Timeline of the far future

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While predictions of the future can never be absolutely certain, present understanding in various fields allows for the prediction of far-future events, if only in the broadest outline. These fields include astrophysics, which has revealed how planets and stars form, interact, and die; particle physics, which has revealed how matter behaves at the smallest scales; evolutionary biology, which predicts how life will evolve over time; and plate tectonics, which shows how continents shift over millennia.

All projections of the future of the Earth, the Solar System, and the Universe must account for the second law of thermodynamics, which states that entropy, or a loss of the energy available to do work, must increase over time. Stars will eventually exhaust their supply of hydrogen fuel and burn out. Close encounters gravitationally fling planets from their star systems, and star systems from galaxies.

Eventually, matter itself is expected to come under the influence of radioactive decay, as even the most stable materials break apart into subatomic particles. Current data suggest that the universe has a flat geometry (or very close to flat), and thus, will not collapse in on itself after a finite time, and the infinite future allows for the occurrence of a number of massively improbable events, such as the formation of Boltzmann brains.

The timelines displayed here cover events from the beginning of the 11th millennium to the furthest reaches of future time. A number of alternate future events are listed to account for questions still unresolved, such as whether humans will become extinct, whether protons decay, or whether or not the earth survives when the sun expands to the red giant.

Video Timeline of the far future

Key

Maps Timeline of the far future

Future of the Earth, the Solar System and the Universe

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Future of humanity

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Spacecraft and space exploration

To date five spacecraft (Voyager 1, Voyager 2, Pioneer 10, Pioneer 11 and New Horizons) are on trajectories which will take them out of the Solar System and into interstellar space. Barring an extremely unlikely collision with some object, the craft should persist indefinitely.

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Technological projects

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Human constructs

Astronomical events

Extremely rare astronomical events beginning in the 11th millennium AD (year 10,001) will be:

Calendric predictions

Nuclear power

Graphical timelines

For graphical, logarithmic timelines of these events see:

• Graphical timeline of the universe (to 8 billion years from now)
• Graphical timeline of the Stelliferous Era (to 10²⁰ years from now)
• Graphical timeline from Big Bang to Heat Death (to 10¹⁰⁰⁰ years from now)

See also

Notes

References

Bibliography

• Adams, Fred C. (2008), "Long term astrophysical processes", in Bostrom, Nick; ?irkovi?, Milan M., Global catastrophic risks, Oxford University Press, ISBN 0-19-857050-3. 
• Brownlee, Donald E. (2010), "Planetary habitability on astronomical time scales", in Schrijver, Carolus J.; Siscoe, George L., Heliophysics: Evolving Solar Activity and the Climates of Space and Earth, Cambridge University Press, ISBN 0-521-11294-X. 

Source of article : Wikipedia