EARTH’S OXYGEN HAS AN EXPIRATION DATE—1 BILLION YEARS FROM NOW A new supercomputer simulation says Earth will lose its oxygen supply in about 1 billion years, long before the Sun actually dies. The Sun will keep getting hotter. That heat will evaporate oceans, destroy the carbon cycle, and kill photosynthesis—the process that gives us oxygen. When plants die off, oxygen levels will crash. The atmosphere will fill with methane, like it did before complex life evolved. Out of 400,000 simulations, nearly all showed the same outcome: a mass extinction-level drop in oxygen. The study cuts the previous estimate—2 billion years of breathable air—in half. No air, no humans, no animals. Only microbes that don’t need oxygen would survive. Source: NDTV / Nature Geoscience