Earth’s habitable lifetime

Earth’s habitable lifetime: at least 1.75 billion years, say astrobiologists

Why we should move to Mars before that

September 23, 2013

Good for another 1.75 billion years, say astrobiologists (credit: NASA)

If we can just hold out another 1.75 billion years, we’ll be fine — as long as we move to Mars by then, according to astrobiologists at theUniversity of East Anglia.

“We used the ‘habitable zone’ concept to make these estimates — this is the distance from a planet’s star at which temperatures are conducive to having liquid water on the surface,” said Andrew Rushby from UEA’s school of Environmental Sciences, who led the research.

“We used stellar evolution models to estimate the end of a planet’s habitable lifetime by determining when it will no longer be in the habitable zone./.../