The search for extraterrestrial life continues. Countless research, counter theories are being drawn from time to time regarding the existence of alien life. The universe is so vast, it has to have a potential for some form of life other than on the Earth. But now it could the very nature's destruction that could have caused an end to the existence of aliens. Recent findings revealed by NASA from the Curiosity Rover pointed out in existence of ancient life on Mars. Now a new study published in the journal Astrobiology suggests that alien life has long met destruction due to the severe climate change.
A team from the University of Rochester made use of mathematical models based on a real-life lost civilization to examine how other civilizations, humans or extraterrestrial, may have reacted when they encountered with planet-altering climate change. Adam Frank, astrophysicist and his teammates simulated the rise and fall of various alien civilisations based on their ability to convert their planet's limited natural resources into energy.
They modelled the nature's apocalypse with an example of the Easter Island. "Easter Island presents a particularly useful example for our own purposes since it is often taken as a lesson for global sustainability," Frank and his colleagues wrote in the paper. "Many studies indicate that Easter Island's inhabitants depleted their resources, leading to starvation and termination of the island's civilization." The Easter Island was isolated from a larger land mass and the inhabitants did not know where else they could go to survive once their resources depleted. Using the fall of the island against the depletion of its resources, the team found four possible endpoints for a hypothetical alien civilization in similar environments of limited resources. Aliens on Mars? Female Warrior Statue on Red Planet Sparks Theories About Extraterrestrial Civilisation.
In those 4 possibilities, the third and fourth were 'collapse,' wherein everyone dies from a lack of basic resources, there are no survivors. Whether a civilization merely dies off or totally collapses is dependent on the sensitivity of the environment and its response. The civilization will eventually head to a doom. So the alien population could have fallen prey to this doom and ceased to exist. This study also keeps a valid question about humans consumption of resources available on the Earth. If we too cannot survive and die off, then the human civilization is very much at risk with climate change.
(The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Jun 11, 2018 10:39 PM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).