SLIDE 7.
The continents of
Earth, no longer lit by the afterglow of intelligence, will drift
into strange new configurations. Two hundred and fifty million
years after the sixth great extinction, the scattered continents
will reconverge on a single equatorial supercontinent, Pangea
Ultima, leaving only the conjoined landmass that was Antarctica and
Australia adrift in the southern ocean. As the sun brightens, so
shall the verdant plains of the Earth; oceanic algal blooms raise
the atmospheric oxygen concentration close to 25 percent, and
lightning-triggered wildfires rage across the continental interior.
It will be an epoch characterized by rapid plant growth, but few
animal life-forms can survive on land—in the heady air of aged
Earth, even waterlogged flesh will burn. And the sun is still
brightening . . .