Of course, but as we progress in technology and science we may find a way to populate other planets, and there is no telling what the effects Andromeda hitting the Milky Way may have. It’s a long way off–it will be up to our descendants to deal with that problem.
There are limits. We live in the Sun’s Corona and it protects us from cosmic rays. Outside the Rankine-Hugoniot shock front at the Heliopause, you literally fly into a microwave oven on full power. This problem is probably insurmountable. That’s even discounting the fact that we don’t even know where there are other planets we could live on, let alone how to get to them.
The extinct I’m talking about is the overall weakening of our species through natural selection. It seems to me that species come to a head in development and then disappear all on their own with no help from larger cosmic forces. The dinosaurs, for example, we well on their way out before the asteroid hit that devastated earth 65 million years ago. So, the question is, do we humans have a sort of built in expiration date and are we beginning to see the effects of it now?
In a word, no. I can put your mind at rest here. That is not how Evolution works at all.
The dinosaurs were not “well on the way out” before the KT event, whatever that event was. They died out gradually in the quarter million years after the KT event, for reasons that are believed to be related to, wait for it, drum roll da da da da da da da da da…
Climate Change!
As for retrograde Evolution, that does not occur the way you illustrate. Only a change in environmental conditions that would compromise or destroy ecological niches would put a species in jeopardy. That is why it is important that we acknowledge climate change. It is a huge threat, more than people realise. A lot of us could die because of it.
It’s not all that clear that we are doing any of those things. Actually, we are not over-populating the planet. Falling birthrates have seen to that, especially in China where parents are desperate to find wives for their sons because so many female babies were aborted.
And the earth has gone through several climates changes over the billions of years it’s existed–that’s nothing new. As for nuclear weapons, we are in the greatest danger from some terrorist group getting hold of one, not of Russia and the US bombing each other, and so humankind, out of existence.
The question is–are we humans going to come to a natural end, and if we are, when will that be?
You have very little understanding of biological systems.
Firstly, human beings are one of the more vulnerable species to extinction because our complexity compromises the speed with which we can biologically adapt. We are also one of the least relevant to the wellbeing of the living biosphere on this planet.
If human beings became extinct, the biosphere at large would actually benefit from it since we are now poised on the brink of wiping out more biodiversity than the KT event, making us the causal agent of a mass extinction. This is not rhetoric, you can look that up and confirm it on any internet search engine.
If, on the other hand, cyanobacteria were to be wiped out, much of the life on this planet would be destroyed with it. Speaking of bacteria, it’s a chastening thought that only ten percent of the cells that make us up contain human DNA. Ninety percent of what we are is microbial, the human body providing a portable ecosystem for bacteria with the checks and balances bacteria need to evolve.
Secondly, I can assure you that we most certainly are overpopulating the planet. There are several times more humans on Earth than the Earth can sustainably support given our current activities. We are depeleting many resources at an alarming rate, to the point where we’d actually need three planet Earth’s to continue our current lifestyle indefinitely. We are going to have to stop burying our heads in the sand and acknowledge that this simply will not do. Not if we wish to maintain our current lifestyle. Not if we wish to survive at all.
Thirdly, the situation between Russia and America now is reasonably stable because a balance of power has been struck over a number of eye wateringly alarming decades after World War II. With China advancing rapidly in manufacturing skill and output, and America’s manufacturing in steep decline, the focus will shift to China. That is when more saber rattling and possibly even wars will ensue, endangering mankind yet again, the lessons of the past forgotten as always.
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