Scientists have different thoughts on when the world might end. Some people think it could happen because of global warming and climate change. This means the Earth getting hotter and the weather changing a lot. They believe these changes could be really bad and cause big problems that might lead to the end of our planet.
The air around us is collecting more and more greenhouse gases. This might make the Earth get much hotter, mess up the weather, and even make the ice at the North and South Poles melt, raising the sea level. These changes could really hurt the plants, animals, and everything that lives on Earth.
Some people also think the world might end because we’re using up important stuff like clean water, fuels from the ground, and valuable minerals. If we don’t find better and smarter ways to use these things, we could have big problems. Running out of these resources might lead to fights between people and make societies fall apart if we don’t figure out how to manage them wisely.
Some folks think that the world might end because of another big sickness, like the COVID-19 that hurt a lot of people. If a really bad and easily spreading sickness happens again and we can’t control it well, it could make a lot of people sick and mess up how we live.
There’s also the idea that a big natural disaster could be a problem. Imagine a huge rock from space hitting Earth. It could make a big explosion, shake the ground a lot, make giant ocean waves, and throw a bunch of dust into the air. This dust might change how the weather works and cause really bad things to happen all over the world.
Some folks also worry that a huge volcano, called a supervolcano, might explode and release tons of ash, gases, and lava. This could really mess up the climate, block the sunlight, and change how plants and animals live. It might even make it hard to grow food and cause big problems for life on Earth.
On a different note, in early May, scientists saw something interesting for the first time: a star eating a planet. It wasn’t just a little nibble, but a really big bite! Astronomers shared their observations of a big gas planet, like Jupiter, getting swallowed by a star similar to our sun. The star had been getting bigger over a really long time because it’s old, and eventually, it grew so much that it swallowed the planet.
Scientists think that something similar might happen to Earth when our sun gets really old and turns into a red giant. It could end up swallowing the four planets closest to it.
Even though scientists have seen signs of other stars eating planets before, this was the first time they actually saw a planet getting swallowed. The study about this interesting event was published in the journal ‘Nature.’
Don’t worry, though – if it happens to us, it’s a long way off. About 5,000 million years, to be exact. Morgan MacLeod, one of the researchers, mentioned that comforting timeline. This cosmic dinner took place a long time ago, between 10,000 and 15,000 years, near the Aquila constellation, when the star was about 10,000 million years old. When the star munched on the planet, it created a burst of light and a stream of dust that shone brightly in cold infrared energy, as noted by the researchers.
Even though scientists have noticed signs of stars eating planets before, this recent discovery was the first time they actually saw a planet being swallowed, as shared in the study published in the journal ‘Nature.’
Now that they have a better idea of what to watch for, researchers will keep an eye out for more of these cosmic feasts. They believe that many planets around other stars might go through the same thing, and eventually, even our solar system could experience a similar fate over a long period of time.
