With great biological havoc comes great opportunity. Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent every weekday. About 445 million years ago, our planet completely changed. Massive glaciers formed over the supercontinent Gondwana, sucking up sea water like an icy sponge. Now called the Late Ordovician mass extinction (LOME), Earth's first major mass extinction wiped out about 85 percent of all marine species as the ocean chemistry radically changed and Earth's climate turned bitter cold. However, with great biological havoc also comes opportunity.

Science Biology Evolution Sea sponges may have been Earth's first living creatures The prehistoric invertebrates likely arrived about 541 million years ago. Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent every weekday. At a certain point in Earth's distant past, the planet's assortment of organic molecules and compounds aligned to create the very first living organisms . The identity of these first living things still continues to elude evolutionary biologists. However, a team of MIT geochemists believe that some 541 million-year-old chemical fossils embedded in sediment indicate that some of Earth's earliest creatures were the ancient relatives of today's sea sponges .

Artificial general intelligence (AGI) does not yet exist, but given the pace of technological development in artificial intelligence, it is projected to reach human-level intelligence within roughly the next two decades. After that, many experts expect it to far surpass human intelligence and to do so rapidly. The prospect of superintelligent AGI poses an existential risk to humans because there is no reliable method for ensuring that AGI goals stay aligned with human goals. Drawing on publicly available forecaster and opinion data, the author examines how experts and non-experts perceive risk from AGI. The findings indicate that the perceived risk of a world catastrophe or extinction from AGI is greater than for other existential risks. The increase in perceived risk over the last year is also steeper for AGI than for other existential threats (e.g., nuclear war or human-caused climate change). That AGI is a pressing existential risk is something on which experts and non-experts agree, but the basis for such agreement currently remains obscure.

For all the chaos going on down here on Earth, it's easy to forget that we live in a volatile galaxy full of formidable dangers. From space rocks flying at thousands of miles per hour, to black holes that could rip our planet apart, sometimes it's best not to think about them. But what would actually happen to the human body if we perished at the hands of these wild astronomical phenomena? MailOnline spoke to experts to find out – and to see if there's any chance of them actually occurring while humanity still exists. Before any of them happen, Homo sapiens could be responsible for their own demise – likely by creating dangerous AI or the emission of greenhouse gases.

From Armageddon to the Day After Tomorrow, there have been plenty of Hollywood movies about how our world might end. But if there is to be a global apocalypse, what might be to blame for wiping out all life on Earth? A wandering black hole, giant asteroid impact and nuclear war could all trigger such disaster, as could the rise of killer robots or the reversal of our planet's magnetic field. Many of these might seem far-fetched but with the Doomsday Clock being placed at a record 90 seconds to midnight this year – and scientists warning that humanity's continued existence is at greater risk than ever before – the threat is now all to real. So how exactly would these devastating possibilities come about? End of days: Ff there is to be a global apocalypse, what might be to blame for wiping out all life on Earth?

Evidence from past extinctions cannot be used as a definitive way of predicting future biodiversity loss, scientists have found by using AI. A team of researchers including Dr. James Witts of the University of Bristol's School of Earth Sciences and led by Dr. William Foster from Hamburg University used fossils from previous mass extinctions to see if AI-generated models can accurately predict extinction vulnerability. Despite expectations, this research found that mass extinctions could not be used to generate predictive models for other biodiversity crises, with no common cause flagged. This is because marine communities are constantly evolving and no two mass extinctions are impacting the same marine ecosystem. Co-author Dr. Witts explained, "In a time of increasing extinction risk, knowing whether we can make predictions about the vulnerabilities of different organisms to extinction is essential."

The idea of intentionally smashing a spacecraft into an asteroid may evoke memories of science fiction blockbusters such as Armageddon or Deep Impact. But it became a reality last week, as NASA's Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) spacecraft soared into a small asteroid called Dimorphos at 14,000mph, with the aim of tweaking its orbit. The space agency hopes the technology could one day be used to defend Earth against a'doomsday' asteroid or comet. But could we really avoid a future Armageddon if we detected a huge space rock headed our way? MailOnline's Executive Science and Technology Editor, Shivali Best, investigates.

A team of researchers affiliated with several institutions in China and two in the U.S. has developed a way to use machine learning to get a better look at the past. In their paper published in the journal Science, the group describes how they used machine learning to analyze records of the past. Scientists use fossils to date rocks because they have no way to test the age of rock directly. Prior research has shown that most species only exist for a certain amount of time. If scientists determine the time when a given dinosaur lived in a given area, they can use that information to date the local rocks using the fossils embedded within them.

A new study applies machine learning to the fossil record to visualize life's history, showing the impacts of major evolutionary events. This shows the long-term evolutionary and ecological impacts of major events of extinction and speciation. Colors represent the geological periods from the Tonian, starting 1 billion years ago, in yellow, to the current Quaternary Period, shown in green. The red to blue color transition marks the end-Permian mass extinction, one of the most disruptive events in the fossil record. The idea that mass extinctions allow many new types of species to evolve is a central concept in evolution, but a new study using artificial intelligence to examine the fossil record finds this is rarely true, and there must be another explanation.

Scientists have long believed that mass extinctions create productive periods of species evolution, or ''radiations,'' a model called ''creative destruction.'' However, new analysis provide evidence for different outcome. A new study led by scientists affiliated with the Earth-Life Science Institute (ELSI) at Tokyo Institute of Technology used machine learning to examine the co-occurrence of fossil species and found that radiations and extinctions are rarely connected, and thus mass extinctions generally don't cause mass radiations.