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Rapid change -

The conditions that we as humans have understood for hundreds of years are changing. Granted, humans have experienced many cultural and existential changes throughout history, but as the universe continues to age, the very fabric of our world is being altered in irreversible ways.

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Magnetic field -

One of the biggest changes will be to Earth’s magnetic field, the invisible barrier that defends the planet from solar flares and debris. It is going to flip in the next thousand years (in fact, it is overdue). Once it happens, the Earth will be left without a protective magnetic field for perhaps centuries.

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Comet Hale-Bopp -

Around the year 4385 CE, the comet Hale-Bopp is set to make an appearance again. The comet was last seen in 1997, and has been known as one of the brightest ever seen by the naked eye.

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Sea levels -

About three thousand years from now, our planet will see a drastic rise in sea levels as the Earth warms further. If our species is still alive, entire cities will be buried beneath water, and the face of our world will be permanently changed.

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Asteroid -

At some point in the next 10 thousand years, a large asteroid is statistically bound to impact the planet, causing mass destruction.

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The Sahara Desert -

The Earth goes through a cycle every 41,000 years whereby the tilt of the planet changes almost two degrees. This shift has a drastic effect on the world’s climate, especially on the Sahara Desert. It is expected that the Sahara will become tropical when the planet shifts again in the next 15,000 years.

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Constellations -

About 20,000 years in the future, the night sky will look a lot different than it does now. Indeed, the constellations as we know them will wander and move across the universe, forever changing the layout of the stars.

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Voyager 1 -

Proxima Centauri is the nearest star to our solar system, and it is 24.9 trillion miles (40 trillion km) from the Earth. As the space probe Voyager 1 travels at a speed of 35,000 mph (56,300 km/h), it will pass Proxima Centauri in the next 40,000 years.

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Interglacial period -

Every 100,000 years or so, the world is dominated by an ice age that drastically lowers the global temperature. The time between ice ages (when the climate is warmer) is known as an interglacial period. We are currently living in an era just like that, but in about 60,000 years it will come to an end.

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Betelgeuse -

Around the same time that ice age takes the planet, the red supergiant star known as Betelgeuse will use up all of its fuel and explode as a supernova. The star is part of the constellation Orion, and is the 10th brightest star in the night sky.

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Antares -

In the next million or so years, the star Antares (which is the brightest in the constellation of Scorpius) will also explode as a supernova. Antares is a massive red supergiant star that’s 700 times larger than the Sun. When it explodes, it will be as bright as the Moon on a clear day.

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Apollo footprints -

Since there is no atmosphere on the Moon, the footprints left behind by the Apollo astronauts are in a constant state of preservation. But nothing ever truly lasts, and in the next 10 million years, the footprints will fade from the Moon’s surface.

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Rings of Mars -

Phobos, one of Mars’ moons, will break apart in roughly 70 million years, and the debris will become a set of rings that encircle the red planet.

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Supercontinent -

Before the seven continents became what they are today, they were once joined into one supercontinent known as Pangaea (pictured). The next supercontinent, named Pangaea Ultima, is expected to form in about 250 million years.

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Rings of Saturn -

In the next 300 million years, Saturn will lose its rings forever. The rings are made up of billions of pieces of ice, dust, and rocks, which will slowly fall to the planet’s surface or drift off into the void of space.

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The Sun -

As the Sun runs out of fuel, it won’t simply fade away to nothing. Instead, its core will collapse and it will expand outward to become a red giant star. The Earth and all life on it will be destroyed and a few billion years after that the Sun will turn into a white dwarf. Its remaining faint light will come from the last residual heat of its extinguished furnace.

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A dark plunge -

Just like the Sun, all the stars throughout the universe will experience a similar fate. As their fuel reserves are burned out, they will die and the universe will be slowly plunged into darkness, lit only by the dim luminosity of white dwarf stars. The last of the stars will die in about 40 trillion years.

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Black dwarf stars -

As white dwarf stars become colder and lose their light, they become burnt husks known as black dwarfs. They are little more than the ashes of stars.

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Black holes -

In about 20 quadrillion years (that's 20 with 16 zeroes behind it), stray matter wandering in the universe will be consumed by black holes. Any future exotic civilizations will have to rely on black holes as the last source of power.

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Atoms decay -

In about one undecillion years (one with 36 zeroes), atoms themselves will begin to decay, and all the remaining matter in the universe will be destroyed. At this point, there will be no matter left in the cosmos, and all that will remain are particles of light and black holes. And so the black hole era begins.

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Time -

Despite how much has already happened in the cosmos by this point, you might be shocked to know that time has only just begun to tick. Indeed, the universe has only just emerged from the womb, but it will spend the rest of its life cold, dark, and empty.

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Life -

The truth is that the universe only offers a brief moment for life to thrive. We are living in the pocket of time where we can exist in security, safe from the universe’s fiery birth and icy death.

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Merging black holes -

In the incredibly distant future (more than a quindecillion years from now, which is a one with 48 zeroes behind), the remaining black holes in the universe will merge, creating bigger black holes that litter the cosmos.

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Dying energy -

But black holes are not immortal, and even they will die. Over unimaginable timescales, particles from black holes will evaporate into the cosmos at an increasing rate, until they vanish in gigantic explosions that briefly light up the dark universe.

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Dark energy -

After the last black holes die, the universe will continue to expand outward, driven by a mysterious and invisible force known as dark energy. Astrophysicists are still trying to decipher this element of the cosmos, and if this energy doesn’t slow down, it will continue to inflate the universe forever.

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Big Crunch -

Alternatively, if dark energy does lose its momentum, the universe could collapse under its own gravity, known as the “Big Crunch.”

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Multiverse -

Physicists increasingly suspect that there might be multiple other universes beyond our own, and that they each have their own unique laws of physics. What other forms of life could exist in these universes?

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Another universe -

Some physicists speculate that there may be a way to escape our universe before all matter and energy is destroyed. Indeed, some have posed the hypotheses that we could create our own baby universe, if we had enough energy to do so.

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End of time -

If there is no way to escape the universe, then the concept of time as we understand it would cease to have meaning. For the first time in its life, the universe will be permanent and unchanging, and nothing will happen forever.

Sources: (Smithsonian Magazine) (Space.com) (YouTube) (Britannica) (National Geographic) (Natural History Museum)

See also: Discover the largest galaxies in the universe

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