Now humans play a key role in shaping the Earth's ecosystems
An international scientific group, which included 35 specialists, came to the conclusion that in 1950 the Earth entered the Anthropocene era - a period when the influence of human activity on our planet in many respects becomes decisive. Until now, such a term was considered informal, but now geologists see it is necessary to reconsider the attitude towards it.
Almost 12 thousand years ago, with the beginning of the last and still lasting interglacial period, an era called "Holocene" began on Earth. It changed the Pleistocene and, according to the most generally accepted scientific ideas today, continues to this day. However, the authors of the new study argue that around 1950 of the last century, the earth entered a new era - the so-called Anthropocene.
The middle of the last century was not chosen by chance as the “border” between the two eras. It was then that, due to active nuclear tests that began in 1945 in the United States and in 1949 in the USSR, many radioactive isotopes appeared all over the Earth, and this may well serve as a formal "starting point" for a new era. However, the fact that a person recently on his own opened a new page in the history of the Earth, according to scientists, is evidenced by a number of various other factors, including an increase in the concentration of nitrogen and phosphate in soils, plastic pollution, soot from power plants, the appearance of a large amount of concrete on the Earth., the disappearance of a number of biological species and even an increase in the number of chicken bones due to the spread of agriculture. The Earth will keep "memory" of all these factors in the future on that geological layer,which today represents the surface of the Earth. Changes of this kind - a radical change in the amount of certain substances or the population of certain animals around the world - usually serve as the basis for the proclamation of a new geological era, and the Anthropocene, according to scientists, will not be an exception.
According to the results of their research, scientists voted, and 30 out of 35 experts came to the conclusion that the Earth has indeed entered a new era. Three opposed this statement, two were absent from the vote. Geologists note that if the world scientific community also agrees with their conclusions, it will turn out that a new geological epoch has come quite recently, and many of our contemporaries "caught" this change. At the same time, the announcement of the onset of a new era could become a recognition of humanity in how strongly it affects the world around us, and therefore, would force us to pay even more attention to the threats that human activity brings to life on the planet.
Nevertheless, some experts are skeptical about the proposal, noting that humanity is not yet able to influence global processes on a scale that equates their influence with the influence of nature itself.
Dmitry Erusalimsky