Question: will the earth ever end

Edward Codling answered on 13 Jun 2011:

An interesting question!

Unfortunately, the Earth as we currently know it will definitely end! The Earth itself is relatively stable, but the big problem we have is that eventually the Sun will die. When this happens it actually expands which will heat up the Earth and kill everything living on the planet. The Sun will then continue to expand and will probably engulf the Earth. However, any living things would be dead many years before this.

This all sounds very drastic and depressing! 🙁

However, the predicted timescale for this to happen is several billion years. The Sun is thought to be not quite halfway through its lifecycle, and hence humans would probably have evolved into new life forms, left for other planets, or gone extinct well before this would happen.

This is why I think space exploration has to continue and develop – we are running out of resources on Earth and we know that at some point the human race will have to leave if we are to survive!

Of course, whether the entire universe will end is a completely different question…. (which I won’t try and answer here!)