Timelapse of 4 billion years into the future.

There's no denying that we're always concerned about our future. What will happen tomorrow,the next day or the next year. Like we were just having a good time in early 2020 and all of a sudden the world shut down. (Excerpt) In spite of all that, let's look at the grand scheme of things. Because that's why you're here right? Have you ever imagined what will happen in four billion years from now?

 It might sound like a long way to go,but on the cosmic level it's only about a third of how long we have existed. In this video, we'll go through some of the major astronomical events that would probably happen over the course of 4 billion years. Before we look into the future,let's have a closer look into the past.

 The latest results from the NASA's WMAP satellite suggest that the universe is 13.75 billion years old. This is with a margin of error of0.1 billion years. Which makes it clear that trying to gaze into the cosmic crystal ball is always a challenging task. If it's hard to look into the past,it's sure going to be a fool-hardy exercise to look into the future. 

Timelapse of 4 billion years into the future

 

On top of all that, the observable universe  is approximately 93 billion light years in diameter. This means that the beam of light must travel 93 billion years from one side to the other. I'm just gonna go out on a limb hereto say that it's impossible to explore the whole universe in one lifetime. For us living beings. But on the other hand,astronomers with the help of the Hubble telescope said that they can predict the future of stars and the universe. 

We talk about the future for 10,000 years, not just a few years. So how did they do it? Well, the astronomers used the Hubble telescope to map the motion of a hundred thousand stars in the Omega Centauri cluster. This was happening for over a period of four years. Omega centauri itself is one of the star clusters in the Milky Way galaxy and is about 15000 light years away from earth. This star cluster could be seen in the southern sky with the naked eye. 

In fact, the ancient astronomer Ptolemy even catalogued this as a single star. Fast forward centuries later, astronomers with the Hubble Space Telescope now know that it is actually a constellation. Millions of them, and they moved like a swarm of bees. So taking that data taken from2002 until 2006, astronomers created a simulation of the star's motion. This was then used as a baseline to predict the future of motion of stars projected over the next thousands of years. 

Timelapse of 4 billion years into the future

Of course there is a big uncertainty. Like, if the baseline is used for the far feature, it should account for the second law of thermodynamics. That entropy should increase over time, for the next billions of years. Who knows if the basic model still holds true in the distant future. But before we go down the list one by one, I'm just going to spoil what's going to happen at the end. It's this. 

Now let's sit back in our time machine,relax and start our journey into the far future. In 10,000 years. The red super giant star named Antares would explode into a supernova due to a shortage of hydrogen in its core. This explosion will be so powerful that it will be visible on Earth during the day. In 15,000 years. Earth's axial tilt would be reversed. 

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Because of this, the summer and the winter would occur on the opposite side of our planet. Australia would have their first wintery Christmas for the first time in 20,000 years. But the last time there was Christmas, there was no Christmas. Either way, this would also mean that the northern hemisphere would experience more extreme weather due to high percentage of land-to-sea ratio. 

In 20,000 years. Earth would face a super volcanic eruption which would be life-threatening and could also wipe out the entire civilization. Imagine the Krakatoa eruption in 1800s. Now multiply that by 1000 and you'd have that super volcanic eruption. If for example the human kind could survive that, pretty much they would be back to the age with no technological development at all. 

Timelapse of 4 billion years into the future

In a 100,000 years. Due to the constant motion of stars in the Milky Way galaxy many constellations in the sky would be non-visible. Some of them would have a complete change in their geometrical shape. The hyper giant star named VY Can is Major is would explode into a supernova and the traces of its explosion would leave precious metals like gold and platinum into deep space. In 500,000 years.

Currently there's a star named Wolf-Rayet WR-104. I know right, it's complicated. But in 500,000 years from now, it would explode into a supernova which would produce a gamma-ray burst. So powerful that it could remove biological life here on Earth. As a side note, when a star with a big enough core explodes into a supernova its radiation releases gamma rays. 

So much power that these waves carry a million times more energy than any normal light. In 750,000 years. Astronomers predict that an asteroid with a size of approximately 3000 ft would strike the Earth's surface. The crater from this asteroid would be250 miles in diameter. As a result of that, a disastrous fire would start and sadly the air would be un breathable near the impact site. 

But there is a hope that mankind would have the technology to destroy the asteroid before reaching the Earth. Again, assuming that mankind is still around at that time. In 1 million years. You must have heard about a famous crater in Arizona. Yes, the one that has a diameter of 1200 meters. Due to the erosion of the Earth's surface,  in one million years it would completely flatten out and no one from the 21st century would be able to recognize this site by this time. 

In 10 million years. By this time, the moons of Uranus Cressida and Desdemona would collide together due to the change in their elliptical path. In 50 million years. Mars would collide with Phobos, its moon. The impact would result in a lot of destruction of the planet and it will also affect the orbital path of Mars around the sun. In 100 million years. 

Earth is likely to be hit by an asteroid about 10 kilometer in size. This is similar to the collision that happened65 million years ago and wiped out the dinosaurs. Perhaps this kind of asteroid impact does paya visit to Earth every 165 million years. In 500 million years. A gamma-ray burst would occur within 6,500 light years from Earth. The results would be deadly. The burst would be so powerful that it would destroy the ozone layer in a few seconds. 

Timelapse of 4 billion years into the future

Also, the radiation from the burst would stop photosynthesis in plants. And eventually life from our planet will be wiped out again. In 1.5 billion years. The luminosity of the sun would increase by about 10%. As a result of this, the average temperature on our planet would rise above 116 F. But you might be thinking, it's not that hot is it? Well, that is actually because we're talking about the average global land and ocean surface temperature. 

In March 2020, the average temperature of the Earth's surface was 2 F. In 3 billion years. There are 1 in 100,000 chances that Earth would be ejected into deep space. Due to the continuous expansion of our universe. Also there are one in 1.3 million chances of being captured by another star's gravity. In 4 billion years. Anyone, anything or any aliens alive at this time would witness the most spectacular event ever in the history of the night sky. 

A cosmic collision between the Milky Way galaxy and the Andromeda galaxy. Billions among billions of stars would get in contact through this collision. Many star systems would be born and many would be gone. Maybe the result would produce habitable planets like Earth. And assuming that Earth would still survive that collision, our planet would be a part of a bigger system. A galaxy named Milkdromeda. 

We aren't really sure what else would change in the universe in the course of 4 billion years. The universe is so massive that it brings many possibilities within it. Who knows if humans are able to survive throughout this timeline. Maybe the technology would become so advanced that we're able to civilize a whole galaxy in the future. Or maybe our current understanding is so minuscule that we're not aware of what the future might present. But at the end, it's the curiosity that makes us humans.