> <i>The length of the day used for astronomical timekeeping reaches about 86,401 SI seconds. Under the present-day timekeeping system, either a leap second would need to be added to the clock every single day, or else by then, in order to compensate, the length of the day would have had to have been officially lengthened by one SI second.</i><p>Can you just imagine the amount of legacy code with DAY_SECONDS=86400 out there 50k years from now?
Fascinating: "10^(10^50) years: Estimated time for a <i>Boltzmann brain</i> to appear in the vacuum via a spontaneous entropy decrease." [1]<p>[1] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boltzmann_brain" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boltzmann_brain</a><p>> [...] a <i>Boltzmann brain</i> is a self-aware entity that arises due to extremely rare random fluctuations out of a state of thermodynamic equilibrium. [...]
My all-time favorite wikipedia article, great to see it getting some attention. I find that along with providing great fodder for small-talk (among certain types), it causes me to experience a psychological effect analogous to the so-called "overview effect" experienced by astronauts. Attempting to conceive of one's place in cosmological time is great exercise.
>Goldstein, Natalie (2009). Global Warming. Infobase Publishing. p. 53. "The last time acidification on this scale occurred (about 65 mya) it took more than 2 million years for corals and other marine organisms to recover; some scientists today believe, optimistically, that it could take tens of thousands of years for the ocean to regain the chemistry it had in preindustrial times."<p>In my opinion, this is the greatest threat to humanity of continuing to pump CO2 into the atmosphere.
While the topic is on. I am trying to find a short story I read some years ago (4-5) about the evolution of life on our planet in the far future.<p>Warning, massive spoilers:<p>There are like 5 or 6 mass extinction events followed by a new civilization each time built by a different specie. At some points a raven civilization goes on the moon (they always had an innate tendency to go higher) and find an old rover, then it jumps to another civ. and the earth is totally smooth and people are living in holes in the ground (this might be another story from Baxter). Then it's some earth inner core creatures fungi-like. It ends with the sun expansion making life on earth impossible and a mars creature pondering all that.<p>Rings any bells ?
> 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.<p>I always thought that the universe will just reach zero Kelvin and the party is over. That it will just continue to do improbable stuff was beyond my imagination. I don't really understand how it should be possible that effects like the emergence of virtual particles still work if all the energy is now in a form which can't be used for energy transformations anymore (entropy) - I know that annihilation of anti-particles of virtual particles (which causes them to exist - that was the amazing finding of Hawking with the Hawking radiation where the anti-particles of virtual particles get annihilated at the event horizon and his counterpart is happily living on because he got lucky that he wasn't too close) is a way to form new particles "out of nothing" (using quantum effects), but I still can't believe that this still works when <i>nothing's moving because we're at absolute zero</i>.<p>Could someone explain why those quantum effects still continue to work (and sometimes even spawn particles and even brains if we get lucky) even if the universe is at absolute zero?
Some of these are ironically myopic: "<i>10,000 years: If globalization trends lead to panmixia, human genetic variation will no longer be regionalized, as the effective population size will equal the actual population size. This does not mean homogeneity, as minority traits will still be preserved, e.g. the blonde gene will not disappear, but it will be rather evenly distributed worldwide.</i>"<p>That prediction makes the rather questionable assumption that humans will still be primarily, if not entirely, on Earth in 10,000 years! Interplanetary colonization will likely dwarf the regional evolutionary isolation we've experienced on this planet. In the longrun it will likely even trend towards speciation (as a more reasonable prediction further on does hit on.) Consider that a European, an African, and a Japanese all share an <i>incredibly</i> recent ancestor.<p>The exciting thing about interplanetary colonization is once the technology starts to become robust, our potential growth and expansion is effectively unlimited. It would be like if the western frontier in the US was uninhabited and somehow went on to infinity. The implications of this are difficult to even imagine.
A number of Science Fiction works talk about how prediction is more accurate the further out you go into the future, but how predictions in the short term are not so much.<p>Like the episode of Deep Space 9 where Bashier works with the other genetically modified humans. They talk about how eventually the galaxy will come to an end due to entropy, but their predictions for the Dominion War had too many variables to accurately predict close up.<p>Psycho-history and Foundation is sorta like this, but I think Issac Asimov doesn't do as good a job with this story/theory/believably.
Amazing that the entirety of human civilization as we know it fits in a smaller time scale than the very first event on this timeline (10,000 years from now).<p>So while these time spans are minuscule on an astronomical scale, they are enormous on a human scale.
Relevant Kurzgesagt video explaining 3 ways the universe will die: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4_aOIA-vyBo" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4_aOIA-vyBo</a><p>I've been posting too many Kurzgesagt videos recently, but it's amazing how much of their content is relevant! :D
This reminded me of a question I've had knocking around in my head since I've heard of hawking radiation- the prediction is that the black holes slowly evaporate into subatomic particles.<p>However, it seems to me at some point a critical juncture would be passed and the black hole would cease being bound gravitationally and the matter would be released similarly to a supernova or just spontaneously form a neutron star.<p>What is the fallacy in that thinking?
Years from now: 2.4 million<p>Java is still at the top of the TIOBE index. Moreover, the familiar Java update progress dialog will display "100 Trillion Devices Run Java Across Thousands of Galaxies".
Reading that timeline was quite a trip. Humanity is really just a tiny blip in the grand scale of time.<p>They don't talk much about AI and other synthetic replacements for humanity. Maybe it's just too difficult to extrapolate.<p>One can guess, though, that long before another 10,000 years have passed, we will have developed artificial beings that are billions of times smarter than we are.<p>By then, we probably will have augmented our minds and bodies to the point where we are vastly more intelligent and powerful as well, so perhaps we will survive in some form or other.
One of my favorite Wikipedia pages of all time. A little sad that there are only three Biology events there though: North American earthworms spreading to Canada, coral reefs recovering, and C4 photosynthesis no longer possible. Can anyone think of more possible biology events?
I'd highly recommend taking a look at <a href="https://www.futuretimeline.net/21stcentury/2020.htm#2020-2025" rel="nofollow">https://www.futuretimeline.net/21stcentury/2020.htm#2020-202...</a>
> The red supergiant star Antares will likely have exploded in a supernova. The explosion is expected to be easily visible in daylight.<p>Wow, I'd love to be able to see that. Makes one sad about all the things they'll never get to experience.
It’s very interesting to speculate about all this, and also crazy to think all these predictions were only made in the last century. I wonder how much different this list will look in another 100 years (if at all).
> <i>230 million - Prediction of the orbits of the planets is impossible over greater time spans than this, due to the limitations of Lyapunov time.</i><p>> <i>[...]</i><p>> <i>3.3 billion - 1% chance that Jupiter's gravity may make Mercury's orbit so eccentric as to collide with Venus, sending the inner Solar System into chaos. Possible scenarios include Mercury colliding with the Sun, being ejected from the Solar System, or colliding with Earth.</i><p>Are these statements contradictory or am I missing something?
This is extremely interesting, but couldn't it be that in 10.000 our technology has advanced so much that we are able to "refill" dying stars for example? I mean, look at how much we have achieved in the past 1000 years, exponential technology growth over a timefrime 10x that can be unimaginable now.<p>These are cool predictions but they need not be true
Can someone explain:<p>> 800 million Carbon dioxide levels fall to the point at which C4 photosynthesis is no longer possible.[57] Without plant life to recycle oxygen in the atmosphere, free oxygen and the ozone layer will disappear from the atmosphere. All multicellular life will die out.[58]
While I'm not totally on board with outlooks on a technological singularity a la Kurzweil and peers, what does it mean that there is no real representation of that idea here? For example, Kurzweil's "law of accelerating returns" where the speed of technological change increases exponentially has many flaws according to scientists I respect greatly, yet also has many hints at possible futures, ironically also according to scientists I respect greatly.<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_singularity" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_singularity</a>
The Timeline talks about Nuclear waste but what about cumulative effect of daily garbage, solid waste, plastic degradation until human beings survive on earth...<p><a href="https://www.thebalancesmb.com/how-long-does-it-take-garbage-to-decompose-2878033" rel="nofollow">https://www.thebalancesmb.com/how-long-does-it-take-garbage-...</a><p>I think this should have been mentioned somewhere in 'Human constructs' section
A blog post I made putting this and the timeline of life on Earth on the same graph:<p><a href="http://hopefullyintersting.blogspot.com/2018/03/the-drake-equation-again.html" rel="nofollow">http://hopefullyintersting.blogspot.com/2018/03/the-drake-eq...</a>
Who knew that the "store stuff forever" problem was basically solved:<p>[1]<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5D_optical_data_storage" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5D_optical_data_storage</a>
Is someone aware of any non-fiction book that imagines the far future? There're plenty of good books about the past, but I'm not aware of something that spins a tale similar to this article, it could make a great read.
Fascinating reading, but does anybody else find it incredibly depressing? Everything we've seen, every place we loved, everything we've produced, every bit of our history, literature, arts, every smallest trace of our passage in the universe, and every living being, species, descendant or distant cousin, is going to be pulverized, baked, incinerated and atomized. Not even too far from now, in geological terms- much before the universe has stopped producing new stars and planets and new life.
if you enjoyed this, you'll probably like this as well: library of babel <a href="https://libraryofbabel.info/" rel="nofollow">https://libraryofbabel.info/</a>
Anyone who was holding their breath waiting for coastal California to fall into the ocean is going to be disappointment to find out it's not happening in their lifetime.