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TIMELINE OF THE FAR FUTURE
?
Welcome to the Timeline of the Future – an interactive web experience
of the furthest reaches of future time. All the data here is
postulated by science and collected from
Wikipedia. This project is designed and created by
Joohyun Park
and
Dongphil Yoo
at NYU ITP.
The following things will happen in 1 – 120 trillion years from now.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Estimated time until the
Earth
collides with the
black dwarfSun
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.
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.
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.