Environment & Energy
In reply to the discussion: Are We Heading Toward Extinction? [View all]paleotn
(17,913 posts)Vastly more species are now extinct than currently exist, so it's simply the natural order of things. Stuff happens. Species can't adapt and they go extinct. And it's still too early to tell if intelligence, as we define it, is a successful long term survival adaptation. It may turn out to actually be a harmful mutation in a certain hominid species and leads nowhere, being quickly extinguished in evolutionary terms. Intelligent Homo sapiens have only been around for a couple hundred thousand years, an eye blink when it comes to the history of our hominid family, much less life on earth.
Life in general? No. Life is incredibly tenacious and has survived numerous extinction events over billions of years. Life on earth will only be extinguished when our sun becomes a red giant and engulfs our planet. But earthly life might still survive, as stowaways on spacecraft. It's not beyond the realm of possibilities that microbes exist right now on Voyager 2, hurtling away from our system.