Martin Rees, Britain’s Astronomer Royal, looks at Earth’s future – particularly the next 100 years – which he regards as a crucial time period for humanity, while speculating about what may happen in the very distant future.
Ever since Darwin, we’ve been familiar with the stupendous timespans of the evolutionary past. But most people still somehow think we humans are necessarily the culmination of the evolutionary tree. No astronomer could believe this. Our sun formed 4.5bn years ago, but it’s got 6bn more before the fuel runs out. And the expanding universe will continue – perhaps for ever – becoming ever colder, ever emptier. As Woody Allen said, “Eternity is very long, especially towards the end”. Any creatures who witness the sun’s demise, here on Earth or far beyond, won’t be human. They will be entities as different from us as we are from a bug.
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