
While the future cannot be predicted with certainty, present understanding in various scientific fields allows for the prediction of some far-future events, if only in the broadest outline.
These fields include
astrophysics
Astrophysics is a science that employs the methods and principles of physics and chemistry in the study of astronomical objects and phenomena. As one of the founders of the discipline, James Keeler, said, astrophysics "seeks to ascertain the ...
, which studies how
planet
A planet is a large, Hydrostatic equilibrium, rounded Astronomical object, astronomical body that is generally required to be in orbit around a star, stellar remnant, or brown dwarf, and is not one itself. The Solar System has eight planets b ...
s and
star
A star is a luminous spheroid of plasma (physics), plasma held together by Self-gravitation, self-gravity. The List of nearest stars and brown dwarfs, nearest star to Earth is the Sun. Many other stars are visible to the naked eye at night sk ...
s form, interact and die;
particle physics
Particle physics or high-energy physics is the study of Elementary particle, fundamental particles and fundamental interaction, forces that constitute matter and radiation. The field also studies combinations of elementary particles up to the s ...
, which has revealed how matter behaves at the smallest scales;
evolutionary biology
Evolutionary biology is the subfield of biology that studies the evolutionary processes such as natural selection, common descent, and speciation that produced the diversity of life on Earth. In the 1930s, the discipline of evolutionary biolo ...
, which studies how life evolves over time;
plate tectonics
Plate tectonics (, ) is the scientific theory that the Earth's lithosphere comprises a number of large tectonic plates, which have been slowly moving since 3–4 billion years ago. The model builds on the concept of , an idea developed durin ...
, which shows how continents shift over millennia; and
sociology
Sociology is the scientific study of human society that focuses on society, human social behavior, patterns of Interpersonal ties, social relationships, social interaction, and aspects of culture associated with everyday life. The term sociol ...
, which examines how human societies and cultures evolve.
These timelines begin at the start of the 4th millennium in 3001 CE, and continue until the furthest and most remote reaches of future time. They include alternative future events that address unresolved scientific questions, such as whether
humans will become extinct, whether the Earth survives when the Sun expands to become a
red giant
A red giant is a luminous giant star of low or intermediate mass (roughly 0.3–8 solar masses ()) in a late phase of stellar evolution. The stellar atmosphere, outer atmosphere is inflated and tenuous, making the radius large and the surface t ...
and whether
proton decay
In particle physics, proton decay is a hypothetical form of particle decay in which the proton decays into lighter subatomic particles, such as a neutral pion and a positron. The proton decay hypothesis was first formulated by Andrei Sakharov ...
will be the eventual end of all matter in the universe.
Earth, the Solar System and the universe
All projections of the
future of Earth
The biological and geological future of Earth can be extrapolated based on the estimated effects of several long-term influences. These include the chemistry at Earth's surface, the cooling rate of the planet's interior, gravitational int ...
,
the Solar System and
the universe must account for the
second law of thermodynamics
The second law of thermodynamics is a physical law based on Universal (metaphysics), universal empirical observation concerning heat and Energy transformation, energy interconversions. A simple statement of the law is that heat always flows spont ...
, which states that
entropy
Entropy is a scientific concept, most commonly associated with states of disorder, randomness, or uncertainty. The term and the concept are used in diverse fields, from classical thermodynamics, where it was first recognized, to the micros ...
, or a loss of the energy available to do work, must rise over time.
Stars will eventually exhaust their supply of
hydrogen
Hydrogen is a chemical element; it has chemical symbol, symbol H and atomic number 1. It is the lightest and abundance of the chemical elements, most abundant chemical element in the universe, constituting about 75% of all baryon, normal matter ...
fuel via fusion and burn out. The Sun will likely expand sufficiently to overwhelm most of the inner planets (Mercury, Venus, and possibly Earth) but not the giant planets, including Jupiter and Saturn. Afterwards, the Sun will be reduced to the size of a
white dwarf
A white dwarf is a Compact star, stellar core remnant composed mostly of electron-degenerate matter. A white dwarf is very density, dense: in an Earth sized volume, it packs a mass that is comparable to the Sun. No nuclear fusion takes place i ...
, and the outer planets and their moons will continue to orbit this diminutive solar remnant. This future situation may be similar to the white dwarf star
MOA-2010-BLG-477L and the Jupiter-sized
exoplanet
An exoplanet or extrasolar planet is a planet outside the Solar System. The first confirmed detection of an exoplanet was in 1992 around a pulsar, and the first detection around a main-sequence star was in 1995. A different planet, first det ...
orbiting it.
Long after the death of the Solar System, physicists expect that matter itself will eventually disintegrate under the influence of
radioactive decay
Radioactive decay (also known as nuclear decay, radioactivity, radioactive disintegration, or nuclear disintegration) is the process by which an unstable atomic nucleus loses energy by radiation. A material containing unstable nuclei is conside ...
, as even the most stable materials break apart into subatomic particles.
Current data suggests that the
universe has a flat geometry (or very close to flat) and will therefore not
collapse in on itself after a finite time.
This infinite future could allow for the occurrence of massively improbable events, such as the formation of
Boltzmann brain
The Boltzmann brain thought experiment suggests that it is probably more likely for a brain to spontaneously form, complete with a memory of having existed in our universe, rather than for the entire universe to come about in the manner cosmolo ...
s.
Keys
Humanity and human constructs
Keys
To date, five spacecraft (''
Voyager 1
''Voyager 1'' is a space probe launched by NASA on September 5, 1977, as part of the Voyager program to study the outer Solar System and the interstellar medium, interstellar space beyond the Sun's heliosphere. It was launched 16 days afte ...
'', ''
Voyager 2
''Voyager 2'' is a space probe launched by NASA on August 20, 1977, as a part of the Voyager program. It was launched on a trajectory towards the gas giants (Jupiter and Saturn) and enabled further encounters with the ice giants (Uranus and ...
'', ''
Pioneer 10
''Pioneer 10'' (originally designated Pioneer F) is a NASA space probe launched in 1972 that completed the first mission to the planet Jupiter. ''Pioneer 10'' became the first of five artificial objects to achieve the escape velocity needed ...
'', ''
Pioneer 11
''Pioneer 11'' (also known as ''Pioneer G'') is a NASA robotic space probe launched on April 5, 1973, to study the asteroid belt, the environment around Jupiter and Saturn, the solar wind, and cosmic rays. It was the first probe to Exploration ...
'' and ''
New Horizons
''New Horizons'' is an Interplanetary spaceflight, interplanetary space probe launched as a part of NASA's New Frontiers program. Engineered by the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) and the Southwest Research Institut ...
'') are on
trajectories that will take them out of the Solar System and into
interstellar space. Barring an extremely unlikely collision with some object, all five should persist indefinitely.
See also
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Chronology of the universe
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Far future in fiction
The far future has been used as a setting in many works of science fiction. The far future setting arose in the late 19th century, as earlier writers had little understanding of concepts such as deep time and its implications for the nature of h ...
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Far future in religion
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Eschatology
Eschatology (; ) concerns expectations of the end of Contemporary era, present age, human history, or the world itself. The end of the world or end times is predicted by several world religions (both Abrahamic religions, Abrahamic and non-Abrah ...
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Formation and evolution of the Solar System
There is evidence that the formation of the Solar System began about 4.6 billion years ago with the gravitational collapse of a small part of a giant molecular cloud. Most of the collapsing mass collected in the center, forming the Sun, while ...
**
Stability of the Solar System
The stability of the Solar System is a subject of much inquiry in astronomy. Though the planets have historically been stable as observed, and will be in the "short" term, their weak gravitational effects on one another can add up in ways that ar ...
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List of radioactive nuclides by half-life
This is a list of radioactive nuclides (sometimes also called isotopes), ordered by half-life from shortest to longest, in seconds, minutes, hours, days and years. Current methods make it difficult to measure half-lives between approximately 10� ...
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Location of Earth
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History of Earth
The natural history of Earth concerns the development of planet Earth from its formation to the present day. Nearly all branches of natural science have contributed to understanding of the main events of Earth's past, characterized by consta ...
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Future of Earth
The biological and geological future of Earth can be extrapolated based on the estimated effects of several long-term influences. These include the chemistry at Earth's surface, the cooling rate of the planet's interior, gravitational int ...
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Orders of magnitude (time)
An order of magnitude of time is usually a decimal prefix or decimal order-of-magnitude quantity together with a base unit of time, like a microsecond or a million years. In some cases, the order of magnitude may be implied (usually 1), like a ...
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Space and survival
Space and survival is the idea that the long-term survival of the human species and technological civilization requires the building of a spacefaring civilization that utilizes the resources of outer space, and that not doing this might lead to ...
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Stellar evolution
Stellar evolution is the process by which a star changes over the course of time. Depending on the mass of the star, its lifetime can range from a few million years for the most massive to trillions of years for the least massive, which is consi ...
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Timeline of natural history
This timeline of natural history summarizes significant geological and biological events from the formation of the Earth to the arrival of modern humans. Times are listed in millions of years, or megaanni ( Ma).
Dating of the geologic reco ...
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Timeline of the universe
The timeline of the universe begins with the Big Bang, 13.799 ± 0.021 billion years ago, and follows the formation and subsequent evolution of the Universe up to the present day.
Each ''era'' or ''age'' of the universe begins with an "epoch", ...
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Timeline of the near future
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Ultimate fate of the universe
The ultimate fate of the universe is a topic in physical cosmology, whose theoretical restrictions allow possible scenarios for the evolution and ultimate fate of the universe to be described and evaluated. Based on available observational evi ...
Notes
References
Bibliography
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{{Millennia
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