Vida na Terra vai-se extinguir… dentro de 16 milhões de anos

Parece-me uma “teoria” bastante especulativa… baseada em estatística que não confere.
As extinções em massa nos últimos 600 milhões de anos não foram em intervalos regulares.
Obviamente que se pode fazer médias, mas isso não quer dizer nada.

Se eu comprar o jornal amanhã e comprar de novo no dia seguinte, e sabendo que não compro o jornal há mais de 20 anos, quer isso dizer que a próxima vez que vou comprar o jornal é daqui a 10 anos? Claro que não. Não faz sentido essa “conclusão”.

Por outro lado, eles falam em extinções em massa, mas a vida continua… 😉

Quem ficou triste com esta nova data… são os profetas da desgraça para 2012 😛

IOL:
“Vida na Terra vai extinguir-se dentro de 16 milhões de anos.
De acordo com investigadores, a vida na Terra é eliminada a cada 27 milhões de anos.
Os cientistas da Universidade do Kansas e de um instituto em Washington têm 99 por cento de certeza que ocorrem extinções a casa 27 milhões de anos.
Em 1980, os investigadores acreditavam que as extinções podem ter sido resultado de um distante gémeo obscuro do Sol, chamado Nemesis, que lançou uma chuva de cometas na direcção do nosso planeta. No entanto, actualmente essa teoria foi refutada, pois ao longo do tempo a órbita do Nemesis mudou.
A última extinção, ocorrida há 11 milhões de anos, acabou com dez por cento dos habitantes da Terra. Temos 16 milhões de anos até acontecer a próxima, apesar de ocasionalmente poder acontecer dez milhões de anos mais cedo.”

Daily Mail:
“Research into so-called ‘extinction events’ for our planet over the past 500 million years – twice as long as any previous studies – has proved that they crop up with metronomic regularity.
Scientists from the University of Kansas and the Smithsonian Institute in Washington DC are 99 per cent confident that there are extinctions every 27 million years.
In the 1980s scientists believed that Earth’s regular extinctions could be the result of a distant dark twin of the Sun, called Nemesis.
The theory was that Nemesis crashed through the Oort cloud every 27 million years and sent a shower of comets in our direction.
The Oort cloud is a vast belt of dust and ice that is believed to lie around one light year from the Sun and is the origin of many of the comets that pass through our solar system.
But now scientists claim that the regularity of the mass extinctions actually disproves the Nemesis theory because its orbit would have changed over time as it interacted with other stars.
The last extinction event, 11 million years ago, saw 10 per cent of the Earth’s inhabitants wiped out.
This means there is around 16million years until the next event takes place, although the graph shows that it occasionally the event takes place up to 10 million years early.
Asteroids crashing into the Earth are commonly believed to be one of the main reasons behind mass extinctions like that suffered by the dinosaurs – the Cretaceous-Tertiary (KT) extinction. The extinction wiped out more than half of all species on the planet clearing the way for mammals to become the dominant species on Earth. The extinction was caused by a massive asteroid slamming into Earth at Chicxulub in Mexico. The asteroid, which was around 15 kilometres wide, is believed to have hit Earth with a force one billion times more powerful than the atomic bomb at Hiroshima.”

News:
“Life on Earth wiped out every 27 million years – and it’s not the fault of Nemesis.
* Extinctions studied over 600 million years
* Occur every 27 million years
* Oort cloud of dust, ice responsible
FIRST the bad news – scientists are now 99 per cent certain mass extinction events on Earth are as regular as clockwork.
The good news? There’s still 16 million years to go until the next one.
That’s the finding from scientists from the University of Kansas and the Smithsonian Institute in the US, where they’ve mapped out all Earth’s extinction events from the past 600 million years.
According to what they’ve seen, life on Earth is wiped out every 27 million years.
It’s not going to be global warming that finishes us all off, either.
Unfortunately for our planet, it passes through a shower of comets every 27 million years, and it very rarely escapes unscathed.
Of the last 20 times we made a galactic run for our lives through the comet shower, Earth only escaped with most of its biological organisms intact six times.”

Examiner:
“Scientists predict mass extinction in 16 million years, give or take 10 million years.”