In about 7 or 8 billion years from now, (not that this will worry any of us now) the Sun will die, Earth and the rest of the Solar system will have died long before, the Sun will probably become a black hole, which will suck everything close into it,
At that time, there will be no trace whatsoever that we ever existed.
The sun will definitely not become a black hole it will become a white dwarf and eventually a black dwarf. The sun, having exhausted it's main fuel will expand to become a red giant approx 4.5bn years from now. Mercury and Venus will be engulfed, the Earth also, possibly though their is some variants in the theories, even if it does not the sun will melt the surface and evaporate any water thus leaving essentially a molten rock billiard ball in space. The good news is that Mars may become inhabitable for a couple of million years.
Thanks for the correction, not a black, but White hole, but really, I was wondering on what you thought that there will be no trace that we would ever have existed,
That being the case, what is the purpose of us being here now.
Our solar system, in the milky way, may not be here by then as we are on collision course with the Andromeda galaxy The Andromeda–Milky Way collision is a galactic collision predicted to occur in about 4.5 billion years between the two largest galaxies in the Local Group—
The Andromeda galaxy is currently racing toward our Milky Way at a speed of about 70 miles (110 km) per second. Ultimately, the two galaxies will collide and merge.
brian, indeed, there will be relatively few actual collisions but huge gravitation forces will rip planets out of solar systems and divert stella orbits as the 2 galaxies do a dance as the two central black holes merge. great time to do star gazing!
Just goes to prove we are not the centre of the universe, we are an unimportant spec of dust in the great scheme of things. Talk of saving the planet is really an irrelevance and pointless as it will eventually no longer exist anyway.
Given our slightly pointless, but nevertheless present urge to explore space, I am sure that by then mankind will have found a way to colonise other planets, so even if the earth ceases to exist, mankind will in all probabilty live on.
Any kind of exploration is never pointless, it broadens the mind and increases our understanding and leads to new scientific developments and inventions. To say its pointless is very short sighted and insular.