Timeline of our planet’s fate

Predictions are never easy, but what is the likely route to Earth’s demise?

Present day

An oasis for life

Earth is the most fertile spot in the known universe, with a protective atmosphere and liquid water in abundance.

Around 300,000 years Wolf-Rayet star WR 104 would have exploded, killing life on Earth

Part of a binary star system 7,800 light years from Earth, WR 104 and its companion are expected to turn supernova within the next few hundred thousand years. Depending on WR 104’s axis of rotation, any resulting gamma ray burst could be aimed at Earth.

500,000 years Earth will be hit by an asteroid one kilometre (0.62 miles) wide

Earth is hit by a large asteroid roughly once every 500,000 years, leading to damage on a potentially global scale. Given sufficient advanced warning, however, it’s surely likely that the space technology needed to divert such asteroids could be developed, regardless of cost.

10 million years Extinction of plants and animals, mainly due to human activity

Extinctions are an arguably inevitable aspect of life, with a predictable underlying rate against which major extinction events – including human-influence – are contrasted. By this point most species will have become extinct, resulting in a perilous future for any new evolving species.

100 million years An asteroid hits Earth, similar in size to the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs

On top of the impact itself, shock waves and debris thrown into the upper atmosphere would cause massive climatic change around the entire globe – assuming, of course, that it wasn’t detected in sufficient time to either destroy it or deflect its path.

230 million years

Orbit of Earth becomes unpredictable

Lyapunov time is the period after which it’s no longer possible to accurately predict the movement of elements in a chaotic system. Named after the Russian mathematician Aleksandr Lyapunov, this is when the cumulative effects of small chaotic factors in the Solar System currently make accurately predicting Earth’s orbit impossible.

500 to 600 million years Nearby gamma-ray burst or hypernova strips Earth’s ozone layer

This is the estimated time by which a gamma-ray burst from a supernova or hypernova located within 6,500 light years of Earth will strip away much of Earth’s ozone layer, potentially triggering a mass extinction. This assumes, however, that the supernova burst will be precisely aligned with Earth.

600 million years Sun’s increased luminosity affects Earth

Energy levels from the Sun begin to unbalance the carbonate-silicate cycle, which sees the increased trapping of carbon dioxide in carbonate rocks. Rocks harden, causing plate tectonics to slow and eventually stop, while falling carbon dioxide levels lead to the extinction of much plant life.

1 billion years Earth’s surface temperature gets hotter

Reaching 47 degrees Celsius (116.6 degrees Fahrenheit), the evaporation of oceans will create a ‘moist greenhouse’ atmosphere. A proportion of the water vapour will reach the stratosphere and beyond where sunlight will split it into its constituent atoms, the hydrogen lost to space.