Hello!
Welcome back to most amazing Top 10 ! I am Rebecca Felgate and as we're getting pretty
close to Halloween, I thought I would give you a good scare.
However ghost, ghouls and demons wont do the trick…I want to really scare you with some
existential doom!
That's right….today I am talking the Top 10 Things That Could Destroy Earth Part 2.
10 - Gamma Ray Burst Gamma Ray Bursts are way more worrying than
Solar Flares.
They are one of the brightest and most powerful events in the universe and have the ability
to destroy anything in their path.
They have been observed in distant galaxies but not yet our own.
Gamma Ray Bursts come from the collapse of stars – usually during a supernova or a
hyper nova.
It has been predicted that a gamma ray burst in the milky way, our galaxy, would cause
mass extinction, if not total obliteration of the earth.
9 -Toxic Pollution I don't know whether this could destroy
planet earth, but toxic waste could definitely destroy its inhabitants.
In most major cities, the air is thick with carcinogens that come from gasoline used in
vehicles.
Pollutants from farming to feed our huge populations effect wildlife and contaminate water sources.
Industry pumps metals into the air, which can be detected falling in the snows of Antarctica.
And this is just day to day, of course there are also the accidents like exploding nuclear
power plants.
With industry constantly rising, with oil constantly being excavated and burned….how
long until we choke the planet to death, or poison ourselves into sickness.
It's not just on land pollution that is a concern, either….we genuinely have to
work about intergalactic Contamination…which is coming in at number 8.
NASA employs full time Galaxy defenders and keeping the earth safe from cosmic contamination
is one of their duties.
In our modern age of space travel and adventure, more than ever, equipment and astronauts are
setting foot in new realms.
We have no idea how particles or matter from these realms would affect earth if they were
introduced.
In the past, travelling from one country to another has had huge effects, for example,
almost the entire wine production of Europe was halted at one point when Phylloxera was
introduced from North America by accident.
We don't want to accidentally bring something home that disrupts the order of things, possibly
to catastrophic effect.
7 - Collapse of Ecosystems When you were little, did you ever ask your
parents or teachers why we couldn't just kill all the wasps or the spiders?
It seemed reasonable as they were pests and you couldn't see a reason for them.
Then the wise elder would say, well…who would trap and eat the flies, and what would
the birds or frogs eat?
Without spiders, we would be overrun by flies and birds and frogs would suffer.
Everything at the moment is linked in an eco system and our existence depends on a fine
balance of other existences.
Despite knowing that, humans are cutting down forests left right and centre to make more
space for our growing population.
Reportedly 30,000 species are vanishing every year because of our effect on our environment,
meaning we are causing mass extinctions.
Who knows when we will kill off something we really need and what effect that will have
on the food chain?
6 - Global Warming You can argue about the cause of it all you
want, the weather on planet earth is fluctuating and is more unstable than we have known it
throughout the period of human history.
We are currently breaking heat records, as arctic ice is disappearing, glaciers are melting,
as is mountain snow.
The rise in sea levels could drown several of our cities.
Some predict that the new body of water could disturb currents in the Atlantic ocean, which
could paradoxically trigger an ice age.
5 - Rogue Planet Collision Uh oh!
It's a rogue planet!
These sound way more fun than they actually are!
Rogue Planets are planets that don't orbit stars some simulations suggest that there
may be more rogue planets than stars in the milky way….at 100 thousand to one…so really,
we could be in one giant game of dodge ball.
Our planet actually may have formed from a collision of planets, so it does happen.
In 2012, some scientists predicted a rogue planet cold be just 100 light years away.
Sure, we can blast asteroids…but how do you deal with a whole planet coming at you.
4 - Earths Core Cools So, right now earths core is hot hot hot and,
to cut something long and complicated down into a paragraph in a top ten list, we need
it to stay that way.
The swirling of liquid iron and nickel of the outer core, swirling around the solid
metal of the inner core creates magnetic fields which defelct solar flares, and more.
If the core cools, not only would we ourselves lose heat, but we would lose our magnetosphere,
which would shoot our earth atmosphere into space, leaving us vulnerable to all kinds
of crazy solar activity.
You know mars?
Icy icy mars?
Many speculate that a cool core is what caused this planet to die out billions of years ago….
There's not much around there now!
No immediate worries though – our core isn't set to cool for tens of billions of years.
One more immediate worry, though, is that humans are currently trying to dig a hole
to the mantle of the earth, which protects the core.
While I am sure we couldn't prod hard enough….some are not sure poking the mantle is a good idea.
3 Robots Ah…robots!
Many people dear that Robots will take over the world, but I am not particularly afraid
of them destroying it.
Humans have yet to evolve to something beyond our current state, but when you think about
it, our next stage of evolution could be computers or robots which are often more durable than
we are.
In some crazy dystopian future, Robots could become the top of the food chain, however
they would likely know how to look after planet earth better than we do.
2 - Devine Intervention I mean…
I am pretty sceptical about this one, but any good sceptic should also be sceptical
of their own beliefs and acknowledge anything could happen to change their mind at any time.
For some religious people, this may seem like a distinct possibility, for the agnostic among
us, we also have to admit that we do not know how the world was create, therefore there
are mysteries to the universe we don't yet understand.
If god created the world and stars, could god not very well destroy them?
IF the world started with a big bang, it could end with one.
For me, I think the most likely way the world will end on this list is our number 1, which
is Egos.
War comes from a clash of egos, failing to acknowledge global warming comes from an egotistical
view.
Oil is money, so those with huge egos will want to burn it, so long as it lines their
pockets.
Egos are the enemy of science and prevention, egos are the enemy of learning.
A person who cannot put aside their ego to accept new information that challenges what
they may have previously believed is a dangerous person indeed.
Unfortunately, the world is filled with egos and the biggest egos tend to run countries.
Only but putting these egos aside and playing for team planet earth, rather than team individual
gain, will we be able to face the issues that have come up on this list.
Fundamentally, if we cant put aside our egos, the world
is doomed.
Không có nhận xét nào:
Đăng nhận xét