46 ms·

Timeline of the far future

696 points by speeq 8y ago

netgusto 8y ago
Fascinating: "10^(10^50) years: Estimated time for a Boltzmann brain to appear in the vacuum via a spontaneous entropy decrease." [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boltzmann_brain https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boltzmann_brain > [...] a Boltzmann brain is a self-aware entity that arises due to extremely rare random fluctuations out of a state of thermodynamic equilibrium. [...]
- oorza 8y ago
  Incoming Galactus
- tzahola 8y ago
  Now calculate the probability of the current Universe arising spontaneously from vacuum.
  - eanzenberg 8y ago
    1
    - cpburns2009 8y ago
      This feels anecdotal rather than an actual calculation.
      - TrainedMonkey 8y ago
        Assuming that time moves forward, probability of all events that have already happened is 1. Probability of all events that could have happened, but did not 0. There is an interesting parallel that could be made to quantum states collapsing. Given that the question asks about 'current' universe arising spontaneously from vacuum the probability is 1 because that has already happened. The more interesting question, what is the probability of a new universe similar to our own arising. To the best of our knowledge (which for this type of extrapolation is admittedly flimsy) this is also 1, this just takes a very long time. The expected time it would take (10^10^10^56) is specified on the last row on the "Future of the Earth, the Solar System and the Universe" table.
        taneq 8y ago
        > Given that the question asks about 'current' universe arising spontaneously from vacuum the probability is 1 because that has already happened. Well, we don't know that. Whatever 'came before' (if that even makes sense) probably wasn't a vacuum with the same rules as we see now.
        pc86 8y ago
        > Probability of all events that could have happened, but did not 0. Only if you meant "could have happened, but did not, and now for some reason can no longer happen." "All events that could have happened, but did not" would reasonably encompass every event with 1 > P > 0, wouldn't it?
        TrainedMonkey 8y ago
        What I specifically meant is that to best of our knowledge past is deterministic, but future is not.
      - Florin_Andrei 8y ago
        It's the only case where anecdotal evidence is acceptable. Actually, no. That would be the existence of my own consciousness. Just mine. Not yours. That's it.
      - PhasmaFelis 8y ago
        I am hardly a mathematician, so I'm probably missing something, but I think it makes sense? I believe it's well-established that elementary particles can spontaneously generate through quantum fluctuation. Assuming that this process is uniformly distributed, the probability per unit time of any given structure self-generating is nonzero (if fantastically small). Over a long enough timescale, the probability of any possible event occurring approaches one. If time is infinite, the probability is one. What am I missing?
        cpburns2009 8y ago
        I meant it more tongue-in-cheek than as a real critique. That being said, such a strong statement should have some backing other than anecdotal evidence I agree with. I'm assuming @eanzenberg said the answer is "1" because our universe clearly exists (from my perspective at least). I'd expect the formula to be similar in nature to the Drake equation [1]. However, I'm neither a mathematician nor a physicist. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drake_equation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drake_equation
    - netgusto 8y ago
      Genius.
    - ende 8y ago
      Please show your work.
      - deleted 8y ago
        [deleted]
      - eximius 8y ago
    - OscarCunningham 8y ago
      They mean probability per second.
      - pjc50 8y ago
        Time is believed to be inside the universe, not outside it; assuming the conventional understanding of spacetime is correct.
  - f2f 8y ago
    it's there at the bottom: 10^10^10^56 "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 [...] 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."
- Florin_Andrei 8y ago
  Fun fact: most Boltzmann brains pass out in a matter of seconds, then die, and there's nothing they can do about that.
  - AgentME 8y ago
    Maybe some Boltzmann brains start out with rich fulfilling memories. And then a later (or earlier) Boltzmann brain happens to exist with a continuation of those memories. (Now I realize I'm just reciting a plot point from the excellent book Permutation City...)
    - baddox 8y ago
      And likewise, maybe others start out in a state of unimaginable agony with a long memory of the same.
      - vinceguidry 8y ago
        Does self-awareness presume the existence of emotion? I feel like Boltzman wouldn't have bothered to assert self-awareness if he'd had a real knowledge of the various gradations of consciousness and just how rare they are, even on Earth.
      - majos 8y ago
        As a dude-do-you-ever-think sidenote, this sort of thing keeps me from getting excited about any type of virtual reality that does anything with our brains. How do I know it won't simulate 10 years of torture, then at the end replace that memory with 10 minutes of an edenic golden field, so when I actually unplug all I have is a nice remembered experience that I'd like (incorrectly) to try again?
        Florin_Andrei 8y ago
        Well, growing up you have no guarantee your life is going to be 100% sunshine-and-bunnies, and indeed it rarely is. And yet you live.
- andbberger 8y ago
  That is __severely__ underestimating the true probability - it considers only random thermal fluctuations. But the universe is really powered by processes that dissipate energy across a gradient to fuel a structured, very low entropy state. The math is the same as calculating the probability that the glass you just broke will spontaneously jump back onto the table and reassemble itself. Which is a standard introductory example in thermodynamics... but you add self-awareness and suddenly this rather mundane thing is spooky and amazing. You should be far more interested in what's happening when you boil a pot of water and convection rolls spontaneously form.
  - drewblaisdell 8y ago
    > You should be far more interested in what's happening when you boil a pot of water and convection rolls spontaneously form. Serious question: why?
    - andbberger 8y ago
      https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17390042 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17390042
  - Symmetry 8y ago
    the universe is really powered by processes that dissipate energy across a gradient to fuel a structured, very low entropy state. By 10^(10^50) years that'll be long over.
    - DoctorOetker 8y ago
      which is exactly his point...
      - Symmetry 8y ago
        Re-reading the post: no I don't think I can reasonably interpret it so that that was his point.
      - 8y ago
- mihaifm 8y ago
  Just spent some good hours reading about Boltzmann brain related stuff...it's indeed a fascinating topic. The most interesting part is the related Boltzmann brain paradox: we are far more likely to be isolated brains randomly popping out of chaos and imagining a universe, than actually living in a real universe.
schintan 8y ago
The further I read, the smaller I feel.
- Kenji 8y ago
  The further I read, the more I see unfalsifiable theories.
- cknoxrun 8y ago
  The further I read, the smaller some of the issues we face today seem. I could spend my life fighting to prevent global warming or fix the world, but this list just makes me want to enjoy the time I have here with my loved ones... I don't know how I feel about these feelings.
  - 21 8y ago
    > According to Berger and Loutre, the current interglacial period ends[14] sending the Earth back into a glacial period of the current ice age, regardless of the effects of anthropogenic global warming. According to that guy, there will be a new ice age in 50k years regardless of the current global warming being stopped or not.
    - mockingbirdy 8y ago
      Climate change? Sounds like a problem for patient man! https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/the-superhero-we-need https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/the-superhero-we-need
    - Robotbeat 8y ago
      If there are industrial humans then, it wouldn’t be hard to engineer supergreenhouse gases to mitigate that.
  - aswanson 8y ago
    You mean, it doesnt make you want to get into an inconsequential political argument with someone on Twitter?
lakshayg 8y ago
> 230 million - Prediction of the orbits of the planets is impossible over greater time spans than this, due to the limitations of Lyapunov time. > [...] > 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. Are these statements contradictory or am I missing something?
- chipperyman573 8y ago
  After 230 million years we lose the ability to make accurate predictions. The second statement says that we are guessing (odds 100 to 1) that Jupiter might do that.
- pavel_lishin 8y ago
  They're from different sources, which presumably don't necessarily agree on how far out their predictions are likely to be reasonable.
  - rtkwe 8y ago
    It's more like the first says we can't know exactly where the planets will be while the second is talking about some of the extremes that divergence will go.
- VLM 8y ago
  There's no agreed upon definition of "Prediction" "the planets" or "the orbits", so its any random number between 1M and 10B years under wildly divergent criteria. Orbits have a large number of degrees of freedom and the chaos noise amplification effect is different for each, so given 15M of noise in starting conditions the point along the orbit of the earth is completely unconstrained in about 100M years, but the diameter of the orbit is very tightly constrained in comparison. In 100M years it'll be pretty easy to draw an ellipse and completely impossible to predict where along that ellipse the earth will be, but it'll be somewhere along that ellipse. There's no analogy in physics, but there is an analogy in numerical simulation, that its like predicting electron orbits. I can do organic chemistry and build lasers all day without knowing where any specific electron is located, does that mean prediction of electron orbits is impossible or that its irrelevant to most practical issues? The specific mechanism for electron orbits is a quantum mechanical limitation whereas the orbit problem is statistical undersampling of noisy data. Given the services of a measurement calibration lab and sufficient budget I can predict very accurately what comes out of a screw making factory tomorrow given today's sample data without continuously supervising the factory overnight, but I can't calibrate the screw making factory today, let it run 100M years, and usefully statistically predict what the factory will try to ship on one given day 100M years from now.
21 8y ago
> 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. Can you just imagine the amount of legacy code with DAY_SECONDS=86400 out there 50k years from now?
- mikeash 8y ago
  It will be easier to boost the Earth’s spin back to a 86,400-second day than to fix all the code.
  - godelmachine 8y ago
    I don’t care if this goes against HN guideline and if I am downvoted, but that was the geekiest joke of the millennia :D
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
    - wierd0 8y ago
      Geeks make it go around yo.
  - mrighele 8y ago
    I would just change the duration of a second. It would be probably easier to change a few physics constants here and there than to fix all the broken code.
    - anticensor 8y ago
      If only you were manipulating second only. You would also be manipulating metre, candela, and ampere, assuming old definition of SI, or metre, kilogram and kelvin assuming new definition of SI.
johnchristopher 8y ago
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. Warning, massive spoilers: 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. Rings any bells ?
- shadyarmsdealer 8y ago
  Could it be Last and First Men by Olaf Stapledon? It's a novel, not a short story, but it has the same structure you've described involving successive sentient races (including bird-like people) and the planets gradually becoming uninhabitable. Edit: Apparently Last and First Men was heavily influenced by a short story, "The Last Judgment" by J.B.S. Haldane. Source: https://www.sas.upenn.edu/sasalum/newsltr/fall99/end.html https://www.sas.upenn.edu/sasalum/newsltr/fall99/end.html. Maybe that's the one you remember?
  - johnchristopher 8y ago
    Thanks, I checked both but it's not it. It really was a short story, no more than ten minutes of reading. Also I distinctly remember the moon rover reference and emphasis that wouldn't likely be depicted as I remember it considering the 1927 date of publication of the short story. I am pretty sure the author wasn't a published author. It was a blog post.
- tzahola 8y ago
  How could the Earth be totally smooth?
  - johnchristopher 8y ago
    Dunno. Also, the author hints than the night is endless and cold and the child, which the author uses to convey that part of the story, is scolded by his parents and ordered to get back underground where it's warmer.
jsdalton 8y ago
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). So while these time spans are minuscule on an astronomical scale, they are enormous on a human scale.
- turc1656 8y ago
  Indeed. In Neil DeGrasse Tyson's version of "Cosmos" there is a great illustration where he says that if we visualize the entire history of the universe as being scaled to one calendar year then every human being that has ever lived has essentially existed somewhere within the last 12 seconds of that year.
  - muterad_murilax 8y ago
    And that's including our ancestors.
  - 394549 8y ago
    > In Neil DeGrasse Tyson's version of "Cosmos" there is a great illustration where he says that if we visualize the entire history of the universe as being scaled to one calendar year then every human being that has ever lived has essentially existed somewhere within the last 12 seconds of that year. Was that in the original Carl Sagan version of Cosmos as well? I seem to recall it, but I've never seen the Neil DeGrasse Tyson version.
    - turc1656 8y ago
      Apparently it was. I have never seen the older version so wasn't aware. Another commenter above posted the youtube link to the original segment.
  - davidivadavid 8y ago
    Same sequence was in the original Cosmos: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GzG9fHMr9L4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GzG9fHMr9L4
  - 8y ago
mockingbirdy 8y ago
> 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. 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 nothing's moving because we're at absolute zero. 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?
- mockingbirdy 8y ago
  Ok, thanks guys. Quantum uncertainty is the reason we can't reach zero Kelvin, so it's kind of nonsense to ask why quantum effects still work at absolute zero. > It's not physically impossible for order to increase, it's just ridiculously unlikely. Would love to see resources that explain this (I think it comes down to quantum uncertainty again). > the basic idea is that the probability for anything to happen is different than 0 Yeah, quantum uncertainty. Still can't wrap my head around it, but in conversations with physicists, they also weren't sure why the heck it works that way. Gonna read my quantum mechanics book, but the math is not easy-going and especially quantum logic with its 3 states (true, false and flying spaghetti monster superposition) is extremely difficult to grasp using intuition. It contains a lot of thinking from statistics which essentially is just extremely unintuitive as well. - - - Edit: I really wonder if something like a "gravitational quantum electrodynamics" (don't know if we achieve it with this specific theory) or string theory (I don't really like it due to its unscientific nature) - in essence a Theory of Everything - will really explain everything like it really is or just happens to be a fitting model without being any meaningful representation of reality (in the sense that it explains how the underlying reality really looks like). We won't be able to verify if our models are actually representing reality anyways (any theory that explains all observed events and which has some plausible and strong predictions can be treated as a possible reality), but would be nice to know. Guess it can't physically happen, unfortunately.
sgillen 8y ago
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).
lowdest 8y ago
If this is interesting to you, I highly recommend "Science & Futurism with Isaac Arthur" available on Youtube and in other formats.
- luos 8y ago
  He publishes it in a podcast format as well without the background music, which I am very thankful for.
- mclightning 8y ago
  they have a very active facebook group as well!
- teekert 8y ago
  I love Isaac Arthur, I look forward to his stuff every week. I listen to him using Pocket Casts, although the visuals can also be very nice.
ganonm 8y ago
I'd highly recommend taking a look at https://www.futuretimeline.net/21stcentury/2020.htm#2020-2025 https://www.futuretimeline.net/21stcentury/2020.htm#2020-202...
stallmanite 8y ago
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.
- mclightning 8y ago
  I am glad to read I wasn't the only one feeling a deep feeling. The facts about past and present gives one an overview effect already, but man the future... makes you feel really insignificant. I am mostly shocked by how all the predictions about Antares etc. show their death pretty soon. We look at these major big stars with awe and inspiration putting great significance to them, yet in the long scale...; their death is closer to us than that of T-rex... much closer.
- Cyphase 8y ago
  I came here to say this. I peruse this article every once in a while; not intentionally, but I end up coming around to it from time to time, often during Wikipedia binges.
- doubledad222 8y ago
  #mefour. I have recommended this article in various conversations over the years. I love how it's grown to include projections from various diverse fields. I feel I have lived forever after reading through it. And the mind-numbing scale eases fears over death for me.
- willidiots 8y ago
  I still remember the first time I found this page, and the deep existential crisis that followed!
- kalendos 8y ago
  Made me remember a Carl Sagan quote. "We are like butterflies who flutter for a day and think it is forever"
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
TangoTrotFox 8y ago
Some of these are ironically myopic: "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." 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 incredibly recent ancestor. 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.
- anonytrary 8y ago
  It's a bit ironic because you made the exact same mistake they made. Interplanetary colonization only makes sense if humans are even around in 10,000 years. It's possible they will not be -- the speed of light being finite makes interplanetary colonization much less probable. Making any kind of 10,000 year prediction on a population thousands seems myopic.
  - TangoTrotFox 8y ago
    Interplanetary is not the same thing as interstellar. Interplanetary just means different planets. E.g. after we colonize Mars we will be an interplanetary species. That's also where the divergence will begin. The development and evolutionary characteristics of individuals that grow up in low g will likely quickly begin to create a group of people radically different from anything on Earth. You're making a common mistake on the speed of light. Understandable as relativity is really really weird. We can get into the hows/whys if you like, but the long and short is that if we can, somehow, develop technology to be able to consistently accelerate at just 1g then we can colonize places that are billions of light years away, all in a single human lifetime. Of course indeed billions of years will have passed for everybody else. It's going to make notions of time, progress, and even extinction get really really weird.
djsumdog 8y ago
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. 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. 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.
- the_af 8y ago
  There is an absolutely delightful short story by -- who else? -- Robert Silverberg about predictions of the far future, "When We Went to See the End of the World". You'll be amused and you'll laugh, though perhaps you'll need a dark sense of humor for that!
Symmetry 8y ago
A blog post I made putting this and the timeline of life on Earth on the same graph: http://hopefullyintersting.blogspot.com/2018/03/the-drake-equation-again.html http://hopefullyintersting.blogspot.com/2018/03/the-drake-eq...
dsfyu404ed 8y ago
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.
- sctb 8y ago
  Would you mind making your comments more thoughtful and informative? https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
christianbryant 8y ago
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. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_singularity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_singularity
- ansible 8y ago
  It is a controversial idea, and most people can only imagine a future for humanity where things look pretty much as they do now, but with slightly better technology (cf Star Trek, where meat bags are flying among the stars, mostly unchanged from present humanity). I'm fairly certain we're looking at the end of human civilization one way or the other within the next 100 years max. The Global Pollution Epidemic, robot uprising, and nuclear war are the more likely bad scenarios for the end of civilization. We might instead be able to develop technology which solves all present problems (like pollution and energy production) and then use it wisely to bring wealth and enlightenment to everyone. I wouldn't care to estimate what outcome is more likely.
  - christianbryant 8y ago
    Even Kurzweil's updated ideas and projections in The Singularity is Near from around 2005 still make assumptions of humanity having a longer technology maturation period than 100 years. I actually have the same opinion as you when it comes to our time left if we can't make some global changes; it bums me out, having two girls who are not even in High School yet.
blisterpeanuts 8y ago
Reading that timeline was quite a trip. Humanity is really just a tiny blip in the grand scale of time. They don't talk much about AI and other synthetic replacements for humanity. Maybe it's just too difficult to extrapolate. 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. 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.
- bilbo0s 8y ago
  Or we will have unleashed highly lethal, self-replicating nanobots in the prosecution of a devastating global war, and the human race will be crawling along with a population at extinction levels. (Or maybe just a good old fashioned series of nuclear exchanges?) The future can be more brilliant than we could imagine, or darker than our worst fears can conjure. Likely, it will be somewhere in the middle.
h4kor 8y ago
Can someone explain: > 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]
- philipkglass 8y ago
  I couldn't find the 800 million year figure specifically in the cited source: https://arxiv.org/pdf/0912.2482.pdf https://arxiv.org/pdf/0912.2482.pdf The general idea, I believe, is that the carbonate-silicate cycle will shift more toward carbonates over time. The Earth will warm substantially as the sun's luminosity increases over millions of years. Warmer conditions will accelerate the reaction of water and carbon dioxide with silicate minerals like magnesium and calcium silicates, shifting the equilibrium to favor more carbon-as-insoluble-carbonate and less carbon-as-available-CO2. Plant life will eventually go extinct from insufficient atmospheric CO2. I haven't spotted a discussion of oxygen loss in either citation 57 or 58. But "just" losing plant life would be enough to drive the extinction of most other multicellular life on Earth. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbonate%E2%80%93silicate_cycle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbonate%E2%80%93silicate_cyc... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun#Main_sequence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun#Main_sequence
- foobiekr 8y ago
  contiued silicate rock weathering which sequesters carbon dioxide
- apo 8y ago
  Photosynthesis produces oxygen at a rate faster than the rate of depletion due to oxidation of the Earth's crust (think rust). Without plants there's nothing left to spew oxygen back into the atmosphere. Photosynthesis converts CO2 into carbohydrates. Lowering the concentration of atmospheric CO2 slows this reaction. Plants also metabolize carbohydrates, producing CO2. So photosynthesis requires the right balance of CO2 concentration and light. The estimate for when CO2 levels would fall too low appears to come from the following linked article: The latter authors feared that photosynthetic production would cease ~ 0.1 Gyr from now when just 150 ppm CO2 remained in the atmosphere. The latter figure corresponded to the CO2 compensation point, at which photosynthetic carbon fixation would exactly balance losses through respiration. We stress that _ this must not be confused with the CO2 value at which healthy metabolism ceases; with zero net C fixation available, a plant could not repair itself, produce seeds, or even grow. https://arxiv.org/pdf/0912.2482.pdf https://arxiv.org/pdf/0912.2482.pdf There's more on the compensation point here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compensation_point https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compensation_point
24gttghh 8y ago
>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." In my opinion, this is the greatest threat to humanity of continuing to pump CO2 into the atmosphere.
- mkempe 8y ago
  One should maintain some perspective: Coral reefs have gone through enormous variations in extent and location, and near extinction, many times since 500 million years ago. Not even the last Ice Age or CO2 levels 10x higher than what we have today managed to cause the extinction of coral.
  - jersully72 8y ago
    How does this near extinction compare to previous ones?
    - mkempe 8y ago
      We're not currently witnessing a near-extinction.
      - wierd0 8y ago
        Scientists consulted when creating the tv show Blue Planet II seems to disagree. According to them we are in fact in the midst of an extinction.
        mkempe 8y ago
        There are wide varieties of corals and of their symbionts. To claim that they are all simultaneously going extinct in all seas and microclimates is absurd, and contradicts the evidence of their repeated adaptations to past climate variations over 500 million years as well as ignores the observation of their thriving across countless local seasonal and weather variations.
owenversteeg 8y ago
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?
- samatman 8y ago
  We have added a second language of relication, language itself, to biology, and are using it to alter the first language in a rapidly expanding way. It’s not easy to make predictions, short or long term, given this. The coral prediction, which does have the word “if” in it, also assumes we
SketchySeaBeast 8y ago
> The red supergiant star Antares will likely have exploded in a supernova. The explosion is expected to be easily visible in daylight. Wow, I'd love to be able to see that. Makes one sad about all the things they'll never get to experience.
- gattr 8y ago
  Actually, the prediction accuracy here is more like "may go off any time". Likewise, for Betelgeuse (the brightest star of Orion), which would also be visible in daylight.
- jimbofisher1 8y ago
  Likely to cause the Bible thumpers to go insane, not sure I want to be there when that happens.
  - sctb 8y ago
    We ban accounts that won't comment civilly and substantively. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
mlthoughts2018 8y ago
My only question is whether the world’s cumulative student loan debt will have been paid back before the red giant Sun engulfs Earth.
mrkstu 8y ago
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. 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. What is the fallacy in that thinking?
- goodcanadian 8y ago
  Theoretically, a black hole can exist at any mass as long as it is dense enough. It is true that a black hole won't form without enough mass to cause it to collapse, but once formed, it can evaporate down to nothing without ever becoming gravitationally unbound.
  - ansible 8y ago
    It has been theorized that tiny black holes may have formed shortly after the Big Bang, and have since evaporated.
  - mrkstu 8y ago
    Theoretically it could evaporate but is there any necessity of that? Is exploding a theoretical possibility or once a stellar mass black hole forms is it thereafter in such a small circumference that it is stuck in that form until it evaporates?
    - zaarn 8y ago
      Well, evaporation is simply a conclusion from hawking radiation. The black hole losses energy over this radiation, energy it produces from it's own mass. Since hawking radiation output increases relative to the size of the black hole as it gets smaller, eventually you end up with an explosion. I do believe that Kurzgesagt made a video that details what would happen with a blackhole with the mass of a coin in your pocket (short version: you die)
- adrianN 8y ago
monkeydust 8y ago
Awesome piece. Will have to read that one again and bookmark it. Puts all life's little shitty events into context!
pascalxus 8y ago
if you enjoyed this, you'll probably like this as well: library of babel https://libraryofbabel.info/ https://libraryofbabel.info/
maxxxxx 8y ago
Pretty useful for real estate investors who want to plan ahead for the next few hundred million years....
billsmithaustin 8y ago
This really belongs in XKCD.
anonymous5133 8y ago
TIL: I don't really know how much about the future and all there is to know in science....
myoffe 8y ago
I was getting depressed towards the end of the event list, and the last one cheered me up. Everything is circular.
- Midnightas 8y ago
  It is happier, still a bit depressing, though, knowing that everything that happened already happened and will keep on happening.
  - throwaway37585 8y ago
    Whoever thou mayest be, beloved stranger, whom I meet here for the first time, avail thyself of this happy hour and of the stillness around us, and above us, and let me tell thee something of the thought which has suddenly risen before me like a star which would fain shed down its rays upon thee and every one, as befits the nature of light. Fellow man! Your whole life, like a sandglass, will always be reversed and will ever run out again, - a long minute of time will elapse until all those conditions out of which you were evolved return in the wheel of the cosmic process. And then you will find every pain and every pleasure, every friend and every enemy, every hope and every error, every blade of grass and every ray of sunshine once more, and the whole fabric of things which make up your life. This ring in which you are but a grain will glitter afresh forever. And in every one of these cycles of human life there will be one hour where, for the first time one man, and then many, will perceive the mighty thought of the eternal recurrence of all things:- and for mankind this is always the hour of Noon.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
nicklaf 8y ago
And then there's this: http://www.exitmundi.nl/ http://www.exitmundi.nl/ ;-)
davidw 8y ago
Now I feel like a moron for going to speak about housing issues at the city council meeting...
Rainymood 8y ago
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. These are cool predictions but they need not be true
- 2845197541 8y ago
  I've never figured out why people think technological growth would be exponential indefinitely.
  - Nydhal 8y ago
    on an exponential scale 10000 years is just one step ahead.
kulu2002 8y ago
The Timeline talks about Nuclear waste but what about cumulative effect of daily garbage, solid waste, plastic degradation until human beings survive on earth... https://www.thebalancesmb.com/how-long-does-it-take-garbage-to-decompose-2878033 https://www.thebalancesmb.com/how-long-does-it-take-garbage-... I think this should have been mentioned somewhere in 'Human constructs' section
amingilani 8y ago
Relevant Kurzgesagt video explaining 3 ways the universe will die: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4_aOIA-vyBo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4_aOIA-vyBo I've been posting too many Kurzgesagt videos recently, but it's amazing how much of their content is relevant! :D
anad7 8y ago
Years from now: 2.4 million 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".
kerbalspacepro 8y ago
Who knew that the "store stuff forever" problem was basically solved: [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5D_optical_data_storage https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5D_optical_data_storage
yedawg 8y ago
this is one of the worst put together wikipedia articles I have ever read
amorphous 8y ago
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.
Udik 8y ago
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.

696 points by speeq 8y ago

Fascinating: "10^(10^50) years: Estimated time for a Boltzmann brain to appear in the vacuum via a spontaneous entropy decrease." [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boltzmann_brain https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boltzmann_brain > [...] a Boltzmann brain is a self-aware entity that arises due to extremely rare random fluctuations out of a state of thermodynamic equilibrium. [...]

oorza 8y ago
Incoming Galactus
tzahola 8y ago
Now calculate the probability of the current Universe arising spontaneously from vacuum.
- eanzenberg 8y ago
  1
  - cpburns2009 8y ago
    This feels anecdotal rather than an actual calculation.
    - TrainedMonkey 8y ago
      Assuming that time moves forward, probability of all events that have already happened is 1. Probability of all events that could have happened, but did not 0. There is an interesting parallel that could be made to quantum states collapsing. Given that the question asks about 'current' universe arising spontaneously from vacuum the probability is 1 because that has already happened. The more interesting question, what is the probability of a new universe similar to our own arising. To the best of our knowledge (which for this type of extrapolation is admittedly flimsy) this is also 1, this just takes a very long time. The expected time it would take (10^10^10^56) is specified on the last row on the "Future of the Earth, the Solar System and the Universe" table.
      - taneq 8y ago
        > Given that the question asks about 'current' universe arising spontaneously from vacuum the probability is 1 because that has already happened. Well, we don't know that. Whatever 'came before' (if that even makes sense) probably wasn't a vacuum with the same rules as we see now.
      - pc86 8y ago
        > Probability of all events that could have happened, but did not 0. Only if you meant "could have happened, but did not, and now for some reason can no longer happen." "All events that could have happened, but did not" would reasonably encompass every event with 1 > P > 0, wouldn't it?
        TrainedMonkey 8y ago
        What I specifically meant is that to best of our knowledge past is deterministic, but future is not.
    - Florin_Andrei 8y ago
      It's the only case where anecdotal evidence is acceptable. Actually, no. That would be the existence of my own consciousness. Just mine. Not yours. That's it.
    - PhasmaFelis 8y ago
      I am hardly a mathematician, so I'm probably missing something, but I think it makes sense? I believe it's well-established that elementary particles can spontaneously generate through quantum fluctuation. Assuming that this process is uniformly distributed, the probability per unit time of any given structure self-generating is nonzero (if fantastically small). Over a long enough timescale, the probability of any possible event occurring approaches one. If time is infinite, the probability is one. What am I missing?
      - cpburns2009 8y ago
        I meant it more tongue-in-cheek than as a real critique. That being said, such a strong statement should have some backing other than anecdotal evidence I agree with. I'm assuming @eanzenberg said the answer is "1" because our universe clearly exists (from my perspective at least). I'd expect the formula to be similar in nature to the Drake equation [1]. However, I'm neither a mathematician nor a physicist. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drake_equation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drake_equation
  - netgusto 8y ago
    Genius.
  - ende 8y ago
    Please show your work.
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
    - eximius 8y ago
  - OscarCunningham 8y ago
    They mean probability per second.
    - pjc50 8y ago
      Time is believed to be inside the universe, not outside it; assuming the conventional understanding of spacetime is correct.
- f2f 8y ago
  it's there at the bottom: 10^10^10^56 "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 [...] 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."
Florin_Andrei 8y ago
Fun fact: most Boltzmann brains pass out in a matter of seconds, then die, and there's nothing they can do about that.
- AgentME 8y ago
  Maybe some Boltzmann brains start out with rich fulfilling memories. And then a later (or earlier) Boltzmann brain happens to exist with a continuation of those memories. (Now I realize I'm just reciting a plot point from the excellent book Permutation City...)
  - baddox 8y ago
    And likewise, maybe others start out in a state of unimaginable agony with a long memory of the same.
    - vinceguidry 8y ago
      Does self-awareness presume the existence of emotion? I feel like Boltzman wouldn't have bothered to assert self-awareness if he'd had a real knowledge of the various gradations of consciousness and just how rare they are, even on Earth.
    - majos 8y ago
      As a dude-do-you-ever-think sidenote, this sort of thing keeps me from getting excited about any type of virtual reality that does anything with our brains. How do I know it won't simulate 10 years of torture, then at the end replace that memory with 10 minutes of an edenic golden field, so when I actually unplug all I have is a nice remembered experience that I'd like (incorrectly) to try again?
      - Florin_Andrei 8y ago
        Well, growing up you have no guarantee your life is going to be 100% sunshine-and-bunnies, and indeed it rarely is. And yet you live.
andbberger 8y ago
That is __severely__ underestimating the true probability - it considers only random thermal fluctuations. But the universe is really powered by processes that dissipate energy across a gradient to fuel a structured, very low entropy state. The math is the same as calculating the probability that the glass you just broke will spontaneously jump back onto the table and reassemble itself. Which is a standard introductory example in thermodynamics... but you add self-awareness and suddenly this rather mundane thing is spooky and amazing. You should be far more interested in what's happening when you boil a pot of water and convection rolls spontaneously form.
- drewblaisdell 8y ago
  > You should be far more interested in what's happening when you boil a pot of water and convection rolls spontaneously form. Serious question: why?
  - andbberger 8y ago
    https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17390042 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17390042
- Symmetry 8y ago
  the universe is really powered by processes that dissipate energy across a gradient to fuel a structured, very low entropy state. By 10^(10^50) years that'll be long over.
  - DoctorOetker 8y ago
    which is exactly his point...
    - Symmetry 8y ago
      Re-reading the post: no I don't think I can reasonably interpret it so that that was his point.
    - 8y ago
mihaifm 8y ago
Just spent some good hours reading about Boltzmann brain related stuff...it's indeed a fascinating topic. The most interesting part is the related Boltzmann brain paradox: we are far more likely to be isolated brains randomly popping out of chaos and imagining a universe, than actually living in a real universe.

schintan 8y ago

The further I read, the smaller I feel.

Kenji 8y ago
The further I read, the more I see unfalsifiable theories.
cknoxrun 8y ago
The further I read, the smaller some of the issues we face today seem. I could spend my life fighting to prevent global warming or fix the world, but this list just makes me want to enjoy the time I have here with my loved ones... I don't know how I feel about these feelings.
- 21 8y ago
  > According to Berger and Loutre, the current interglacial period ends[14] sending the Earth back into a glacial period of the current ice age, regardless of the effects of anthropogenic global warming. According to that guy, there will be a new ice age in 50k years regardless of the current global warming being stopped or not.
  - mockingbirdy 8y ago
    Climate change? Sounds like a problem for patient man! https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/the-superhero-we-need https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/the-superhero-we-need
  - Robotbeat 8y ago
    If there are industrial humans then, it wouldn’t be hard to engineer supergreenhouse gases to mitigate that.
- aswanson 8y ago
  You mean, it doesnt make you want to get into an inconsequential political argument with someone on Twitter?

lakshayg 8y ago

> 230 million - Prediction of the orbits of the planets is impossible over greater time spans than this, due to the limitations of Lyapunov time. > [...] > 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. Are these statements contradictory or am I missing something?

chipperyman573 8y ago
After 230 million years we lose the ability to make accurate predictions. The second statement says that we are guessing (odds 100 to 1) that Jupiter might do that.
pavel_lishin 8y ago
They're from different sources, which presumably don't necessarily agree on how far out their predictions are likely to be reasonable.
- rtkwe 8y ago
  It's more like the first says we can't know exactly where the planets will be while the second is talking about some of the extremes that divergence will go.
VLM 8y ago
There's no agreed upon definition of "Prediction" "the planets" or "the orbits", so its any random number between 1M and 10B years under wildly divergent criteria. Orbits have a large number of degrees of freedom and the chaos noise amplification effect is different for each, so given 15M of noise in starting conditions the point along the orbit of the earth is completely unconstrained in about 100M years, but the diameter of the orbit is very tightly constrained in comparison. In 100M years it'll be pretty easy to draw an ellipse and completely impossible to predict where along that ellipse the earth will be, but it'll be somewhere along that ellipse. There's no analogy in physics, but there is an analogy in numerical simulation, that its like predicting electron orbits. I can do organic chemistry and build lasers all day without knowing where any specific electron is located, does that mean prediction of electron orbits is impossible or that its irrelevant to most practical issues? The specific mechanism for electron orbits is a quantum mechanical limitation whereas the orbit problem is statistical undersampling of noisy data. Given the services of a measurement calibration lab and sufficient budget I can predict very accurately what comes out of a screw making factory tomorrow given today's sample data without continuously supervising the factory overnight, but I can't calibrate the screw making factory today, let it run 100M years, and usefully statistically predict what the factory will try to ship on one given day 100M years from now.

21 8y ago

> 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. Can you just imagine the amount of legacy code with DAY_SECONDS=86400 out there 50k years from now?

mikeash 8y ago
It will be easier to boost the Earth’s spin back to a 86,400-second day than to fix all the code.
- godelmachine 8y ago
  I don’t care if this goes against HN guideline and if I am downvoted, but that was the geekiest joke of the millennia :D
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - wierd0 8y ago
    Geeks make it go around yo.
- mrighele 8y ago
  I would just change the duration of a second. It would be probably easier to change a few physics constants here and there than to fix all the broken code.
  - anticensor 8y ago
    If only you were manipulating second only. You would also be manipulating metre, candela, and ampere, assuming old definition of SI, or metre, kilogram and kelvin assuming new definition of SI.

johnchristopher 8y ago

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. Warning, massive spoilers: 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. Rings any bells ?

shadyarmsdealer 8y ago
Could it be Last and First Men by Olaf Stapledon? It's a novel, not a short story, but it has the same structure you've described involving successive sentient races (including bird-like people) and the planets gradually becoming uninhabitable. Edit: Apparently Last and First Men was heavily influenced by a short story, "The Last Judgment" by J.B.S. Haldane. Source: https://www.sas.upenn.edu/sasalum/newsltr/fall99/end.html https://www.sas.upenn.edu/sasalum/newsltr/fall99/end.html. Maybe that's the one you remember?
- johnchristopher 8y ago
  Thanks, I checked both but it's not it. It really was a short story, no more than ten minutes of reading. Also I distinctly remember the moon rover reference and emphasis that wouldn't likely be depicted as I remember it considering the 1927 date of publication of the short story. I am pretty sure the author wasn't a published author. It was a blog post.
tzahola 8y ago
How could the Earth be totally smooth?
- johnchristopher 8y ago
  Dunno. Also, the author hints than the night is endless and cold and the child, which the author uses to convey that part of the story, is scolded by his parents and ordered to get back underground where it's warmer.

jsdalton 8y ago

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). So while these time spans are minuscule on an astronomical scale, they are enormous on a human scale.

turc1656 8y ago
Indeed. In Neil DeGrasse Tyson's version of "Cosmos" there is a great illustration where he says that if we visualize the entire history of the universe as being scaled to one calendar year then every human being that has ever lived has essentially existed somewhere within the last 12 seconds of that year.
- muterad_murilax 8y ago
  And that's including our ancestors.
- 394549 8y ago
  > In Neil DeGrasse Tyson's version of "Cosmos" there is a great illustration where he says that if we visualize the entire history of the universe as being scaled to one calendar year then every human being that has ever lived has essentially existed somewhere within the last 12 seconds of that year. Was that in the original Carl Sagan version of Cosmos as well? I seem to recall it, but I've never seen the Neil DeGrasse Tyson version.
  - turc1656 8y ago
    Apparently it was. I have never seen the older version so wasn't aware. Another commenter above posted the youtube link to the original segment.
- davidivadavid 8y ago
  Same sequence was in the original Cosmos: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GzG9fHMr9L4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GzG9fHMr9L4
- 8y ago

mockingbirdy 8y ago

> 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. 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 nothing's moving because we're at absolute zero. 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?

mockingbirdy 8y ago
Ok, thanks guys. Quantum uncertainty is the reason we can't reach zero Kelvin, so it's kind of nonsense to ask why quantum effects still work at absolute zero. > It's not physically impossible for order to increase, it's just ridiculously unlikely. Would love to see resources that explain this (I think it comes down to quantum uncertainty again). > the basic idea is that the probability for anything to happen is different than 0 Yeah, quantum uncertainty. Still can't wrap my head around it, but in conversations with physicists, they also weren't sure why the heck it works that way. Gonna read my quantum mechanics book, but the math is not easy-going and especially quantum logic with its 3 states (true, false and flying spaghetti monster superposition) is extremely difficult to grasp using intuition. It contains a lot of thinking from statistics which essentially is just extremely unintuitive as well. - - - Edit: I really wonder if something like a "gravitational quantum electrodynamics" (don't know if we achieve it with this specific theory) or string theory (I don't really like it due to its unscientific nature) - in essence a Theory of Everything - will really explain everything like it really is or just happens to be a fitting model without being any meaningful representation of reality (in the sense that it explains how the underlying reality really looks like). We won't be able to verify if our models are actually representing reality anyways (any theory that explains all observed events and which has some plausible and strong predictions can be treated as a possible reality), but would be nice to know. Guess it can't physically happen, unfortunately.

sgillen 8y ago

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).

lowdest 8y ago

If this is interesting to you, I highly recommend "Science & Futurism with Isaac Arthur" available on Youtube and in other formats.

luos 8y ago
He publishes it in a podcast format as well without the background music, which I am very thankful for.
mclightning 8y ago
they have a very active facebook group as well!
teekert 8y ago
I love Isaac Arthur, I look forward to his stuff every week. I listen to him using Pocket Casts, although the visuals can also be very nice.

ganonm 8y ago

I'd highly recommend taking a look at https://www.futuretimeline.net/21stcentury/2020.htm#2020-2025 https://www.futuretimeline.net/21stcentury/2020.htm#2020-202...

stallmanite 8y ago

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.

mclightning 8y ago
I am glad to read I wasn't the only one feeling a deep feeling. The facts about past and present gives one an overview effect already, but man the future... makes you feel really insignificant. I am mostly shocked by how all the predictions about Antares etc. show their death pretty soon. We look at these major big stars with awe and inspiration putting great significance to them, yet in the long scale...; their death is closer to us than that of T-rex... much closer.
Cyphase 8y ago
I came here to say this. I peruse this article every once in a while; not intentionally, but I end up coming around to it from time to time, often during Wikipedia binges.
doubledad222 8y ago
#mefour. I have recommended this article in various conversations over the years. I love how it's grown to include projections from various diverse fields. I feel I have lived forever after reading through it. And the mind-numbing scale eases fears over death for me.
willidiots 8y ago
I still remember the first time I found this page, and the deep existential crisis that followed!
kalendos 8y ago
Made me remember a Carl Sagan quote. "We are like butterflies who flutter for a day and think it is forever"

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

TangoTrotFox 8y ago

Some of these are ironically myopic: "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." 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 incredibly recent ancestor. 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.

anonytrary 8y ago
It's a bit ironic because you made the exact same mistake they made. Interplanetary colonization only makes sense if humans are even around in 10,000 years. It's possible they will not be -- the speed of light being finite makes interplanetary colonization much less probable. Making any kind of 10,000 year prediction on a population thousands seems myopic.
- TangoTrotFox 8y ago
  Interplanetary is not the same thing as interstellar. Interplanetary just means different planets. E.g. after we colonize Mars we will be an interplanetary species. That's also where the divergence will begin. The development and evolutionary characteristics of individuals that grow up in low g will likely quickly begin to create a group of people radically different from anything on Earth. You're making a common mistake on the speed of light. Understandable as relativity is really really weird. We can get into the hows/whys if you like, but the long and short is that if we can, somehow, develop technology to be able to consistently accelerate at just 1g then we can colonize places that are billions of light years away, all in a single human lifetime. Of course indeed billions of years will have passed for everybody else. It's going to make notions of time, progress, and even extinction get really really weird.

djsumdog 8y ago

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. 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. 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.

the_af 8y ago
There is an absolutely delightful short story by -- who else? -- Robert Silverberg about predictions of the far future, "When We Went to See the End of the World". You'll be amused and you'll laugh, though perhaps you'll need a dark sense of humor for that!

Symmetry 8y ago

A blog post I made putting this and the timeline of life on Earth on the same graph: http://hopefullyintersting.blogspot.com/2018/03/the-drake-equation-again.html http://hopefullyintersting.blogspot.com/2018/03/the-drake-eq...

dsfyu404ed 8y ago

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.

sctb 8y ago
Would you mind making your comments more thoughtful and informative? https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

christianbryant 8y ago

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

ansible 8y ago
It is a controversial idea, and most people can only imagine a future for humanity where things look pretty much as they do now, but with slightly better technology (cf Star Trek, where meat bags are flying among the stars, mostly unchanged from present humanity). I'm fairly certain we're looking at the end of human civilization one way or the other within the next 100 years max. The Global Pollution Epidemic, robot uprising, and nuclear war are the more likely bad scenarios for the end of civilization. We might instead be able to develop technology which solves all present problems (like pollution and energy production) and then use it wisely to bring wealth and enlightenment to everyone. I wouldn't care to estimate what outcome is more likely.
- christianbryant 8y ago
  Even Kurzweil's updated ideas and projections in The Singularity is Near from around 2005 still make assumptions of humanity having a longer technology maturation period than 100 years. I actually have the same opinion as you when it comes to our time left if we can't make some global changes; it bums me out, having two girls who are not even in High School yet.

blisterpeanuts 8y ago

Reading that timeline was quite a trip. Humanity is really just a tiny blip in the grand scale of time. They don't talk much about AI and other synthetic replacements for humanity. Maybe it's just too difficult to extrapolate. 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. 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.

bilbo0s 8y ago
Or we will have unleashed highly lethal, self-replicating nanobots in the prosecution of a devastating global war, and the human race will be crawling along with a population at extinction levels. (Or maybe just a good old fashioned series of nuclear exchanges?) The future can be more brilliant than we could imagine, or darker than our worst fears can conjure. Likely, it will be somewhere in the middle.

h4kor 8y ago

Can someone explain: > 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]

philipkglass 8y ago
I couldn't find the 800 million year figure specifically in the cited source: https://arxiv.org/pdf/0912.2482.pdf https://arxiv.org/pdf/0912.2482.pdf The general idea, I believe, is that the carbonate-silicate cycle will shift more toward carbonates over time. The Earth will warm substantially as the sun's luminosity increases over millions of years. Warmer conditions will accelerate the reaction of water and carbon dioxide with silicate minerals like magnesium and calcium silicates, shifting the equilibrium to favor more carbon-as-insoluble-carbonate and less carbon-as-available-CO2. Plant life will eventually go extinct from insufficient atmospheric CO2. I haven't spotted a discussion of oxygen loss in either citation 57 or 58. But "just" losing plant life would be enough to drive the extinction of most other multicellular life on Earth. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbonate%E2%80%93silicate_cycle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbonate%E2%80%93silicate_cyc... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun#Main_sequence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun#Main_sequence
foobiekr 8y ago
contiued silicate rock weathering which sequesters carbon dioxide
apo 8y ago
Photosynthesis produces oxygen at a rate faster than the rate of depletion due to oxidation of the Earth's crust (think rust). Without plants there's nothing left to spew oxygen back into the atmosphere. Photosynthesis converts CO2 into carbohydrates. Lowering the concentration of atmospheric CO2 slows this reaction. Plants also metabolize carbohydrates, producing CO2. So photosynthesis requires the right balance of CO2 concentration and light. The estimate for when CO2 levels would fall too low appears to come from the following linked article: The latter authors feared that photosynthetic production would cease ~ 0.1 Gyr from now when just 150 ppm CO2 remained in the atmosphere. The latter figure corresponded to the CO2 compensation point, at which photosynthetic carbon fixation would exactly balance losses through respiration. We stress that _ this must not be confused with the CO2 value at which healthy metabolism ceases; with zero net C fixation available, a plant could not repair itself, produce seeds, or even grow. https://arxiv.org/pdf/0912.2482.pdf https://arxiv.org/pdf/0912.2482.pdf There's more on the compensation point here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compensation_point https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compensation_point

24gttghh 8y ago

>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." In my opinion, this is the greatest threat to humanity of continuing to pump CO2 into the atmosphere.

mkempe 8y ago
One should maintain some perspective: Coral reefs have gone through enormous variations in extent and location, and near extinction, many times since 500 million years ago. Not even the last Ice Age or CO2 levels 10x higher than what we have today managed to cause the extinction of coral.
- jersully72 8y ago
  How does this near extinction compare to previous ones?
  - mkempe 8y ago
    We're not currently witnessing a near-extinction.
    - wierd0 8y ago
      Scientists consulted when creating the tv show Blue Planet II seems to disagree. According to them we are in fact in the midst of an extinction.
      - mkempe 8y ago
        There are wide varieties of corals and of their symbionts. To claim that they are all simultaneously going extinct in all seas and microclimates is absurd, and contradicts the evidence of their repeated adaptations to past climate variations over 500 million years as well as ignores the observation of their thriving across countless local seasonal and weather variations.

owenversteeg 8y ago

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?

samatman 8y ago
We have added a second language of relication, language itself, to biology, and are using it to alter the first language in a rapidly expanding way. It’s not easy to make predictions, short or long term, given this. The coral prediction, which does have the word “if” in it, also assumes we

SketchySeaBeast 8y ago

> The red supergiant star Antares will likely have exploded in a supernova. The explosion is expected to be easily visible in daylight. Wow, I'd love to be able to see that. Makes one sad about all the things they'll never get to experience.

gattr 8y ago
Actually, the prediction accuracy here is more like "may go off any time". Likewise, for Betelgeuse (the brightest star of Orion), which would also be visible in daylight.
jimbofisher1 8y ago
Likely to cause the Bible thumpers to go insane, not sure I want to be there when that happens.
- sctb 8y ago
  We ban accounts that won't comment civilly and substantively. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

mlthoughts2018 8y ago

My only question is whether the world’s cumulative student loan debt will have been paid back before the red giant Sun engulfs Earth.

mrkstu 8y ago

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. 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. What is the fallacy in that thinking?

goodcanadian 8y ago
Theoretically, a black hole can exist at any mass as long as it is dense enough. It is true that a black hole won't form without enough mass to cause it to collapse, but once formed, it can evaporate down to nothing without ever becoming gravitationally unbound.
- ansible 8y ago
  It has been theorized that tiny black holes may have formed shortly after the Big Bang, and have since evaporated.
- mrkstu 8y ago
  Theoretically it could evaporate but is there any necessity of that? Is exploding a theoretical possibility or once a stellar mass black hole forms is it thereafter in such a small circumference that it is stuck in that form until it evaporates?
  - zaarn 8y ago
    Well, evaporation is simply a conclusion from hawking radiation. The black hole losses energy over this radiation, energy it produces from it's own mass. Since hawking radiation output increases relative to the size of the black hole as it gets smaller, eventually you end up with an explosion. I do believe that Kurzgesagt made a video that details what would happen with a blackhole with the mass of a coin in your pocket (short version: you die)
adrianN 8y ago

monkeydust 8y ago

Awesome piece. Will have to read that one again and bookmark it. Puts all life's little shitty events into context!

pascalxus 8y ago

if you enjoyed this, you'll probably like this as well: library of babel https://libraryofbabel.info/ https://libraryofbabel.info/

maxxxxx 8y ago

Pretty useful for real estate investors who want to plan ahead for the next few hundred million years....

billsmithaustin 8y ago

This really belongs in XKCD.

anonymous5133 8y ago

TIL: I don't really know how much about the future and all there is to know in science....

myoffe 8y ago

I was getting depressed towards the end of the event list, and the last one cheered me up. Everything is circular.

Midnightas 8y ago
It is happier, still a bit depressing, though, knowing that everything that happened already happened and will keep on happening.
- throwaway37585 8y ago
  Whoever thou mayest be, beloved stranger, whom I meet here for the first time, avail thyself of this happy hour and of the stillness around us, and above us, and let me tell thee something of the thought which has suddenly risen before me like a star which would fain shed down its rays upon thee and every one, as befits the nature of light. Fellow man! Your whole life, like a sandglass, will always be reversed and will ever run out again, - a long minute of time will elapse until all those conditions out of which you were evolved return in the wheel of the cosmic process. And then you will find every pain and every pleasure, every friend and every enemy, every hope and every error, every blade of grass and every ray of sunshine once more, and the whole fabric of things which make up your life. This ring in which you are but a grain will glitter afresh forever. And in every one of these cycles of human life there will be one hour where, for the first time one man, and then many, will perceive the mighty thought of the eternal recurrence of all things:- and for mankind this is always the hour of Noon.

deleted 8y ago

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nicklaf 8y ago

And then there's this: http://www.exitmundi.nl/ http://www.exitmundi.nl/ ;-)

davidw 8y ago

Now I feel like a moron for going to speak about housing issues at the city council meeting...

Rainymood 8y ago

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. These are cool predictions but they need not be true

2845197541 8y ago
I've never figured out why people think technological growth would be exponential indefinitely.
- Nydhal 8y ago
  on an exponential scale 10000 years is just one step ahead.

kulu2002 8y ago

The Timeline talks about Nuclear waste but what about cumulative effect of daily garbage, solid waste, plastic degradation until human beings survive on earth... https://www.thebalancesmb.com/how-long-does-it-take-garbage-to-decompose-2878033 https://www.thebalancesmb.com/how-long-does-it-take-garbage-... I think this should have been mentioned somewhere in 'Human constructs' section

amingilani 8y ago

Relevant Kurzgesagt video explaining 3 ways the universe will die: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4_aOIA-vyBo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4_aOIA-vyBo I've been posting too many Kurzgesagt videos recently, but it's amazing how much of their content is relevant! :D

anad7 8y ago

Years from now: 2.4 million 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".

kerbalspacepro 8y ago

Who knew that the "store stuff forever" problem was basically solved: [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5D_optical_data_storage https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5D_optical_data_storage

yedawg 8y ago

this is one of the worst put together wikipedia articles I have ever read

amorphous 8y ago

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.

Udik 8y ago

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.