The Far Future of Our Solar System

An anonymous reader writes "Sure, the Universe is expanding, the galaxies are accelerating away from one another, and it's looking more and more like they'll never re-collapse. The timeline of the far future looks pretty grim on large scales. But what's to come of our Solar System: of the Earth, our Moon and our Sun? This tour of the far future of the Solar System, scaling the timescales to the Big Bang being '1 Universe year' ago, puts it all in perspective."

Comments

Starts with a bang

[AdamColley]

Aye, his blog is pretty damn excellent.

http://scienceblogs.com/startswithabang/

Unfortunately after a billion years or so there'll be no humans left to see it, hopefully at some point we'll have moved some of our eggs elsewhere, perhaps with generation ships if Einstein was right and there's no other possibilities...

Re:Starts with a bang

[koan]

Over that time scale genetic drift alone would mean we wouldn't see them as human.

Re:Starts with a bang

[davester666]

sure we will, because somebody will figure out how to clone a human, then the super-wealthy will decide they don't need the rest of us when heading out into space, and rely on cloning instead.

Re:Starts with a bang

[gmuslera]

There have been hominids for 5m years, proper humans for only 200k years, civilization for just 20k years, and in 100 years we invented a lot of things (from nukes to biological agents) that could end mankind any day, while going rampant sabotaging the earth ecosystem... and things keeps accelerating. What make you think that will be humans around in not in 1 billon nor 1 millon, but only 10k years in the future being very generous?

Yes, laying eggs somewhere else could improve the chances, self-sustaining space colonies is the way to try it more than generation ships, if any of them is ever possible. But that don't have a chance to happen with current culture where profit in the present is more important than having a future.

To put an example, an asteroid impacted earth 2 days ago that wasn't detected till that moment, how much you think is "invested" on mapping any potential space threats compared with, i.e. spying on ourselves, bailing out banks or even denying climate change? When the federal government had budget problems one of the first victims was the NASA program to detect space debris (a good example of a surveillance system that worth it), while the pentagon wasted 5.5billons the night before the shutdown (if we are talking about our survival, that was a waste), And always will be an "emergency" that will divert efforts and attention to something else, even if we have to create it. Unless we figure out a practical, safe way to travel (far) into the future (yes, we could done it doing a relativistic speed trip, or some suspended animation process could be developed, but nothing practical and for masses yet) we should not worry about what will happen in a millon years, is just too out of the reach of mankind.

Re:Starts with a bang

[BringsApples]

I think you're right on, but I think saying that man will be around for another 10k years is not generous, but silly. No other species that we know of has ever been as selfish, and foolish as mankind. Hell, crocodiles have been here for 200 million years, and they never bothered to invent a lay-z-boy recliner, a blender, or even TV! And if you look around the planet at the humans that are here and happy, they have learned to live with Nature, and not against it, as mankind has for the last 200 years or so.

It does seem that Nature has some intelligent design to it, that sort of self-repairs when things get out of whack, and when species try to play god, they self-destruct. There does seem to be a small push toward a more Natural living these days, despite being laughed at by the masses. An interesting book that I found on this subject is called "Darwin's Unfinished Business" by Simon G. Powell. He also has some interesting youtube videos. Here's one based on the book that I just mentioned:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ff1Z8nGGebs

I'm not trying to advertize, but bring to light a new way to approach Nature - with respect. And you seem like a fit personality.

Re:Starts with a bang

[PolygamousRanchKid]

Here you go: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metric_expansion_of_space#What_space_is_the_universe_expanding_into.3F

It's kinda sorta expanding into itself . . .

If you smoke some weed, listen to an old "Yes" album from the 70's and do some whippets, you understand it all and it becomes really clear, but you forget again when the whippets wear off.

Re:Starts with a bang

[BringsApples]

Have you gotten to know any other species well?

Yes.

Altruism is a very sophisticated behavior. So greed is pretty much built-in, along with deceit, rape, and genocide.

I think you have these backwards. Altruism is a simple matter of not being selfish, and even dogs do it. I feel that is built in. Of course greed, deceit, rape and genocide (hell you forgot to mention murder) are a part of nature, but they're things that, when viewed from a humane perspective (the one with altruism built-in), are looked down upon as barbaric, or things that are done by those with less evolution.

But you're taking what I said out of context. The next time you see or hear of anything except for mankind knowingly ruining the entire planet for it's own personal and very temporary gain, hit me up and I'll buy you a drink.

Re:Starts with a bang

[l0n3s0m3phr34k]

That's a answer we don't know, and might never. The actual "edge" is probably beyond our light cone, which means it's further away than the light can get to us. As for your question below, during the beginning of the universe it expanded faster than light, so the information from the "edge" is beyond our line.

Some theories have our universe is just one of many, along interconnecting "branches" or something. So our spacetime, with it's physical laws, is expanding into the greater multiverse space, along with other universes with other sets of laws of physics. Just like our blood viens resemble tree branches in a fractal way, and how the galaxies connect together in a fractal way, some think the rest of the universe might be the same.

Of course, beyond our universe lies madness, incomprehensible physics our bodies couldn't survive in and our minds can never understand without snapping. You could always take a boat down to a particular island in the South Pacific, if you are allowed to you might find "someone" who can explain the Outerverse to you...in a land of non-Euclid geometry and negative-energy warped spacetime.

Re:I'm a fan of the Big Crunch

[koan]

(Queue repetitive commercial music) BIG CRUNCH *chorus* it's gonna squash your brain* BIG CRUNCH "Start your morning as a singularity"

Re:What about the future of Slashdot?

[Anonymous Coward]

Funny thing is, the new beta is neither "half-assed" nor "hipster-inspired," and that's the worst part - that somebody obviously put a lot of effort into that horribly-designed, utterly unnavigable, visually confusing kludge of shit. The misprioritization of the beta design is Ballmer-esque in scale, as all of the things that made Slashdot good (strong sense of community, lack of censorship, elegant simplicity) are deliberately being phased out and in their place being put paid shills and inline ads; topped off with a UI so horrible that, unlike every other damn site on the 'net, cannot be avoided or made better by script-blocking.

Wanting to be another ZDnet or whatever just might have worked if Slashdot had that big corporate visibility from the get-go, but the only way to go from here is pissing off the small but fierce fanbase which made Slashdot great, without all the big corporate visibility required to maintain a site like ZDnet. Good going, Slashdot, you've fucked yourself. But you will be vindicated -- when your baby finally tanks, and you are laid off or reassigned to writing paid-shill articles and product-placements full-time and comments have been abolished entirely, you can sit in your skid-marked office chair with a smug grin and mutter to yourselves,

" Heh heh heh, good riddance Ethanol-fueled...you'll never troll me again! "

Take this with a grain of salt

[TheRealMindChild]

I made an edit a while back in reference to the "4 billion year mark", because it was inaccurate, even via the cite it provides:

"Median point by which the Andromeda Galaxy will have collided with the Milky Way, which will thereafter merge to form a galaxy dubbed "Milkomeda".[46] The Solar System is expected to be relatively unaffected by this collision.[47] "

If you actually look at the citation (originally, the previous one had something to do with collisions of clouds and particles) at http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/hubble/science/milky-way-collide.html, it DOES NOT SAY that it will be "relatively unaffected". To Quote:

"Although the galaxies will plow into each other, stars inside each galaxy are so far apart that they will not collide with other stars during the encounter. However, the stars will be thrown into different orbits around the new galactic center. Simulations show that our solar system will probably be tossed much farther from the galactic core than it is today. To make matters more complicated, M31's small companion, the Triangulum galaxy, M33, will join in the collision and perhaps later merge with the M31/Milky Way pair. There is a small chance that M33 will hit the Milky Way first."

While the sum contents of mass *may* be the same within our solar system, everything will be jumbled pretty good to where it won't even kind of look the same.

Take this timeline with a grain of salt. It is pretty apparent the moderators do little in terms of verification

Re: Take this with a grain of salt

[Joehonkie]

That link doesn't say any of the things you think it says. It's talking about stars in their relative orbits to each other. No party of your quote mentions the contents of the solar system.

Re:Take this with a grain of salt

[dryeo]

My understanding is that when Andromeda merges it will trigger a huge amount of star formation due to the shock waves in the interstellar medium which will increase the radiation in the galaxy due to many Blue giants and the resulting supernovas.
Long before that (500 million+ years) the Sun is going to get too hot for the Earth to have oceans and advanced (any?) life. Of course we could move the Earth or mankind could migrate elsewhere and there is even a chance of a close encounter with another star perturbing the Earths orbit into a better position.
What will probably cause the extinction of Home Sapiens will be climate change. Through most of its life the Earth has been in hot house conditions and we evolved for ice house conditions. If we don't cause climate change, then things like the continents rearranging themselves will long term.

In AD 802701, war was beginning

[tepples]

humans a few million years down the line will be looking like eurasian anime characters with cuteness not intelligence the most dominating feature

That or the Eloi from The Time Machine by H.G. Wells.

Long term

[fyngyrz]

Cloning isn't viable over the long term, even if you made it so, that implies a stagnant society.

Let's make some different, very likely, assumptions. Today's nascent cloning technology is unlikely to even slightly resemble that of the future; today's human (and pet) genome, with all of its flaws, is unlikely to resemble that of the future; We'll no longer be farming animals for food, perhaps not even vegetables; AI will be here, as will robotics without AI (service class machinery); planets orbiting stars will not be the only viable human environment; technology in general will be almost unrecognizable in its power and efficacy; a system of more than enough for everyone will replace a labor based economy; overall, just with those few changes, no prediction based on today's extant situation is likely to come even close. Life spans may be quite extended. And that's not even counting the unpredictable changes -- for instance, in 1900, even later, no one had any idea what silicon electronics would do for us. Near term major change tech includes ultracaps, fusion (20 years out, no doubt at all, lol), driverless vehicles, significantly better building materials, the erosion of superstition and the rise of generations focused on objective reality instead of imaginary friends.

if you're super wealthy and going to space are you going to take all the scumbags hanging out on the street with you?

Wealth only has meaning in an economy of scarcity. I strongly suspect that the latter is going away, which in turn will eliminate the former. It's just going to be a very rocky transition. For my part, I live far better than my parents did, expect to live longer, am healthier, and have far more cool stuff. And that's within a wealth-based economy. And the funny thing? My parents had considerably more money. :)

As for "scumbags", if people have enough resources, and the genome is cleaned up to eliminate stupidity, ugliness, weak critical thinking skills and greed, why would there be any?

Hawking radiation

[Max Threshold]

Hasn't it been shown that only the least massive black holes will evaporate from Hawking radiation? The radiation emitted by larger ones is less than the mass/energy they absorb from the CMB, so they will continue growing...

Re:Hawking radiation

[mark_osmd]

That's true right now, the 3K background is higher than the tiny temperature of the black holes. But the background temperature will get lower and lower as the universe expands, eventually it would get lower than the hawking temperature of even the largest black holes. At that point all black holes will be shrinking.

Re:I think I saw this movie...

[marcello_dl]

No way, the simulation has produced Justin Bieber and Microsoft 8, yet it's still running. If there is an OFF button, it is jammed.

Re:Stuff that matters

[InfiniteLoopCounter]

Can somebody explain why this stuff matters? I mean speculation without a chance of experimental verification?

Thinking about things -- why they happen, how they may happen -- in great detail without actually experiencing them is one aspect that makes us human beings. Thinking about the eventual fate of the universe and our current home is something that we should all do at some point.

It also is several notches above the other rampant speculation without experimental verification here and lifts the profile of /. a bit from where you have to shovel down to the level sometimes.

Re:Andromeda

[TrollstonButterbeans]

When the Milky Way and Andromeda "collide" no stars will collide. Star formation will begin a new due to the exchange of interstellar gases and the two galaxies will merge.

So that isn't exact the "end" of anything, just the start of a larger galaxy.

Re:Andromeda

[TrollstonButterbeans]

Of course, when the Milky Way and Andromeda do merge, Galactic taxes will likely go up and this could lead to the Trade Federation complaining and threatening a planetary embargo ... but this just conjecture.

Re:What about the future of Slashdot?

[srobert]

Indeed. CmdrTaco must be rolling in his grave. ...What? He's still alive. They tell me. Well, of course he is. How could he be rolling in his grave if he was dead? The disturbing part is that he's in a grave. Someone really should get him out of there. What? He apparently refuses to come out until Slashdot ditches the beta.