What Will the Earth be Like in 5,000,000 Years?

To be able to predict how the Earth will be like in 5,000,000 years from now, first we need to say how it came to be today. Well, Earth went through so many changes throughout its billions of years of its existence. Started as a big ball on fire, many periods of ice ages, and being constantly hit by asteroids who came within its path. This asteroids are the ones that scientists believe brought life to it. Earth surface is constantly changing and moving. Having a crust cracked into plates floating in a semiliquid mantle that makes them move because of its convection currents. Scientist believe it all started when all continents were once together in a supercontinent called “Pangaea”. Billions of years ago, the movement started to move them until where they are today. Evidence of this is on the continent's shape fitting like a puzzle, similar fossils of plants and animals being found along the coasts of continents separated by an ocean, and similar rocks and minerals as well.

The planet’s topography has gone through many changes as well because of the plates movement. As the continental drift theory explains, some of the continents moved away from each other, but others crashed. As a result of this geological event, mountain ranges formed. The ocean floor also went through some changes when plates separated (seafloor spreading) creating and destroying the ocean floor, as well as forming rifts and underwater volcanoes that make more land (islands).

But the crust is not the only thing that has changed. The planet’s climate has suffer many changes since the earth’s “birth”. This changes have happened over millions of years, from warm to cold and warm again. Now, we are warm but getting colder. Before our time, volcanic activity, solar flares, and asteroids crashing on Earth leaving dust particles in our atmosphere, sending us into an ice age. Today, humans are the cause of our climate change. Humans release excessive greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere, which breaks our ozone layer, making a hole, leaving us unprotected from UV rays. These climate changes pose a threat to human existence, as well as all life in our planet.

Thinking about the future of our planet and the future of all life on Earth is just something that not many people do. We ask ourselves: What will the Earth be like in about 5,000,000 years from now? Who knows, we can’t see the future right? On the other hand, we can predict what could be using what we know now, predict a path of existence or destruction of all life on Earth.

Now let’s talk about how I think Earth would look like on the surface. I believe that because our crust is in constant and dynamic movement, and we can feel that with every earthquake that is happening more and more times now than before, our continents would not be where the are now. It took millions of years for Pangaea to separate, why not, maybe Pangaea will form again, but in a different shape, since our continents will be united opposite sides to how they were on Pangaea. The movements of the plates also causes volcanic eruptions, and volcanic eruptions pollute our air, our atmosphere. On top of that we have the humans doing just that, polluting the air filling our atmosphere with carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases that will destroy any protection from harmful sun rays. Life will slowly die. In 5 million years, the conditions on Earth will no longer be ideal for life. I believe that another Ice age will come back to our planet.

Humans and our own planet’s surface process will not be the only cause for extinction of life on Earth. We still need to think about threats that come from space. Asteroids that are wondering in space, carrying ice and space dust, could be getting caught by planets or even our own planet’s gravity and get in our path. These threats, with our present technology, are being monitored, and plans are being created as a possible solutions of protecting Earth in the event of one of them putting us in danger. But we have to think, 5 million years from now, just like it happened millions of years in the past, Earth could be impacted by one of them and finish all life, or change the shape of the surface of Earth, or even destroy the whole planet.

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