• Question: how do you think the worlds going to end?

    Asked by 878mecm38 to Alan, Ciorsdaidh, Lauren, Martin, Neil, Shuo on 15 Mar 2018.
    • Photo: Martin McCoustra

      Martin McCoustra answered on 15 Mar 2018:

      In a couple of billion years, the Sun will entered a phase of it’s evolution where it expands and cools. It will expand sufficiently that it is likely that the orbit of Earth would lie within the boundaries of the expanded Sun and the Earth will simply evaporate! Long before that, however, all the water on Earth will have gone and the atmosphere will have been blown away making Earth uninhabitable.

    • Photo: Neil Keddie

      Neil Keddie answered on 15 Mar 2018:

      In a time many millions of years after we’ve gone! I think @Martin has outlined the ultimate fate of the earth here, so I won’t repeat that doom any further.

      Sooner than that, I don’t think the world will end, but I think one of the big challenges facing us in the near future is what will happen when the antibiotics we rely on today become useless against common diseases. This is becoming more of a problem due to overuse of antibiotics, and them being mis-prescribed for viral infections (they do nothing to treat those!). Unless we tackle this problem, a lot more people may die in the future from relatively trivial diseases, and that may radically change the face of the planet.

    • Photo: Alan McCue

      Alan McCue answered on 15 Mar 2018:

      I think Martin and Neil have provided excellent answers already 🙂

    • Photo: Lauren Webster

      Lauren Webster answered on 16 Mar 2018:

      Wow Martin fab answer 🙂

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