USA: NASA scientists find evidence of flowing water on Mars1:23
NASA announced at a press conference in Houston, Monday, that scientists have found first proof that flowing water exists on the Mars surface during the summer. Planetary Science Division Director for NASA Dr. James Green stated that "Mars is not the dry arid planet that we thought of in the past. Today we are going to announce, that under certain circumstances, liquid water has been found on Mars." Images were shown on screen explaining how the discovery was made and the potential implications is has. Footage courtesy of NASA
This landscape scene from The Martian could be what earth looks like in billions of years. Picture: Fox films
EARTH is slowly turning into a barren red world just like Mars and it spells doom for every living being on the planet.
That’s the terrifying warning from a top scientist who wants our species to wake up to the grim fate awaiting us.
Anjali Tripathi, an astrophysicist at Harvard University, has spoken out about a “frightening” natural effect called atmospheric escape.
In a recent TED talk, she said that 400 pounds of hydrogen and almost 6.6 pounds of helium escape from Earth into space with every single minute that passes.
Eventually, this will cause such a massive change in the makeup of Earth’s atmosphere that life will be unable to cling on any longer and the planet’s surface will turn blood red and barren.
Cool, for now. But how long will it be before the earth’s atmosphere is incapable of supporting life?Source:Supplied
She said the atmosphere is little more than a “tenuous veneer around our planet” which “allows life to flourish.”
“It’s such an amazing phenomenon that the fact it is disappearing should frighten you,” she added.
Mars was thought to have weather systems just like ours, which means it may even have been home to living organisms.
But it is believed to have undergone a massive process of atmospheric escape in which hydrogen disappeared into space, leaving oxygen behind.
Scientists theorise that Mars have held life billions of years ago. Picture: Fox filmsSource:Supplied
It was this oxygen that is believed to have turned the planet red, by oxidising (rusting) the surface.
The same process is already happening on Earth, but is likely to speed up in the “far future” because the sun is set to get brighter and brighter, until it eventually engulfs much of the solar system.
Tripathi added: “What we can look forward to, or at least prepare for, is the fact that in the future, the Earth is going to look more like Mars.”
“Our hydrogen from water breaking down will escape into space more rapidly, leaving us with a dry, reddish planet.”
Happily, we have a few billion years left until this grim scenario plays out, so we’ve got plenty of time to prepare for the inevitable apocalypse.
This article first appeared in the New York Post and was republished with permission.
