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After one year. Human head and body lice go extinct, while cockroaches in cities at temperate latitudes freeze to death. Domestic and farm animals perish in enormous numbers.
Currently, the Moon is moving away from Earth at a rate of 4 cm (1.6 inches) per year. In 50 billion years, if the Earth and Moon are not engulfed by the Sun, they will become tidelocked into a larger, stable orbit, with each showing only one face to the other.
- 100 Years: A Sweltering Century
- 200 Years: Live Long and Prosper?
- 300 Years: Humanity Makes The Big Leagues
- 860 Years: Duck!
- 1,000 Years: Duck Even more!
- 2,000 Years: Pole Position
- 8,000 Years: Dancing with The Stars
- 50,000 Years: Cooling-Off Period
- 100,000 Years: Canis Majoris Goes Wild
- 100,000 Years: A Supervolcano Erupts
Earth continues to heat up, possibly by as much as 10.8 degrees Fahrenheit (a change of 6 degrees Celsius) from today's average temperature. This spurs a cascade of crises around the world, including more severe droughts, wildfires, floods and food shortages caused by changing weather patterns. Sea levels are 1 to 4 feet (0.3 to 1.2 meters) higher ...
Human life expectancy is rising, helping more and more people live beyond 100. Yet while population growth has slowed, there are still roughly 9 billion of us straining Earth's resources. Climate change has killed countless people, wiped out valuable wildlife and caused key ecosystems to collapse. Our great-grandchildren try to forgive us for this ...
Created by Soviet astronomer Nikolai Kardashev, the Kardashev scale ranks advanced civilizations based on their energy sources. A Type I civilization uses all available resources on its home planet, while Type II taps the full energy of a star and Type III harnesses galactic power. American physicist Michio Kaku has predictedhumanity will be a Type...
The asteroid 1950 DAwill pass scarily close to Earth on March 16, 2880. Although a collision is possible, NASA predicts it will narrowly miss, providing an important reminder of what's to come — and another reason to celebrate on St. Patrick's Day.
Thanks to ongoing human evolution (yes, we're still evolving), people of the year 3000 might be 7-foot-tall giantswho can live for 120 years, according to some projections.
The planet's north and south magnetic poles periodically reverse, with the last switch occurring in the Stone Age. It may already be under way again today, but since it's a slow process, the North Pole probably won't be in Antarctica for a few millennia.
As if pole reversal wasn't confusing enough, gradual changes in Earth's rotation have now dethroned Polaris as the North Star, replacing it with Deneb. But Deneb will later be usurped by Vega, which will give way to Thuban, eventually setting the stage for Polaris to regain the rolein 26,000 years.
Unless excess greenhouse gases are still scrambling Earth's climate, the current interglacial period finally ends, triggering a new glacial periodof the ongoing ice age.
The largest known star in the Milky Way has finally exploded, producing one of the most spectacular supernovas in galactic history. It's visible from Earth in daylight.
There are about 20 known supervolcanoes on Earth, including a famous one under Yellowstone, and together they average a major eruption once every 100,000 years or so. At least one has probably erupted by now, releasing up to 100 cubic miles (417 cubic kilometers) of magma and causing widespread death and destruction.
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 and whether proton decay will be the eventual end of all matter in the Universe.
An ice age is a time where a significant amount of the Earth's water is locked up on land in continental glaciers. During the last ice age, which finished about 12,000 years ago, enormous ice ...
Oddly enough, an Ice Age has gripped the Earth for most of the last 2.6 million years, and we’re currently experiencing an unusually warm break from this so-called Quaternary glaciation, which temporarily lifted around 12,000 years ago.
People also ask
How long has the Earth been alternating between ice ages and interglacial periods?
How did humans move around the world during the last 100,000 years?
How many times has climate flipped between glacial and interglacial periods?
When did the Ice Age end?
Will the current interglacial period end?
How will Earth's axial tilt change in the next 4.5 billion years?
It began at the end of the last glacial period, about 10,000 years ago. Scientists are still working to understand what causes ice ages. One important factor is the amount of light Earth receives from the Sun.
