Galaxy And Mass Assembly (GAMA), an Australian-led project, has been measuring the energy output of stars for the last few years. The team of Australian researchers discovered that the total output of stars is now only half from what it used to be 2 billion years ago.
According to Simon Driver, a professor at the University of Western Australia and one of the leaders of the GAMA project, our Universe is slowly dying. This is actually not surprising for scientists, who have known this since the early 1990s. However, the new study performed by the GAMA team used seven of the world's most powerful telescopes and gathered data from over 200,000 galaxies across 21 different energy wavelengths. Their study was presented Monday at in Hawaii, at the General Assembly of the International Astronomical Union.
Luckily, the Universe will still be around for at least a few more billion years. However, when it comes to life on Earth, we might not be so lucky. In a previous study, astrobiologist Jack O'Malley-James made the prediction that 'the end of the world' will arrive for our civilization on Earth as a result of too little carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
Since all living things require liquid water, according to O'Malley-James any remaining life will be restricted to pockets of liquid water, perhaps in caves underground or at higher altitudes. Any surviving organism would also have to cope with extreme ultraviolet radiation and extreme high temperatures.
O'Malley-James made his forecast at the University of St Andrews, during a National Astronomy Meeting. He based his somber predictions on a computer simulation studying the impact that long-term changes to our Sun will likely have on Earth.
Scientists expect that our solar system star will age over the next billion years. Our Sun will remain stable, according to astronomers, but grow steadily brighter. The Earth will heat up due to the increasingly intense radiation. The increase in temperature will go to such an extent that Earth's oceans will start to evaporate.
According to O'Malley-James, in the far future life in the Earth's "will be very different to this". The dying biosphere will be composed of species' populations that are most likely to survive until the point at which all life from the planet will vanish. At that point, Earth will be left with a nitrogen/carbon-dioxide atmosphere.
