I recently watched a video that mentioned the “toxic pit problem” of how closed mines turn into toxic lakes full of rainwater and harmful chemicals. Some companies are trying to fix them, but I was wondering if the Earth could “purify” itself if left completely alone?
Like, let’s say all of humanity disappeared tomorrow, could the harmful chemicals be filtered out or dissolved or changed after a billion years?
In: Planetary Science
“Purify” really has no meaning.
Humanity is and will always be just a blip in the history of the earth.
“Purity” is a concept we humans have, of the kind of Earth that best supports our species, or what we want to claim as what we think the Earth needs to be.
But prior to and post humanity and the kinds of multi-cellular organisms we consider as “life”, the Earth has been in worse shape and will be in worse shape.
The Earth has been at one point all lava and magma and sulfur rain, possibly a turbulent ocean world, and just before time as we know it, a world of incredible cold then a world of incredible warmth. And eventually there will be an Earth that is just rock. Clearly all worse conditions than what we have now.
And if you really think about it, all humans ever really did was utilize the resources the Earth provided, but also realize the fact that it is the Earth that made humans by allowing cellular organisms to exist.
Humanity, and the way we deal with our environment is just a quick effect of Earth being Earth along its extremely long lifetime.
There’s no “pure Earth”, that’s just for us humans to think about and experience in our lifetimes.
Latest Answers