Civilization on Earth will probably be killed off by one of three ways, scientists have concluded.

Using math models, a team from the University of Rochester in New York, calculated what would happen to the planet as the population grows and the effects of climate change inflicts chaos.

It was found humanity could go through a soft landing, a gradual die off or full blown collapse.

A gradual die-off is when 70 per cent of life on Earth is wiped out before things go back to normal.

Depressingly, this was found to be by far the most likely outcome.

The most positive outcome is a soft landing, which is where we avoid mass extinction.

This happens when a civilization adapts to radically changing weather and sea levels over time, dodging the bullet.

A full blown collapse will mean our planet was too sensitive to recover from damage caused by its humankind.

All intelligent life will perish very quickly.

In this doomsday scenario even when planets switched to renewable fuels to save themselves from extinction, the damage done was sometimes so bad it could not be reversed.

The scientists had used models they mapped out possible histories of alien worlds.

They called these societies “Exo-civilizations” and learning from their mistakes could help us prepare for climate change’s effect.

Writing in the Atlantic, coauthor Professor Adam Frank said: “Given that more than 10 billion trillion planets likely exist in the cosmos, unless nature is perversely biased against cizviliations like ours, we're not the first one to appear.

“That means each exo-civilization that evolved from its planet's biosphere had a history: A story of emergence, rising capacities, and then maybe a slow fade or rapid collapse.

“And just as most species that have ever lived on Earth are now extinct, so too most civilizations that emerged (if they emerged) may have long since ended.

“So we're exploring what may have happened to others to gain insights into what might happen to us.”

This story originally appeared in The Sun.

