Abstract
Let’s imagine that we actively wanted to wipe out life on Earth—or simply to eliminate the dominant species, us. Given what we already know about how life has weathered the various storms nature has thrown at it, exterminating life might seem rather tricky. However, sterilizing a planet can be done, albeit with far greater difficulty than it would be to terraform a lifeless one.
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Notes
- 1.
The Frontiers of Time is part of the “Voyage through the Universe” series by Time-Life, published in 1990. ISBN 0 7054 1086 2. A more recent take on this is “The Five Ages of the Universe” by Fred Adams and Greg Laughlin, ISBN-10: 0684865769 published by Simon and Schuster.
- 2.
507 years is the lifespan of the Western Empire – lasting until 476 AD; with the Eastern Roman (Byzantine) empire lasting until the Renaissance in 1453. However, from the beginning of 536 AD the empire went into a slow protracted decline, propelled by the outbreak of Plague in 541-542 AD.
- 3.
This story can be found at: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/feb/17/my-stepson-autism-new-zealand-refused-residency-asd.
- 4.
“Evacuate Earth” aired on the National Geographic Channel in December 2012.
- 5.
Laughlin and Fred Adams: The Five Ages of the Universe. The Free Press 1999 ISBN: 0-684-85,422-8.
- 6.
1 ton of TNT is the energy equivalent of 4.184 gigajoules (4.184 billion joules).
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Stevenson, D.S. (2017). Agents of Mass Destruction. In: The Nature of Life and Its Potential to Survive. Astronomers' Universe. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-52911-0_7
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