The Future Of The Earth In 1 Billion Years From Now - What Will Change In The Earth?

INTRODUCTION

To make inferences about the future of the earth and to effectively answer the questions as relating to how the earth will be in a billion years, one might think it is a "mission impossible", but obviously, we will start with the few facts we know about the earth, then we'll be using them to make predictions about the future of the earth.

Let's start by considering what will change in the earth with the passage of time:

1. TIME ITSELF

When you ask someone "how many hours are there in a day?" the next reply will be "24 hours". Well, that's because there is (or rather, an approximation of it)... but what if I tell you that about 1 billion years ago, the earth had only about 18 hours and some minutes, will you believe me? Before you scream "impossible!!", just hang on. From your elementary geography, you must have been taught that the earth rotates round its axis, but were you also taught that some astro bodies (like the moon) also have influence on the rotation of the earth?

Tidal locking of moon to earth. By Stigmatella aurantiaca Licence:CC BY-SA 3.0

The greatest influence on the rotation of the earth is the moon. Of course, the moon is our own natural satellite which is situated about 385,000km from the earth, but the moon also has a tidal lock with the earth. By "tidal lock", I mean an interaction between two co-orbiting bodies in which both of them have been synchronized in a way that has caused one stellar body to achieve a similar rotational period as the other. That is; their rotation will be in sympathy to the other. Over the years, it has been observed that the moon is slightly moving further away from the earth. This could be the effect of the alteration in the earth's rotational speed (slightly decelerating). So to keep up with the tidal locking, the moon has to keep drifting and receding backwards. Even though this movement might be considered by many as negligibly small (about 1.5 inches each year _[ref]), but the accumulation of this over a long period of time will obviously be visible. According to the Natural Academy of science, over the period of 1.4 billion years, the moon has drifted about 44,000 km away from the earth.

Do you know the effect of the drifting away of the moon? This is affecting the length of days here on earth. According to NASA's Report, the length of earth's day gets longer by about 1.4 milliseconds every 100 years. Now you'll say it is pretty small huh? Extrapolating these figures a little; in 50,000 years, there will be additional 1 second. Now that's still pretty small right? But summing this up a little, the length of day will be exactly 1 hour longer in about 180 million years (that's working with the NASA's report I cited earlier). Now let's do a little maths.

If 180 million years will add 1 hour to the length of earth's day,
Then in 1 billion years = 1 hour x (1,000,000,000 years / 180,000,000 years).
= 5.5 hours (on approximation)

That means; in 1 billion years, we'll have additional 5.5 hours which will sum up to about 29.5 hours in a day (5.5 hours + 24 hours). Pretty cool huh? Okay let's look at what else will change in the next 1 billion years.

2. PLATE TECTONICS AND CONTINENTAL DRIFT

As rigid as the earth might appear to you, you'd be surprised to know that inside the earth (the crust, core, and mantle), there's a movement going on and it is referred to as "plate tectonics". A very known geo-scientist in the early 20th century; Alfred Wegener; was among the first people to propose a theory as it relates to plate tectonics. From his observation, he inferred that the various continents of the world have a coastline that appear to fit if placed together (just like a jigsaw puzzle). This led him to believe that, indeed, these continents had been fused together as single entity (which he referred to as Pangaea). However, over the passage of time, Pangaea broke up and the continents began to drift away.

The continents kept on drifting away on an extremely slow but continuous pace till now we have 7 continents. This drifting (or movement) can be considered as plate tectonics. Though at that time, he didn't call it "plate tectonics", but this has formed the fundamentals of the theories of tectonics we have today. The average motion of these plate have been calculated to be about 1-2 cm each year _[ref] - now you might also feel these figure are so small, but what do you think would happen over a period of 1 billion years? Remember, plates haven't stopped moving.

Another fact is; all the plates that make up the lithosphere have different patterns of movement. The movement can be convergent, divergent or even sliding, and their interactions go a long way to influence the earth's geography. For example, the formation of many mountains is a remote effect of plates colliding with one another. Just like it has been observed; mount Everest adds a few cm every year _[ref]. Also, volcanoes can be remotely linked to plate tectonics. Yes! It might surprise you to know that the internal core of the earth is almost as hot as the surface of the sun - in case you're wondering where volcanoes come from.

Definitely, in 1 billion years from now, we should not expect the shape of the earth to be the same as we have it now - some plates would collide with others (forming new landmarks), some will slide over others, while some others will drift further away from others.

Also, with the increase in the retention of heat on the earth (and global warming), the overall temperature of the earth would have increased over these number of years. The effect of this can be imagined as thus: Polar caps will melt - increasing the level of liquid water on the earth. Some coastal cities will be submerged. And probably, Greenland (which is currently among the coldest regions of the world) will become perfectly habitable with a fair temperature.

3. HUMANS AND HUMANITY

Obviously, we will not look at what will change in the earth without considering the human species. A question that might come to your mind is; "would humans still remain in the next 1 billion years, if yes, in what form?" Observably, the answer to this is very bleak. Before this present time, there had been some extinction events on the earth. As a matter of fact, there had been a record "5 mass extinctions" and the truth is, the extant modern humans never witnessed any of these mass extinctions. The appearance of the extant modern humans is still at its infancy - just about 200,000 years ago _[ref], but the last major extinction event took place 66 million years ago_[ref].

Remember this; it is called "mass extinction" for a very specific reason - there was a huge decline in species and biodiversity on the planet. The first one that took place about 450 million years ago caused the extinction of over 70% of the bio-species on the planet _[ref]. Now, the real scare is; "will there be another mass extinction?" Well, humans are the major disrupters of the balance of the ecosystem, more so, the population of the earth is currently at the excess of 7.7 billion - the question is; how many more will the earth probably take before putting up a "fight for survival?". Asides the extinction events, there are other factors that could potentially threaten the future of humankind:

• Imagine an outbreak of disease (like a pandemic)
• What if we have a cosmic or stellar intervention? Like a cataclysm or a body colliding with the earth?... Probably not? The next point might send some signals to you.
• What of wars? Here, we're not talking about human-to-human warfare, but warfare between humans and AI. Maybe that was what Elon Musk meant when he quipped that "battle of AI" might initiate the third world war.

However, if humans are able to survive all these potential threats, we definitely might not remain in this extant form. With the advances in technology, one could easily infer that our biological bodies would be greatly mutilated by technology - of which the major ones will be AI and cybernetics. Imagine a future where humans will probably merge with machines (the process has already begun).

More so, we should also take into account the fact that there is no certainty if the earth will or will not remain after 1 billion years, or if human must have achieved multi-planetary abilities, or at least established a space colony. Here's a crucial point to consider though; with the population growth being witnessed in this era, how will you think the earth will respond to it in a billion years to come? Obviously, at the current rate of increase, it will be impracticable for the earth to accommodate such population. Potentially, our next point of call could be "space colonization".

FINAL WORDS

We tried to make projections into how and what the earth will look like in a billion years to come (that's if humans wouldn't destroy the earth before then). We started with the facts we have at hand and used them to make extrapolations into what to expect in the future. One thing is very important to note here; even though these projections have been made, it would actually be impossible for y'all to witness them, except maybe you're immortal, lol.

Thanks for reading

> References for further reading:

• Plate Tectonics - Nationalgeographic
• Theory of continental drift - Alfred Wegener
• Days getting longer on earth – Nasa
• Relationship between movement of the moon and length of days on earth
• Pangaea the super-continent

gif by @foundation