaia hypothesis has little to no evidence in support of it.
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December 29th, 2009 at 1:57 am
Yes the Earth will die. If not first from a nuclear war or attacking space aliens the Sun will eventually swell up and swallow the Earth after it bakes it at a couple million degrees.
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December 29th, 2009 at 2:28 am
It’s neither.
About 5 billion years from now the sun will begin to run out of fuel and will swell to the size of our orbit. I guess it will die then.
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December 29th, 2009 at 2:55 am
The earth is, mostly, a ball of molten iron hanging in space.
Life only inhabits a tiny portion of the earth: the skin on an apple is thicker than the earth’s crust, relative to the diameter – and organisms only live *on top* of that crust.
Eventually the earth will "die" when the sun dies and expands – boiling-off the earth’s atmosphere and water.
The interdependence of organisms in the biosphere means that by altering the levels of different substances in and on the earth, humans are playing havok with the balance. But I seriously doubt that humans could ever wipe out all life on earth – even if we really tried (which we aren’t: we’re only doing it by accident). Bacteria and simple organisms will always survive, but we might wipe out a lot of the larger organisms, including ourselves. The earth has both been a lot hotter and a lot colder at different points in the past, and life got on fine (albeit many species became extinct every time the climate changed dramatically)
References :