I actually fact checked this and it’s true.

  • sosodev@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    23
    ·
    edit-2
    1 year ago

    People forget that life on earth has been around for an extremely long time. We believe that single cellular life first appeared around 3.5 billion years ago. We also believe that the universe is around 13.8 billion years old. That means life has been around and evolving for around 25% of the time the universe has existed. Life operates on a scale far beyond our comprehension.

    Another fun fact about life. We think that multicellular life only appeared around 600 million to 1.2 billion years ago. So life was probably single cellular for billions of years. The complexity of life has rapidly increased since then and will continue to do so.

    Edit: new research suggests that complex multicellular life may have appeared around 2.4 billion years ago.

      • sosodev@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        17
        ·
        edit-2
        1 year ago

        Even if humans manage to kill off most life on Earth it will continue to exist, propagate, and become more complex. Again we’re talking about billions of years. There have been huge shifts in climate and mass extinctions many times before and yet here we are.

        • samus12345@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          5
          ·
          1 year ago

          True, it would be difficult to completely turn Earth into a lifeless rock, but I think humans are up to the task.

          • HenryWong327@lemmy.ml
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            1
            ·
            1 year ago

            Eh I doubt it. Every single nuke ever built combined still doesn’t come close to the power of the Chicxulub asteroid (the one that killed the dinosaurs) and even that impact didn’t come close to eliminating all life on Earth. Unless someone accidentally compresses a mountain into an artifical black hole or something there probably is no way to wipe out all life on Earth.

            • Tvkan@feddit.de
              link
              fedilink
              arrow-up
              4
              ·
              1 year ago

              Mars was once habitable but lost it’s magnetic field, wiping it’s atmosphere. Venus was once habitable but taken over by a runaway greenhouse effect.

              I’m not saying they ever had life or that we’re going to suffer the same fate, but it’s definitely possible to wipe a planet clean.

        • PorkRollWobbly@lemmy.ml
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          5
          ·
          1 year ago

          Yeah I think most people don’t know or comprehend that there have already been like 5 mass extinctions in our planets lifespan. It’s going to take something like getting hit by 4 gamma ray bursts at the same time to completely wipe life off of planet earth.

          • 1847953620@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            3
            ·
            1 year ago

            true, we’re just gonna be like a soft reset button, like a windows reinstall without formatting, where it just shoves everything into windows.old