What will happen before 2100? - 4

December 29th, 2019

By: Haris Ahmad[1]

This is the third blog that I am writing on this topic and we have reached up to the year 2050 and the events that will happen on the years before. In this blog, I’ll explain some more events that will happen before 2100 soon, I will write blogs about more years into the future. In 2061, Halley’s comet will flyby close to Earth and surprisingly, it will be visible to the naked eye. This comet was discovered in 1758. It has a diameter of about 11 km and has a mass of 220 trillion kg. This comet will flyby above Earth on 28^th July 2061. This comet may collide with planet Earth and if that happens, it will collide with a large amount of force and will form a huge impact crater that would be rough, 33 km deep and 89 km wide. The impact of this collision will kill everything within a range of 238 km. Moreover, a few days after the collision, dust clouds will take over the sky and prevent light from Sun from reaching us. This will start a nuclear winter, which will kill most of the species that inhabit this planet as well as most of the humans.

Picture credit: www.astronomycafe.net

A few years later, in 2069 NASA will send a probe to Alpha Centauri, which is the closest star system to us. This star system consists of three stars named as Alpha Centauri A, Alpha Centauri B, and Alpha Centauri C. Even though it is the closest, it is still approximately 4.21 light-years away from us which means that even light from this star system takes 4 years to reach us which, trust me, is a very long distance. As we know, the Voyagers are traveling in outer space at very high speeds of about 15.4 km/s, it will still take it tens of thousands of years to reach the star system. This probe will search for life on the planets that orbit these stars and will also confirm if the conditions of them are good enough to sustain human life. Though it will take a lot of time for us to reach the star system with the technology of today, we may find a way to travel faster enough to reach it in a few years.

This blog was another of the topic of the events that will happen before 2100. After this one, I will write the last blog of this series and later, I will write about the events that will happen in a few more years into the future.

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[1] Haris Ahmad is currently studying in 9^th grade (O levels) in The City School Islamabad.

What will happen before 2100? - 3

December 22^nd, 2019

By: Haris Ahmad[1]

This blog is the second one of this series and in this, I will cover more of the events that will happen before the year 2100. I covered till the years 2021 in my last blog and explained about the James Webb telescope. So, let’s proceed further in time. In 2021, another space achievement will be made and humans will open the first space hotel. Yes, you read it right, a space hotel. However, the cost of living in this hotel is not ideal for many people because you’d have to pay 9.5 million $ to launch the hotel. Going further in time, in 2023 NASA will send humans to the Moon again. NASA has started a new program called the Artemis. In this project, we may experience the building of stations on the Moon and later, Mars. For this program, NASA has made many projects and has made a lot of improvements than before. NASA will use the SLS (Space Launch System) rockets that are the most powerful rockets ever made, even more, powerful than Saturn V.

Image Source: https://www.planetary.org/blogs/jason-davis/2018/20180309-sls-best-not-miss.html

NASA has divided this program into three main parts. The Artemis I, II and III. In Artemis I, NASA plans to send the first human spacecraft to the Moon in the 21^st century. In Artemis II, NASA plans to send the first humans in orbit of the Moon in the 21^st century. Lastly, in Artemis III, NASA plans to send the first crewed mission to the gateway and the lunar surface.

In 2029, the asteroid Apophis will fly 30,000 miles above Earth. Apophis is a huge asteroid with a diameter of approximately 370 meters. Some even call it the god of chaos.

Image Source: https://phys.org/news/2017-06-impact-threat-asteroid-apophis.html

This asteroid will flyby Earth on April 13^th, 2029 at a small distance above Earth at the speed of 30 km/s. It has chances of crashing with Earth and scientists have predicted that if this asteroid crashes with Earth, it will produce a force of 65,000 nuclear bombs exploded at the same time, killing millions of people just in seconds. The impact of this asteroid will cause a nuclear winter affecting all humans. Some say that NASA has already started to prepare for this asteroid impact. Moreover, I have explained about asteroids in one of my previous blogs too.

Furthermore, by 2050 humans would have started colonizing Mars. We have been thinking of the colonizing Mars for a long period and we are soon going to start this process. While NASA is sending humans to Mars in a few years, SpaceX is going to launch humans to Mars probably before 2025. We really have to leave the planet Earth because we are destroying this planet in such a way that even its survival has become unsure in the upcoming centuries. With the threats of nuclear wars as well as the disastrous climate change, humans aren’t going to end up well on this planet. So, we have to find other planets to colonize and our very first destination is the red planet, Mars. In a few centuries, we may find ways to travel to and potentially colonize exoplanets as well as some of the moons of the planets in our Solar system itself such as Titan, which is a moon of Saturn.

In this blog, we went halfway to our destination in time and soon we will complete this fabulous journey in time. I will write another blog on this topic as well, ending our journey to 2100 and explaining the events that we will witness before that.

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[1] Haris Ahmad is currently studying in 9^th grade (O levels) in The City School Islamabad.

What will happen before 2100? - 2

December 15^th, 2019

By: Haris Ahmad[1]

This blog is the last one of my blogs on the topic of the events that will happen before 2100. In this, I will end our journey in time towards the year 2100 and the events that will happen in between. I left the last blog in 2075, so let's continue. In 2075, the ozone layer will be fully healed.

Image Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ozone_depletion

We discovered the ozone layer in 1913 when we realized that there is a layer above us that is protecting us from the harmful rays of the Sun. Most of this layer is present in the stratosphere about 50 km above the surface of the Earth. This layer absorbs approximately 98% of the Ultraviolet radiation of the sun and gives our planet the ability to sustain life because if there were no ozone layer, we would have a lot of health problems and sustainability of life would have been very hard for our planet. If there were no ozone layer, humans would face many deadly diseases such as immune system suppression and skin cancer. Just about, 34 years ago in Antarctica, scientists found a hole in the ozone layer. The research found that the ozone layer had been damaged by CFCs and according to google, CFCs are any of a class of compounds of carbon, hydrogen, chlorine, and fluorine, typically gases used in refrigerants and aerosol propellants. They are harmful to the ozone layer in the earth's atmosphere owing to the release of chlorine atoms on exposure to ultraviolet radiation. As a result of this research, CFCs were banned or allowed in limited amounts by the government. According to recent studies, we have found out that the ozone layer Is healing very fast and by 2075, it would be fully healed.

Now let's go further into time to the year 2095. If the rate of deforestation at the Amazon forest stays the same as today, by 2095 the Amazon would be fully cut down and there won’t be any trees left there.

Image Source: https://www.globalvillagespace.com/amazon-rainforest-being-cut-down-at-record-pace-under-bolsonaro/  

This would mean that our biggest shield against climate change would no longer be able to live. The Amazon is also called the lungs of Earth. Therefore, the lungs of the Earth would no longer be there for us. This would also lead to the extinction of many living things. This would mean that the Earth would be more vulnerable to the disastrous climate change which would cause the death of millions of people as well as animals.

Humans are rapidly progressing in all aspects and by 2100, humans would have become an interplanetary civilization which means that we would live on different planets. Not only this but, by 2100 the population would reach 11 billion which would not be a very good thing because if the population increases at such high rates, Earth won’t be able to feed all of the humans. After all, the resources would soon run out and scarcity of food and water would cause many deaths.

This blog ended our journey to 2100 in time. I will try my best to soon write more blogs in which we will travel further through time and discuss the events that will happen in the upcoming years.

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[1] Haris Ahmad is currently studying in 9^th grade (O levels) in The City School Islamabad.

What will happen before 2100? - 1

December 8^th, 2019

By: Haris Ahmad[1]

Humans are developing at a very fast pace and are achieving a lot of things very quickly. Our curiosity to do everything has forced us to do the most challenging things and perform things that are not very easy. Development related to space is at its peak and there are many agencies working right now. We have achieved a lot up till now but that’s just the beginning. In the upcoming centuries, we will probably become an intergalactic civilization, which will conquer space unless somehow, another extraterrestrial life invades us. So, let’s start already. In 2021, NASA will launch the James Webb Telescope.

Image Source: https://scitechdaily.com/the-james-webb-space-telescope-is-the-largest-most-powerful-space-telescope-ever-built-video/

The making of this telescope is the largest, most expensive and the most challenging space-engineering project the humans have ever attempted. NASA has been working on this project for 30 years. This telescope is not the only of its kind, but humans also launched another telescope named as Hubble in 1990. Hubble telescope experienced some technical problems but, after it was fixed, it worked just fine and it literally rewrote our perception of the universe. Though Hubble can see objects that are very distant, it cannot see things farther than a specific limit. This is where the James Webb telescope kicks in which can take images in more detail and higher distance than the Hubble telescope and can see objects that have details about the origin of the universe. This telescope will help us understand how the universe started and how it formed. It would uncover the forces of the universe and the evolution of how many objects formed in the universe. Not only will this telescope help us see the past of this universe, but it will also help us predict the fate of many of the galaxies, stars, etc. This telescope has the ability to capture infra-red the light that ultimately helps it significantly in finding objects much farther than the Hubble could see. The main problem though is that the Sun also emits infra-red light so, how do we keep the infra-red light from the Sun away? Well, this telescope has a sun shield that literally blocks all the light from the Sun from reaching the telescope’s camera. We still have a lot of problems to tackle before we launch this but, one problem is what we all have to pray to end well. That problem is the launch. Now, we know that rocket launches are extremely hard and have a high chance of failure. Therefore, we have to launch this telescope perfectly into space or else, a lot of money, effort and time will be wasted. This telescope will be launched into orbit at a very far distance, at a point called the Second Lagrange point. This point in orbit is 1.5 million km away from the Earth though it is still in the zone of orbiting the Earth. The advantage of this orbit is that it would clear out a huge space for the telescope to see.

This blog was the first of this series and I will write more blogs on the topic as we still have another 79 years to cover.

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[1] Haris Ahmad is currently studying in 9^th grade (O levels) in The City School Islamabad.

Potential Threads to Humans - 2

December 1^st, 2019

By: Haris Ahmad[1]

As I explained in my last blog, many threats to us can wipe us all out. Nature is a very surprising thing and can help us as well as kick us but humans are more dangerous and are not even trustworthy. In my opinion, the greatest enemies of humans are humans themselves. We have fought a lot of wars on this planet although very few strong weapons were used. However, now humans possess extremely dangerous weapons. We should stop fighting in between ourselves and should live together as the peaceful inhabitants of planet Earth.

The first threat that I am going to talk about is volcanoes. According to Google, the meaning of the term volcano is a mountain or hill, typically conical, having a crater or vent through which lava; rock fragments, hot vapor, and gas are or have been erupted from the earth's crust. In basic terminology, these things spew out magma from the cents that are below Earth’s surface. Some of you may have watched the movie Pompeii. The volcano that erupted in the city of Pompeii is known as Mount Vesuvius. Although it was a small volcano, it still caused a lot of damage as it spewed magma till 4 cubic km. However, some super volcanoes can spew magma more than 500 cubic km. These supervolcanoes form ash clouds, which block the sunlight causing a drop in temperatures and preventing plant/crop growth.

Image Source: https://bigthink.com/surprising-science/supervolcano-wipe-out-united-states-kill-billions

The last supervolcano eruption occurred 25,000 years ago in New Zealand. Researchers predict that these eruptions occur every 30,000 to 50,000 years.

The second threat I am going to talk about is overpopulation. Some of you may be wondering how can overpopulation even cause extinction on humans? Well, when the population increases at a very high rate, the Earth’s capacity to produce food deteriorates and there is not enough food to feed all the people. Therefore, this leads to starvation, which kills all humans eventually. Moreover, the more the population, the more the diseases spread causing an increase in pandemics, which can kill huge amounts of people.

The third threat I am going to talk about is climate change. The temperatures worldwide are significantly increasing due to global warming. If global warming continues to stay on the rate it is on today, by 2100 the temperature on Earth would increase by up to 4 degrees Celsius. This would melt the ice/glaciers on the planet consequently increasing seawater levels. This would cause floods that would displace or kill millions of people and if continued, climate change would wipe out humans. I have explained about climate change in one of my previous blogs.

This blog is the second of its kind that I have written. I will write one last blog of this series in which I will explain two of the biggest threats to the extinction of the human race. Some of you may even know about one or both of them.

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[1] Haris Ahmad is currently studying in 9^th grade (O levels) in The City School Islamabad.