The End Of The Earth

[steve_bank]

A few billion years from now the surface will begin to become uninhabitable. Heat and loss of water. So, the end of unversed is a nice speculation but irrelevant. Unless we developed large scale Star Trek space travel that is our ultimate end.

Eat, deink, and be merry for in few billion years it is all over.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun

The Sun is roughly middle-aged; it has not changed dramatically for more than four billion[a] years, and will remain fairly stable for more than another five billion years. It currently fuses about 600 million tons of hydrogen into helium every second, converting 4 million tons of matter into energy every second as a result. This energy, which can take between 10,000 and 170,000 years to escape from its core, is the source of the Sun's light and heat. In about 5 billion years, when hydrogen fusion in its core has diminished to the point at which the Sun is no longer in hydrostatic equilibrium, the core of the Sun will experience a marked increase in density and temperature while its outer layers expand to eventually become a red giant. It is calculated that the Sun will become sufficiently large to engulf the current orbits of Mercury and Venus, and render Earth uninhabitable. After this, it will shed its outer layers and become a dense type of cooling star known as a white dwarf, which no longer produces energy by fusion, but still glows and gives off heat from its previous fusion.

The enormous effect of the Sun on Earth has been recognized since prehistoric times, and the Sun has been regarded by some cultures as a deity. The synodic rotation of Earth and its orbit around the Sun are the basis of solar calendars, one of which is the predominant calendar in use today.

Evolution time line
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_evolutionary_history_of_life

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Earth
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Future_of_Earth

 

[DBT]

Probably long before that:

''In the next billion years, the amount of solar radiation reaching the Earth will increase by 8 percent.

This 8 percent increase doesn't sound like much, but if you look at a recent 1994 report by the National Academy of Science "Solar Influence on Global Climate", you will discover that a 0.1 percent increase in solar radiation causes a 'climate forcing of 0.24 watts per square meter, which leads to an increase in the mean global temperature of 0.2 degrees centigrade. From this, we can estimate that our 8 percent increase in solar radiation will cause a 16 degree increase in the mean solar temperature over the next billion years. Or 5 degrees in the next 300 million years. ''

The evaporation of the Earth's oceans would be well underway by 1 billion years from now. We can assume that millions of years before this, Earth will have become uninhabitable. Life more complex than a bacterium has only been around for 600 million years, so it looks like we are about half way through the 'Golden Years'. To me, this is rather uncomfortably short, because it suggests that in perhaps as short as a few hundred million years, life could get very uncomfortable here!! ''

 

[steve_bank]

The ecosystem as it is maybe a few million years. Barring asteroids and nuclear war.

 

[rousseau]

Timeline of the Far Future on Wikipedia.

Worth going through.

 

[Kharakov]

When are they going to make other substrates for consciousness? I think after that point, we'll just simulate the Earth, it will be more efficient, without pain of evolution/etc.

Perhaps ultimately things will wind down because everything is content. Web content I mean.