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TIMELINE OF THE FAR FUTURE

?

years from now

years from now

Astronomy and astrophysicsAstronomy and astrophysics  Astronomy and astrophysics
Geology and planetary scienceGeology and planetary science  Geology and planetary science
BiologyBiology  Biology
Particle-physicsParticle-physics  Particle-physics
MathematicsMathematics  Mathematics
Technology and cultureTechnology and culture  Technology and culture
TIMELINE OF THE FAR FUTURE

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What will happen?


1 pixel = 100 years from here.

Click the label below to see the event.

How life will evolve over time?


1 pixel = 100,000 years from here.

Will humans become extinct?


1 pixel = 100,000,000 years from here.

Lots of questions are still unresolved.

The following things will happen in 1 – 120 trillion years from now.

Astronomy and astrophysics
Low estimate for the time until star formation ends in galaxies as galaxies are depleted of the gas clouds they need to form stars.

The universe's expansion, assuming a constant dark energy density, multiplies the wavelength of the cosmic microwave background by 1029, exceeding the scale of the cosmic light horizon and rendering its evidence of the Big Bang undetectable. However, it may still be possible to determine the expansion of the universe through the study of hypervelocity stars.

Astronomy and astrophysics
Estimated time until the red dwarf star Proxima Centauri, the closest star to the Sun at a distance of 4.25 light-years, leaves the main sequence and becomes a white dwarf.
Astronomy and astrophysics
Estimated time until the red dwarf VB 10, as of 2016 the least massive main sequence star with an estimated mass of 0.075 M, runs out of hydrogen in its core and becomes a white dwarf.
Astronomy and astrophysics
Estimated time for stars (including the Sun) to undergo a close encounter with another star in local stellar neighborhoods. Whenever two stars (or stellar remnants) pass close to each other, their planets\' orbits can be disrupted, potentially ejecting them from the system entirely. On average, the closer a planet\'s orbit to its parent star the longer it takes to be ejected in this manner, because it is gravitationally more tightly bound to the star.
Astronomy and astrophysics
High estimate for the time until normal star formation ends in galaxies. This marks the transition from the Stelliferous Era to the Degenerate Era; with no free hydrogen to form new stars, all remaining stars slowly exhaust their fuel and die.
Astronomy and astrophysics
Time by which all stars in the universe will have exhausted their fuel (the longest-lived stars, low-mass red dwarfs, have lifespans of roughly 10–20 trillion years). After this point, the stellar-mass objects remaining are stellar remnants (white dwarfs, neutron stars, black holes) and brown dwarfs.

Collisions between brown dwarfs will create new red dwarfs on a marginal level: on average, about 100 stars will be shining in what was once the Milky Way. Collisions between stellar remnants will create occasional supernovae.

In 1 quadrillion – 100 quintillion years, these three things will happen.

Astronomy and astrophysics
Estimated time until stellar close encounters detach all planets in star systems (including the Solar System) from their orbits.

By this point, the Sun will have cooled to five degrees above absolute zero.



Astronomy and astrophysics

Estimated time until 90%–99% of brown dwarfs and stellar remnants (including the Sun) are ejected from galaxies. When two objects pass close enough to each other, they exchange orbital energy, with lower-mass objects tending to gain energy. Through repeated encounters, the lower-mass objects can gain enough energy in this manner to be ejected from their galaxy. This process eventually causes the Milky Way to eject the majority of its brown dwarfs and stellar remnants.



Astronomy and astrophysics
Estimated time until the Earth collides with the black dwarf Sun due to the decay of its orbit via emission of gravitational radiation, if the Earth is not ejected from its orbit by a stellar encounter or engulfed by the Sun during its red giant phase.

Now, let's go to the further future.

Astronomy and astrophysics

Estimated time until those stars not ejected from galaxies (1%–10%) fall into their galaxies' central supermassive black holes. By this point, with binary stars having fallen into each other, and planets into their stars, via emission of gravitational radiation, only solitary objects (stellar remnants, brown dwarfs, ejected planets, black holes) will remain in the universe.


Assuming that protons do not decay, estimated time for rigid objects, from free-floating rocks in space to planets, to rearrange their atoms and molecules via quantum tunneling. On this timescale, any discrete body of matter "behaves like a liquid" and becomes a smooth sphere due to diffusion and gravity.


Estimated time until a supermassive black hole with a mass of 20 trillion solar masses decays by the Hawking process. This marks the end of the Black Hole Era. Beyond this time, if protons do decay, the Universe enters the Dark Era, in which all physical objects have decayed to subatomic particles, gradually winding down to their final energy state in the heat death of the universe.

Let's go further –

closer to the end of the universe.

Or the beginning maybe.



High estimate for the time for the Universe to reach its final energy state, even in the presence of a false vacuum.

10101056 years from now Around this vast timeframe, quantum tunnelling in any isolated patch of the vacuum could generate, via inflation, new Big Bangs giving birth to new universes. Because the total number of ways in which all the subatomic particles in the observable universe can be combined is 1010115, a number which, when multiplied by 10101056, disappears into the rounding error, this is also the time required for a quantum-tunnelled and quantum fluctuation-generated Big Bang to produce a new universe identical to our own, assuming that every new universe contained at least the same number of subatomic particles and obeyed laws of physics within the range predicted by string theory.

by Joohyun Park & Donphil Yoo