The danger to civilization can lurk both in the person himself and be external. Something tells me that for a better understanding of the world around us, the reader simply needs to familiarize himself with these external dangers. At least with part of them.
The first thing that can occur to a person when he is told about the danger threatening our planet is asteroids. This is the influence of the media and Hollywood films. The general public knows much less about other dangers. Well, let's start with the famous …
Journalists and Hollywood have not come up with anything new. Earth has been repeatedly subjected to devastating asteroid bombardment. And it will be exposed more than once, judging by how often it happened before.
We will mention only a few cases, this will be enough to make an impression.
So, about two billion years ago, an asteroid fell on our planet, the size of which is comparable to the size of Mount Everest. After the impact, a crater with a diameter of 140 km appeared, which is located in South Africa. I do not know if tourists are taken to this crater, but they are taken to the famous Arizona crater (America). This crater is 1,200 m in diameter and 175 m deep. It was left after a huge meteorite, consisting of nickel iron. The crater is impressive, especially from the air. But compared to what fell on our planet before it, the Arizona meteorite is just a puppy. One of the worst catastrophes in the history of the Earth occurred about 250 million years ago, at the end of the Permian period. The impact of an asteroid that fell somewhere between Australia and Antarctica was so powerfulwhich caused massive volcanic eruptions in the area directly opposite - in Siberia. As a result, more than 90% of vertebrate marine animals have disappeared from the face of the Earth. Life was almost erased from the face of the planet, evolution had to start almost from the beginning. Another, slightly smaller, catastrophe occurred about 65 million years ago. Then the dinosaurs were out of luck. An asteroid more than 15 km across fell in the Gulf of Mexico, near the Yucatan Peninsula, where a crater with a diameter of about 200 km remained in memory of it. (By the way, some scientists believe that the Gulf of Mexico itself is nothing more than an asteroid impact crater. This round bay is actually very suspicious in shape.)Life was almost erased from the face of the planet, evolution had to start almost from the beginning. Another, slightly smaller, catastrophe occurred about 65 million years ago. Then the dinosaurs were out of luck. An asteroid more than 15 km across fell in the Gulf of Mexico, near the Yucatan Peninsula, where a crater with a diameter of about 200 km remained in memory of it. (By the way, some scientists believe that the Gulf of Mexico itself is nothing more than an asteroid impact crater. This round bay is actually very suspicious in shape.)Life was almost erased from the face of the planet, evolution had to start almost from the beginning. Another, slightly smaller, catastrophe occurred about 65 million years ago. Then the dinosaurs were out of luck. An asteroid more than 15 km across fell in the Gulf of Mexico, near the Yucatan Peninsula, where a crater with a diameter of about 200 km remained in memory of it. (By the way, some scientists believe that the Gulf of Mexico itself is nothing more than an asteroid impact crater. This round bay is actually very suspicious in shape.)where a crater with a diameter of about 200 km remained in memory of him. (By the way, some scientists believe that the Gulf of Mexico itself is nothing more than an asteroid impact crater. This round bay is actually very suspicious in shape.)where a crater with a diameter of about 200 km remained in memory of him. (By the way, some scientists believe that the Gulf of Mexico itself is nothing more than an asteroid impact crater. This round bay is actually very suspicious in shape.)
A powerful seismic wave swept through the center of the planet, which played the role of a kind of "lens", and focused on the Indian subcontinent, which was still an island at that time. Through the cracks that appeared, billions of tons of molten basalt poured onto the surface of our planet. Numerous new volcanoes have thrown into the atmosphere an unimaginable amount of ash that obscured the sun. Lack of sunlight led to the cooling of the Earth and, as a result, the ice age began and the death of dinosaurs, which became extinct in a record time for evolution.
In addition to the cases described, there are craters, the age of which is estimated at 125, 161, 295, 330 and 360 Ma … Note the frequency. The last major meeting took place 65 million years ago. It's time to meet again. For a very long time there have been no uninvited guests, each of whom is worse for us than all the Tatars put together … and in general, the guests are "pulling up". In 1908, a comet exploded in Russia in the Podkamennaya Tunguska area. And the comet was so-so, and there was enough talk about it for a century. Because the comet showed on a micro scale what would happen to the Earth if it collided with a larger object …
In principle, people were very lucky then - if the Tunguska meteorite fell in a more populated place, the history of mankind could have taken a completely different path. If this meteorite fell just six hours later, its name would no longer be Tunguska, but Moscow. Naturally, Moscow would be destroyed. Another couple of hours of delay - and Berlin would be erased from the face of the planet. The fact is that the force of the explosion of the Tunguska meteorite was about 20 megatons! For comparison: a bomb with a capacity of only 15 kilotons was dropped on Hiroshima, and 20 kilotons on Nagasaki. A thousand times less than the explosion in Podkamennaya Tunguska!
Despite the fact that the Tunguska meteorite exploded at an altitude of 10 km, the century-old forest was dumped on an area of 2,150 hectares. The shock seismic wave circled the Earth twice (!). After the explosion, not only in Siberia, but also in Europe, for several days there were white nights and noctilucent clouds were observed - so much dust was in the atmosphere after this air explosion. Moreover, the diameter of this meteorite was only 50-60 meters.
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1996, May - an asteroid with a diameter of 500 meters flew just 450,000 km from us, and six days later another asteroid with a diameter of 1.5 km approached our planet by 3 million kilometers. By cosmic standards, this is very close. 1998 - asteroids "whistled at the temple" three times - in February, September and November. In 1999 - in March and June. There were two cases in 2000.
What happens if a large asteroid hits Earth? Researchers have calculated the disaster process on computers. When an asteroid, which has a diameter of only one kilometer, falls, everything within a radius of a thousand kilometers from the crash site will be destroyed. Fires will capture vast territories, a colossal amount of ash and dust will be thrown into the atmosphere, which will settle over several years. The sun's rays will not be able to break through to the Earth's surface, due to a sharp cold snap, many species of heat-loving plants and animals will die, photosynthesis will stop. What can be called a nuclear winter will come. Most people and animals will die of hunger …
And when the dust eventually settles and the circulation of the atmosphere is restored, there will be a greenhouse effect due to a significant increase in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Surface temperatures will rise, melting polar ice caps and flooding the coastal land. In addition, the magnetic field of our planet will be disturbed, the dynamics of tectonic processes will change, and the activity of volcanoes will increase.
When an asteroid falls into the ocean, the consequences of the impact will be no less dire. Giant tsunamis will overwhelm the land, and almost immediately all living things will die on almost all the coasts of the globe. Water dust released into the atmosphere will completely change its circulation, which will unpredictably change the climate.
Both options are disastrous for civilization. Let me remind you that they are talking about a body with a diameter of only a kilometer. The most unpleasant thing is that the chances of dying in such a catastrophe for all mankind are no less than the chances of an individual person dying in a car accident. What does this mean? We hear or read news reports every day.
How many people died in an accident, it is naive to think that we will definitely be blown away by this cup. But if our planet was a member of some galactic community of about six billion members, every year we would receive information about hundreds of thousands (!) Civilizations that died from asteroids. A hundred a day.
The first to take a serious look at this problem was the US government. Since 1981 NASA has regularly held meetings on the asteroid problem. Since 1991, these meetings have become international - at the initiative of NASA and the International Astronomical Union, a Working Group for the Study of Near-Earth Objects was created. The Americans have developed a project called "Space Guard". It involves the placement of six 2.5-meter telescopes on Earth's territory, which will continuously monitor space. With the help of this project, they hope to obtain accurate data on the movement of asteroids in outer space, calculate their trajectory, mass and speed. And, perhaps, to be saved by hitting the asteroid with nuclear warheads …
The main supporters of the nuclear project are American nuclear scientists, under the leadership of E. Teller, Honorary Director of the US Livermore National Laboratory. They believe that it is high time to make an experimental explosion on one of the passing asteroids in order to work out the technique of delivering and navigating charges, to assess the limits of our technological capabilities.
But not all scientists support this project. Many, in order to knock the asteroid off the dangerous course, offer to fire it … with lead blanks! The impact of a multi-ton lead ingot may well deflect the asteroid by a tenth of a degree from the deadly path, and with correct calculations, this will be quite enough.
Irradiation of the surface of a cosmic body with high-power lasers seems to be very promising. Firstly, the change in mass caused by the sharp evaporation of matter will in itself lead to a change in the flight trajectory, and, secondly, the flow of hot gases should become a kind of jet engine for the asteroid.
In the end, we can simply fly to an asteroid and build several space engines on its surface, turning the asteroid into one giant rocket. Launching rocket launchers will knock the asteroid off course … However, while this is all fantasy, a matter of the future, to which we still have to live. But in the "asteroid" case, there is at least the prospect of solving the problem - to fire. What do you want to do with supernovae?..
Exploded stars are known as supernovae. Our yellow dwarf is not in danger of turning into a supernova in the foreseeable future, but neighboring stars - more massive - can throw out a similar focus.
At the moment of explosion, the supernova emits as much energy as the Sun can generate in 5 billion years, that is, the exploded star shines like five billion Suns! Do you think the stars are far away and won't hurt us? Alas, if such a "joyful" event occurs within a radius of 25 light years from the Earth, it will inevitably leave its "scar" on the Earth. Streams of ultraviolet, X-ray and gamma radiation will reach our planet and damage its ozone layer.
Gaps will appear that will not last for decades. During this time, hard solar ultraviolet light will stir up plankton - the basis of the food chain in the oceans. Mass extinction of living creatures will begin in the ocean, and then on land. Under the influence of cosmic rays in the upper atmosphere, the content of nitrogen dioxide will sharply increase. Tiny droplets of this gas form a fog that will envelop the Earth and cool its atmosphere. It's unpleasant …
Much worse if the star explodes even closer. It has already been calculated that when a supernova explodes at a distance of 10 light years from our planet, the amount of ozone in the earth's atmosphere will be reduced by three times.
How great is this danger? In our Galaxy, supernova explosions are observed on average once every 50–100 years. That is, so far we were simply lucky - most supernovae were bursting so far from the solar system that we did not even notice them. In the immediate vicinity of us, that is, at a distance of several tens of light years, supernova explosions are observed approximately once every couple of hundred million years. The probability of this event is approximately the same as the probability of an asteroid with a diameter of ten kilometers falling onto our planet.
And yet, this has already happened with the Earth! Not only asteroids erased life on the planet almost to the ground, but also supernova explosions. In the mid-1990s, physicist John Ellis of the Swiss CERN and his American colleagues Brian Fields and David Schramm suggested that supernova explosions should leave a trail in rock deposits or layers of ice. The fact is that a real chemical factory begins to work in the incandescent gaseous envelope that the star has thrown off itself. In a matter of seconds, almost the entire assortment of the periodic table appears here, up to such a transuranic element as californium (serial number 98), which on Earth can only be obtained artificially.
If this chemical cloud, ejected by a supernova, covers our planet, then some exotic elements will penetrate into its atmosphere. Having settled on the surface of the land or at the bottom of the sea, they form deposits as unusual as those that remain after the fall of a huge asteroid. (The meteorite that killed the dinosaurs was discovered because it left a huge amount of iridium in the layer that separated the Cretaceous and Tertiary periods.)
If, say, a star explodes 30 light years away from us, then the total mass of matter falling onto the planet will be about 10 million tons. (Which corresponds to a block with a diameter of only 200 m.) This mass is 10,000 times less than the mass of the asteroid that crashed into the Earth 65 million years ago and killed the dinosaurs. And if we take into account that the supernova matter did not fall into one place, like an asteroid, but was scattered throughout the planet, then it is very difficult to find it. Nevertheless, it can be produced by some isotopes that cannot be found on Earth: for example, iron-60 and plutonium-244.
The long-awaited discovery, as always, came unexpectedly. A group of German physicists led by Gunter Korshinek, studying volcanoes, accidentally discovered iron-60 in sediments mined from the bottom of the Pacific Ocean near Pitcairn Island. Actually, scientists were doing other research. They collected samples of ferromanganese nodules in the southern part of the ocean. These layers, which contain large amounts of iron and manganese, are often found in the vicinity of underwater volcanoes. It was here that an iron isotope was discovered in an amount that exceeded the norm by a factor of thousands.
The half-life of iron - 60 is equal to one and a half million years. Scientists have calculated that this portion of the isotope entered the earth's atmosphere about five million years ago, and then settled on the ocean floor. The reason for the appearance of iron-60 could only be the explosion of a supernova, located 50-100 light years from the Sun. In those days, this star must have shone in the sky hundreds of times brighter than the full moon!
Astronomers estimate that supernovae have exploded several times in the vicinity of the solar system since the birth of life on Earth (that is, over the past three billion years). It is possible to assume that these cosmic catastrophes significantly influenced the evolution of life on Earth. And not for the better.
But there are even more unpleasant things in the Universe than supernova explosions. Astronomers have recently discovered an interesting phenomenon. How it was not noticed before is simply incomprehensible. It turned out that near-Earth satellites observing the Universe in the X-ray range every single day register a sharp burst of gamma radiation in any corner of the Universe. The flash lasts only a few seconds or even a fraction of a second, but its power is enormous: in a fraction of a second, as much energy is released as the Sun could emit in ten billion years!
Scientists cannot yet understand where such monstrous energy comes from. Maybe these eerie universal lightning flashes when a neutron star disappears into the belly of a huge black hole or when neutron stars collide. As a rule, such flares are observed outside our Galaxy. And what if the "lightning" flashes in a radius of 3,500 light years from our planet?.. Employees of the Israeli Institute of Technology, located in Haifa, simulated such an event on a computer. It turned out that as many charged particles would be poured onto the Earth at once as it had reached it in the last 100,000 years. The strongest radioactive contamination of air and soil will occur! And its dose will be fatal for all living things. Within a month, half of the world's population will die out. The other half will die out a little later.
Perhaps the most massive death of animals on Earth - the "Perm catastrophe", which occurred about 250 million years ago - was caused by just such an outbreak. According to some reports, during the Perm catastrophe, 96% of the planet's inhabitants became victims of a strange unexpected plague. It was then that the famous trilobites disappeared from the face of the Earth. The cause of this tragedy has remained unknown to this day.
Other dangers await us. For the past several tens of millions of years, the Sun has been in a relatively calm place - between two galactic arms. However, the solar system revolves around the center of the Milky Way (as our Galaxy is called, if anyone is interested) and after a certain time will enter the region of the galactic arm densely strewn with stars.
There we have to spend as much as 60 million years. Numerous stars will wreak havoc on the gravitational order of the planets and comets in our system. Many comets from the so-called Oort cloud, hitherto "dormant" at the periphery of the solar system, rush to its center, where they will inevitably collide with planets, including the Earth. Even worse, if the Earth itself changes its orbit, moving a little closer to the Sun or a little further from it. It is unlikely that a person will be able to exist on a frozen or hot planet.
But, even if we manage to miraculously avoid all these dangers, all the same, after a while we will have to prepare to say goodbye to the sun. It will become old, turn into a red giant and swallow the Earth. This will not happen immediately. The sun will warm up gradually. The earth will also gradually be covered with deserts, which will lead to mass extinction of animals. After half a billion years, the Earth will simply be burned out. And in another five billion years, the Sun will swell incredibly. Its edge will almost reach our planet, and the Earth will be covered with a viscous, hot mess, reminiscent of volcanic lava.
“Of course, we will not sit back and calmly wait for the ruthless Universe to tear us to rags! - the romantics of space travel will exclaim. - This is completely unacceptable! First, you can fly somewhere with all your belongings. Secondly … Secondly, fly away again. Even further. And we'll see."
This is a good option, romance, but alas, even if we fly to another suitable star in our Galaxy, this will not be a cardinal solution to the problem. Unfortunately. The Milky Way rushes at a speed of 500,000 km / s towards the neighboring galaxy - the famous Andromeda nebula. Galaxies approach each other by ten million kilometers every day. Andromeda is now 2.2 million light years away. Children's puzzle for first grade: how long will it take for the "trains" to collide?
No, at first it will even be beautiful: when the "trains" approach each other, the sky will be dotted with such an incredible number of stars that at night people will be able to read the newspaper without turning on the lights. And a little later (after some four or five billion years) there will be no one to read the newspapers: the Milky Way will collide with the Andromeda nebula. I assure you - it will be an unpleasant sight.
Perhaps you are hoping that since the distances between individual stars are so great, galaxies will pass through each other without noticing? Alas … The distances between the stars are actually hundreds of millions of times the diameter of the stars themselves. But there is no void between them, but there are huge masses of extremely rarefied interstellar gas. He is supposed to be the cause of the disaster. The gas clouds, which are now invisible to us, due to rarefaction, will heat up and flare up after the collision. A thermonuclear reaction will begin in their midst. New stars are forming. They will begin to number in the thousands, or even hundreds of thousands. Their incandescent masses will emit a bright blue light. Unprecedented fireworks will illuminate the gloomy cosmic distance. But there will be no one to look at him.
What are our chances? And can we count on someone's help?
This is what I mean … Nature works with a margin. 99% of all the primary matter of the Universe annihilated in the first moments. Out of thousands of biological mutations, one turns out to be successful and is fixed. From a thousand dandelion seeds, one or two will sprout. Many local civilizations on Earth could not stand crises and perished. Now, in connection with globalization, we practically all have one Civilization with a capital letter. That is, now we are talking about life on the planet in general. If anything, now we will not get off with one suburb, it will cover the entire world economy. Together with us. Perhaps, out of tens or hundreds of civilizations that are "sown" on different planets of infinite space, global internal and external crises are overcome by a few, that is, the survival of civilizations is no more than that of dandelion seeds. This is disappointing.
On the other hand, as the Universe evolves, the role of reason increases and the role of general physical factors decreases. Take a general physical map or a map of vegetation, look at America or Eurasia. Anywhere, well, for example, in the lower third of Eurasia - a zone of forest-steppe and steppe. More precisely, nature is supposed to have a forest-steppe here. In reality, we will find settlements, cities, plowed fields, power lines, ditches and canals, mines, airfields, roads … Actually, there is almost no natural forest-steppe left in its pure form. Just like taiga in Europe … Only insects and birds should fly in the air. And also planes with helicopters fly …
Man has long been a geological force that changes landscapes, as noted by Vernadsky. By the way, by the noosphere he meant exactly and only this - the influence of man on natural landscapes, and not at all what the esotericists and exalted ladies with crimson hair think about, who are prone to drawing up natal charts and profound discussions about spirituality and the information field of the planet …
The influence of intellect as a property of complexly organized matter to transform nature (change the natural environment to an artificial one) in the world will increase the more, the further progress goes. Hence the assumption. Why shouldn't the civilizations that appeared in other stellar systems before us take on the role of a "breeder" or a doctor who artificially increases the "germination" of civilizations? After all, the child in the hospital is not asked whether he wants to live or does not want to - they get it, slap on the ass - breathe! And if he can't, they put him in the pressure chamber and start pulling him out.
What if we have been watched and cared for for a long time? And they will intervene only as a last resort, over trifles, like Hiroshima and Nagasaki, they will not interfere. There is a reason for this. If the child's illness is mild, the temperature is not very high, it is not necessary to bring it down: the body will cope on its own, even a little training of the immune system is useful for it. But if the temperature is very high, they begin to bring it down with drugs. So, if we ourselves do not cope, if there is a real danger for the loss of the Earth civilization by the space community as a whole, they will come and save us without asking. Slap on the ass - breathe! Or shoved into the "pressure chamber".
A beautiful version, but Nazaretyan aptly called it one of the varieties of religion. Modified in a modern way by the craving for the Father, who, if something happens, will come, save, spank …
He's probably right …
A. Nikonov
