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Planets With Life Linger Longer

Roughly a billion years from now, the ever-increasing radiation from the sun will have heated Earth into inhabitability; the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere that serves as food for plant life will disappear, pulled out by the weathering of rocks; the oceans will evaporate; and all living things will disappear.

Or maybe not quite so soon, say researchers from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), who have come up with a mechanism that doubles the future lifespan of the biosphere - while also increasing the chance that advanced life will be found elsewhere in the universe.

Earth maintains its surface temperatures through the greenhouse effect. Although the planet's greenhouse gases-chiefly water vapor, carbon dioxide, and methane-have become the villain in global warming scenarios, they're crucial for a habitable world, because they act as an insulating blanket in the atmosphere that absorbs and radiates thermal radiation