Less than a thousand years: this is how long it takes for a civilization to destroy its planet due to climate change

Detecting life on other planets is one of the most tenacious careers of scientists. From analysis of the atmosphere to detection of technological evidence. Now a new model suggests that An advanced alien civilization could take less than 1,000 years to destroy its own planet with climate change, even if it depends solely on renewable energy.

When a team of astrophysicists from the University of Rome, led by Amedeo Balbi, simulated the rise and fall of alien civilizations, they discovered that, if a civilization will experience exponential technological growth and energy consumptionit would take less than 1,000 years before the alien planet became too hot to be habitable.

This would be true even if civilization used renewable energy sources, due to the inevitable leakage in the form of heat, as predicted by the laws of thermodynamics. The new study was published in the arXiv preprint database and is undergoing peer review.

While astrophysicists wanted to understand the implications for life beyond our planet, their study was initially inspired by human energy use, which has grown exponentially since the 19th century. In 2023, humans use about 180,000 terawatt hours (TWh), which is about the same amount of energy that reaches Earth from the Sun per second. Much of this energy is produced by gas and coal, which is warming the planet at an unsustainable rate. But even if all that energy were created by renewable sources like wind and solar, humanity would continue to grow and, therefore, would continue to need more energy.

This raised the question: Is this something sustainable over a long period of time?, according to the authors. Balbi’s team was interested in applying the second law of thermodynetomica to this problem. This law says that there is no energy systemandperfect attic, in which all the energyYocreated is used efficiently; some energy must always escapeYoa of the system. This energyYowhat does har escape fromto for a planet to warm over time.

“You can think of it as a leaky bathtub,” explains Manasvi Lingam, co-author of the study, in an interview. If a bathtub containing only a little water leaks, only a small amount can escape. But as the tub gets fuller and fuller (as energy levels increase exponentially to meet demand), a small leak can suddenly turn into a flooded house”.

In this case, the flooded house is the atmospheric temperature of a planet. An accumulation of energy leaks, even green energy, will eventually overheat any planet to the point where it is no longer habitable. If energy levels are not curbed, this disastrous level of climate change could take less than 1,000 years from the start of energy production, the team found.

For astrobiologists, this 1,000-year limit also makes it much more difficult to find life elsewhere in the cosmos. After all, 1,000 years is a blink of an eye in cosmic terms, since Planets like Earth take hundreds of millions of years to become habitable. But alien extinction is not the only potential result of exponential energy use, the study notes.

However, there are other options, both for humans and alien civilizations. Instead of accepting extinction or developing the technology to move energy production off the planet, a civilization could choose to stagnate its growthLingam suggested.

“If a species has chosen balance, has learned to live in harmony with its environment, that species and its descendants could survive perhaps up to a billion years,” concludes this expert.