SLIDE 8.
Seven hundred and
fifty million years later. The brightening sun will glare down upon
cloud-wreathed ancient continents, weathered and corroded to
bedrock. Even the plant life has abandoned the land, for the
equatorial daytime temperature is perilously close to the boiling
point of water. What life there is retreats to the deep ocean
waters, away from the searing ultraviolet light that splits apart
the water molecules of the upper atmosphere. But there’s no escape:
the oceans themselves are slowly acidifying and evaporating as the
hydrogen liberated in the ionosphere is blasted into space by the
solar wind. A runaway greenhouse effect is well under way, and in
another billion years Earth will resemble parched, hell-hot
Venus.