Letters to the Editor
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Mass extinctions
"But life on the planet will happily go on without us, at least until the sun dies or until some big asteroid or comet smashes it."
As anyone who has read a science book about the earth's history will know, mass extinctions have been a regular occurrance, whether caused by asteroid inmpact, volanic erruptions or climate changes. According to the "snowball earth" theory, there was even a time when the planet was completed covered in ice. And yet life, in the form of sea-bottom bacteria, survived. In the long run, species are as mortal as individuals. Humans will disappear, whether suddenly or gradually. I'm just glad we've managed to produce a Mozart and a Shakespeare in our limited time on this planet.