User:Floatingloopingtrees/Future rainforests

FUTURE RAINFORESTS
Rainforest are forests that have existed in the past on most all of the continents. The abundant fossil evidence clearly shows that the outward physical structure of the different plant groups, both large and small, was very visibly different in the different periods since the original formation of dense plant growth. If the future of evolution is anything at all like how it proceeded in the past then in the hundreds of millions of years yet to come on Earth the outward phsical appearance of plants, both large trees and smaller plants, will go through continuing large changes in appearance.

There will be more than changes in appearance too. The very structure of the internal cellular organelles may become quite different, just as cells of billions of years ago are quite different from the cells of today.

Dense vegetation began in the Devonian epoch. The vegetation grew in overall height to where they had species of genuine trees. These rainforests, jungles or simply forests greatly expanded during the long Carboniferous epoch. These great expanses of Rainforests were in existance over hundreds of millions of years in the past.

There are many hundreds of million of years left on the Earth before the Sun's supply of Hydrogen for the fusion process that fuels it to be depleted. When it is seriously depleted the Earth's surface will slowly begin to greatly overheat. It is estimated that the Earth's oceans will not begin to dry up until one Billion years in the future. After the oceans have begun to dry up there is estimated to be one to two plus Billion years before the oceans are all dried up. Aquifiers, or underground rivers, may survive much longer.

So a cautious estimate of the time remaining in which rainforests, as well as Earth's flora and fauna in general, can continue to develope and evolve to new conditions is at least two(2) Billion years. The scientific figure for when the Sun's supply of hydrogen is depleted completely is after an additional two billion years or so.

At far distant time a type of stellar nucleosynthesis will occur. Because the forces of fusing hydrogen will grind to a stop the Sun will collapse. This collapsing will generate so much heat and pressure that the Helium, left from fusing of the Hydrogen, will fuse explosively into the element Beryllium -- resulting in the Sun engulfing the planet Venus and then exploding as a Nova.