Earth is slowly turning into a barren red world just like Mars and it spells doom for every living being on the planet.
That’s the terrifying warning from a top scientist who wants our species to wake up to the grim fate awaiting us.
Anjali Tripathi, an astrophysicist at Harvard University, has spoken out about a “frightening” natural effect called atmospheric escape.
In a recent TED talk, she said that 400 pounds of hydrogen and almost 6.6 pounds of helium escape from Earth into space with every single minute that passes.
Eventually, this will cause such a massive change in the makeup of Earth’s atmosphere that life will be unable to cling on any longer and the planet’s surface will turn blood red and barren.
She said the atmosphere is little more than a “tenuous veneer around our planet” which “allows life to flourish.”
“It’s such an amazing phenomenon that the fact it is disappearing should frighten you,” she added.
Mars was thought to have weather systems just like ours, which means it may even have been home to living organisms.
But it is believed to have undergone a massive process of atmospheric escape in which hydrogen disappeared into space, leaving oxygen behind.
It was this oxygen that is believed to have turned the planet red, by oxidizing (rusting) the surface.
The same process is already happening on Earth, but is likely to speed up in the “far future” because the sun is set to get brighter and brighter, until it eventually engulfs much of the solar system.
Tripathi added: “What we can look forward to, or at least prepare for, is the fact that in the future, the Earth is going to look more like Mars.”
“Our hydrogen from water breaking down will escape into space more rapidly, leaving us with a dry, reddish planet.”
Happily, we have a few billion years left until this grim scenario plays out, so we’ve got plenty of time to prepare for the inevitable apocalypse.
Merry Christmas, everyone.