Neil deGrasse Tyson took to Twitter to send a message to his followers about Earth Day, rather than being optimistic it was sobering. Tyson told his Twitter followers that the phrase 'Save Earth' is peculiar given the planet's history.
His message boils down to comparing the longevity of the planet to the longevity of the species that inhabit the planet.
Save Earth?
Neil deGrasse Tyson took a jab at the phrase 'Save Earth' on April 23. Tyson said that he finds the phrase 'Save Earth' odd because the planet continuously survives whatever comes its way. From massive asteroid strikes to climate change, the Earth will continue to exist.
Other scientists jumped in to say that the slogan is catchy and brings attention to the cause. One of the suggestions to replace 'Save Earth' was 'Preserve the Relatively Stable Biosphere in Which Human Civilization Developed,' though the person suggested that it might not have the same ring to it.
More than 99 percent of the species that have ever lived on Earth are estimated to be extinct. Humans happen to be one of the species, Tyson's tweet points out that humans can go extinct just like the other species have in the past. Earth has existed for over 4 billion years and has suffered huge catastrophes during its existence.
Catastrophes That Earth Has Survived
One of the biggest catastrophes that happened to Earth during its existence is the Theia impact. This is the theory of how the Moon formed. The theory says that the moon formed out of a collision between Earth and another planet the size of Mars about 4.5 billion years ago. This collision happened about 20 to 100 million years after the Earth formed.
Another catastrophe was the Great Oxygenation Event. Beginning about 2.5 billion years ago cyanobacteria emerged, they were photosynthetic bacteria that produced oxygen at a time when there was none in the atmosphere. This oxygen was poisonous to the anaerobic bacteria that inhabited Earth at that time. Photosynthesis caused the mass extinction of countless species of bacteria.
There is also the Permian Extinction when all life on Earth almost ceased to exist. About 250 million years ago, something almost killed around 90 percent of Earth's species. Less than a third of the large animal species survived, and almost all of the trees died. Scientists are still looking for a cause of the massive extinction event.
