Where do you think the Earth and humanity would be in a billion years?

Post your ideas in this thread.

 

Humans won't be. Barring any major disasters, the earth will probably still support life, but we wouldn't recognize most of it.

 

After a million years: humanity is back into a stone age and the remnants of our civilisation (if there still are any) will be regarded as divine.
After a billion years: humanity has evolved in some ridicilous looking species and finally will be wiped out by something random (probably a virus ).

 

At the rate we are going, probably extinct.

 

Funny there's actually an article about that on wikipedia. I found this part interesting (and it's not good):

"In about 1.1 billion years, the solar luminosity will be 10% higher than at present. This will cause the atmosphere to become a "moist greenhouse", resulting in a runaway evaporation of the oceans. As a likely consequence, plate tectonics will come to an end.[11] Following this event, the planet's magnetic dynamo may come to an end, causing the magnetosphere to decay and leading to an accelerated loss of volatiles from the outer atmosphere. Four billion years from now, the increase in the Earth's surface temperature will cause a runaway greenhouse effect. By that point, most if not all the life on the surface will be extinct.[12][13] The most probable fate of the planet is absorption by the Sun in about 7.5 billion years, after the star has entered the red giant phase and expanded to cross the planet's current orbit."

 

Yeah, when the sun gets too hot we better made it off earth but that is an issue for the thread "Where do you think the Earth will be in 2 billion years (or later)"
If humanity actually manages to leave earth it will probably shrivel away drifting in the cosmos somewhere

 

I awoke this morning with a fearful depression.Was beginning to lose my faith in my existence and humanity.This thread hasn't helped.

 

Don't worry Fairlight, we seem to have an annoying habit of managing to stick around

 

It's more the idea of time that depresses me.Any notion of the passing of time just seems abhorrent.

 

Everything's is temporary, just let it go.

 

all larger species will probably go extinct but by then smaller creatures and even bacteria will have evolved into something or other.

time doesn't really exist though. For everything that blinks out of existence, something else blinks into existence. Even if earth is absorbed into the sun some other planet in some other universe will support intelligent life and hopefully they'll have more common sense than humans. stupid humans.

 

Hmm, I'd say time does exist simply because we perceive it. Whether or not it's real or not is another issue, but I'd agree that the way we've been measuring it is rather depressing. We're so fixated on the passing of it that we miss that NEW time is actually given to us fresh, like lush and fragrant market vegetables.

 

Can someone explain the time is not real thing? I feel its one of those quantum physics issues which is either over my head or is often grossly misinterpreted.

The issue I am having trouble understanding is it's clearly not just humans which are affected by time. You can usually tell when a cat, dog or animal is aging and lifespans are fairly uniform, particularly when considering how long the earth has been around. I can maybe see how it might be conditional but I'm not sure how it can be any less real than something like gravity. If I throw kitty up in the air on Earth I better plan on catching it, I'm also not planning on keeping kitty for 50 Earth rotations around the Sun.

There is no longer an Earth at that point, it would be the end of it's 'life' span, suggesting time has elapsed.

 

The way I see it:

"Clock Time" is just a measurement, like inches and ounces. Helps us track the earths rotation around the sun, like it actually means something significant.. and to an extent, it does nowadays, because society is built around the concept that we actually need to do things, and Clock Time helps give us some reference points in the sloppy mess of reality.

"Actual Time" is the perception of change relative to the Absolute(awareness, or consciousness.. depends how you frame that argument).

 

Time is simply change...change in velocity of an object. We measure time by counting the motion of something occuring at regular intervals.

 

I read a science fiction book about this called The First and Last Men. good read blew my mind

 

What was it about?

 

Million years..I will be here, trust me and at a 1,000,023 I will be very smart..

 

And rather wrinkly I'd imagine

 

no..you get replacement bodies every 100 years..its awesome!