Comment on The Earth is reflecting less and less sunlight, study reveals

• JohnnyEnzyme@piefed.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

  FWIW, the Earth has about 500-600My left before common photosynthesis is no longer possible due to fallout from the sun heating up gradually. My understanding is that unless complex life somehow adapts, then that will be the end of it on Earth, with simpler life presumably surviving for billions more years past that mark.

  Point is– if complex life can survive the coming collapse, then it evidently does have a healthy window to work with. I believe that might be helped out by the ‘churning of the continents,’ in which landmass gets regularly cycled back in to the magma layer over the course of millions of years, with new areas appearing on the other edges, so to speak.

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  • salacious_coaster@infosec.pub ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    I’m enjoying the thought of our current planet being melted down into liquid hot magma and a whole new planet surface getting a chance

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    • JohnnyEnzyme@piefed.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

      Right??

      It’s going to be glorious.
      –(sotto voce)

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  • Korhaka@sopuli.xyz ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

    What about life around deep sea vents?

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    • JohnnyEnzyme@piefed.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago

      Ahh, good point, yes.
      I actually was thinking about those beautiful little deep-sea worlds when I wrote the above, but simply didn’t know enough to assert a dang-ol’ thing at the time. Okay, let’s see:

      However, although it is often said that these communities exist independently of the sun, some of the organisms are actually dependent upon oxygen produced by photosynthetic organisms, while others are anaerobic. –WP

      So… looks like we have at least *some* members of these little communities carrying on, past the death of oxygenic photosynthesis, which they evidently don’t need in order to survive. (meanwhile with anoxygenic photosynthesis carrying on for many millions more of years).

      But off the top of my empty coconut, it does raise a couple Q’s:

      1) Since there are maybe a dozen or less community members who live in these little worlds, closely built in to a commensurate ecosystem, would the death of the ones who rely on traditional photosynthesis bring about a collapse, either partial or total?

      2) Would rampant global warming tend to mess with the already super-heated, typically sulfurous nature of these worlds? (me, I would tend to think “nawt,” since they’re already so hot, but then again, I’m just some layperson really curious about all this, hah)

      Ah… those beautiful, entrancing little forbidden worlds:
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrothermal_vent
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ECBbAjoEHWI

      ❤️

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