Elon Musk again gave a gripping prediction of Earth's future. In his latest tweet on Twitter, the CEO of SpaceX said that all species on Earth will be extinct due to the sun continuing to expand, so humans must find ways to live on other planets.
"There is a 100% chance that *all* species will become extinct as the sun expands, unless humans switch to interplanetary life," Musk said in a tweet.
Musk's tweet is a response to a paper published in the journal Biological Reviews entitled 'The Sixth Mass Extinction: fact, fiction or speculation?'. Robert Cowie, one of the paper's authors, said there have been five mass extinctions so far, and a sixth has already begun.
While the previous five mass extinctions were caused by natural events, the ongoing sixth mass extinction is purely human activity.
The paper also estimates that at least 260,000 species have disappeared since 1500, including spineless animals such as snails and slugs.
Meanwhile, the solar expansion that Musk fears is also a sure thing. The sun will indeed continue to expand if it runs out of hydrogen to burn, and when this hydrogen runs out the sun will be able to crush the Earth.
If there's a company that can help humans move planets and avoid mass extinctions, SpaceX would be one of them. But so far SpaceX so far has no plans to save humanity from this threat.
Musk has previously spoken about building an 'ark' that would take humans and the animals on Earth to Mars. However, of course until now the Starship project that will take astronauts to the Moon and Mars has not yet been in space.
Also, while Musk's concerns are true, solar expansions and explosions are likely to occur within the next five billion. It's still a long way from the extinction of thousands of species that is happening more rapidly at this time.