What would the Earth eventually look like, if it was somehow stripped of its atmosphere today?
Consider the present day Earth. Now, through some event (magic, a giant maid with a vacuum cleaner, a disgruntled alien did it, ...), our planet is stripped of its atmosphere. Assume that this happens in such a way that other features of our planet are not significantly affected, and that the Earth is actually stripped of its atmosphere (it isn't merely replaced by some other gas(es)). The Sun is still there, and the solar system as a whole is unaffected by this little antic.
After a reasonable length of time (maybe a few hundred million years into the future), an alien civilization comes zooming past the solar system in their superspace-drive spacecraft, and decide to make a rest stop at what used to be the Earth.
- What would the Earth look like when these visiting aliens arrive?
- What would be the primary driving factors in the transition from what we have today to what they would be encountering?
Particularly consider what the surface would look like, including the effects on plate tectonics and the effects of meteor bombardment from space.
I'm not tagging this as hard-science, but the harder the science in the answers, the better.
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