First of all, I am new here and I would just like to say hello to everybody :) I haven't created a profile yet but am planning to get down to it some time this week.

On to my post... This is something which I have pondered since I was nine years old and I feel that it is a VERY overlooked topic (well, with a few exceptions, ala William Olaf Stapleton's book "Star-Maker"). We've all seen and heard scenarios and simulations of what life might be like in the year 2100 or 3000 or even twenty-thirty years from now, but hardly anyone touches the future time period between 1 Million and 20 Billion (or whatever year the Universe is supposed to end) A.D. Are people too scared to imagine what it would be like or maybe they feel it's way too difficult (which is not far from the truth) but why not at least try to picture it?

I don't know about all of you, but -- considering mankind lives on without any interruption -- what everything might look like in a million or billion years from now sounds more exciting than what it would look like than say 20 or 100 years from now. If by the year 3000 we are to have some form of god-like nanotechnology, then imagine a million years!

I have gathered some big questions I've been pondering and I would like to have an intelligent discussion about this. I would love to hear everyone else's take on them:

1. What do you think life will be like in a million/billion years?
2. How different do you think we will look then from the way we do today? Describe.
3. Do you think we will possess superhero powers by this time (I know that sounds crazy, but still I had to ask)?
4. How do you think we will speak?
5. What would our cities look like?
6. What would our spaceships look like?
7. It makes sense that by this time we would have colonized millions of worlds across the Universe and would not be living on Earth by the time the Sun explodes. Do you think we would possess the technology to save it? If so, what kind? Do you think we would even want to save the Earth? Why not?
8. Most of the things we are limited by today would logically no longer be considered limits by then, so if that's the case, then what new limits do you foresee or ones remaining?
9. Overall, on what kind of level do you see man's technology reaching?
10. When the Universe ends, it is logical that by this time Man has taken the form of the fabric of the Universe itself. Do you think he will be able to stop it from happening?
11. Do you think that anything from this time period (way of life, people, technology) etc. will have any mirroring effect with millions or billions of years in the past (B.C.)? For example, the Sun was created around the same time in B.C. that it will be destroyed in A.D.
12. This one is a bit off-topic and religious. About Revelations in the Bible... Do you think it's possible that they could be reffering to the end of the world/time in billions of years from now? I mean they do mention the destruction of the Sun to some extent, in Revelations 16 I believe.
13. Do you think things such as love, sex, and other needs would still exist?
14. Would space look the same?
15. Why do you think these types of questions about this particular era in the future are seldomly ever talked about anywhere?

That's all I can come up with for now. What do you all think?

I'll restrict myself to answering just a few of your questions.
The three main limits that I see for future technology are the speed of light, entropy and the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle. That is also the order in which I believe we will eventually (if ever) overcome these limits. Preventing the sun exploding or the death of the Universe are not likely to occur; in the case of the sun, it would probably be simpler to move the Earth than rejuvenate the sun, and in the case of the Universe, even if there is no 'big crunch', entropy will cause the eventual heat death of the Universe. Any solution to either problem would need fantastic amounts of energy from outside the Universe to implement.

Why not give us what you think about those questions? You could start a new thread about each question and tell us your opinions about it then we could respond to each one individually therefore keeping to just one subject at a time. This "shotgun" approach would lead to a very long and drawn out answer which many here,myself included, don't want to take the time to answer all of the questions at one time.

I try to resolve problems that occur now, not in the future for I really can't project myself millions of years from now. I am more interested in what's going to become of our environment during the next few centuries because if we pollute it as we are doing now we, as humans, just might not be around to see beyond a few centuries from now.

These questions are discussed: in science fiction. Few authors routinely go billions of years into the future, but the few who do (and even millions of years into the future, which is more common, yields the same answers) take two paths.

1. Homo sapiens will stop evolving naturally. Only genetic modifications that are seen as increasing our health or abilities will occur, and those will be done in laboratories. In that case people of the future would probably be recognizable to us. As for language, since the dawn of sound recording technology, the evolution of language has also slowed. We'll coin new words but we probably won't pronounce existing words differently.

2. Homo sapiens will continue to evolve through natural selection. This means that human colonies on widely separated planets will diverge and at some point perhaps not be recognizable to each other. But the language will probably not evolve any more dramatically than in Scenario 1.

If you believe that we will in fact never find a way to travel faster than light, Scenario 2 is the clear winner. There will be very little travel between colonies, and even news reports may be two generations old by the time another colony receives them.

I certainly buy Scenario 2. The work that's being done with paired electrons separated by large distances is promising, but so far it only portends higher-speed communication, not travel. There are lots of interesting new multi-dimensional models of the universe, but they're only different from the one we perceive at the subatomic level, not at the astronomical level.

As for evolution i think that it is on its way out. Im not totally sure so don't quote me but Animals evolve to adapt to their surroundings.
It's really cold and snowing, a wolf with little fur dies, a wolf with more fur survives, slowly all the furless wolves die and only furry ones survive. Humans evolved like this to a certain point until by eating meat our brains evolved more quickly and we began to make tools so if it does get cold we just nick another animals fur. We no longer adapt to our surroundings, we change our surroundings to adapt to us. So i really see little future for evolution.

Actually we do adopt, but you have to remember that evolution can't be directly observed when it regards mammals or any other non microscopic life forms. A few years ago some people died in Brasil from cold although it was +10C, when in northen europe countries we still use to walk in t-shirts. It's a small adoptation too.

by that time, we would be dead, replaced by either another species or an advanced form of ourselves, or we killed ourselves off, bummer, but we would have definetly have left our mark on things. we would've established natural enviornments on many bodies in our solar systems, as well as on other star systems.

We are starting to come to the point where we can alter ourselves as well as our enviroment. Soon genetic engineering will start ironing out the flaws in the human body. Later, we spread out into the stars and modify ourselves for wherever we have to live. Changes are cumulative and soon enough there isn't one human race. There are thousands, ranging from things swimming in the atmospheres of gas giants to beings wired for space itself... having to -eat- their air. Some might be mechanical. All niches will be filled.

Some branches will die off. Others will become dead ends, trapped in some specialized niche that they can't find their way out of. Others will continue to evolve and adapt but never get any more advanced. Reniassance, darkage... repeat.

A few I imagine will keep going, becoming basically godlike. I imagine people who gave up organic bodies at some point living on in computerized factory planets. I can even imagine thought coded into blackholes or self propagating quantum computers wired into the structure of space itself. Thought goes on... but not what I would call -human- thought. Perspective is lost and so is much of what makes people -people-.

I imagine these beings waging wars within whatever medium they are in over things that we could never make sense of. I imagine some beings taking intrest in more primitive branches of man. Some might even start species afresh on bonsai planets, dysonspheres, or ringworld-type structures. Mankind and anything of us will never -let- ourselves get bored.

I recommend The Last Question, a short story by Isaac Asimov (and his own personal favourite). One of two stories he wrote in which he postulated intelligence eventually leaving the body behind and floating around as pure mind, pure energy in space (the other one was Eyes Do More Than See which is in Nightfall 2).

In the past, due to natural selection, a multitude of genetic-prone diseases weeded themselves out of the gene pool on their own. But now, we have come up with immunizations, treatments, and cures for just about every illness that has plagued mankind in the last century. The gene pool is no longer thinning out these discrepencies in the human genome because of this, and the numbers of them merely continue to grow. If for some reason the many recent advances in genetics suddenly reached a road block, I would predict that in the future, if society continued down the same path that it does now, human bodies would eventually become less and less self sufficient until the day when we are all walking around full of genetic flaws requiring a lifetime of popping pills and relying on outside means to continue living. Luckily, at the current state of research into that field decoding the human genome, it would appear that genetic modification prior to birth might be a distinct possibility as soon as in the next century. One day, parents might very well be able to choose gender, hair/eye/skin color, personality pre-dispositions, and a number of other factors for their soon-to-be child.

Another, more realistic scenario that I can see coming in the near future is super strains of bacteria which are resistant to all currently known types of treatment and possibly any future treatment too. We have already seen certain bacteria that have developed immunities to specific antibiotics which were once effective against them, and that took only a matter of a few decades due to their much quicker evolutionary nature compared to us. The over-use of antibiotics in our society only speeds up the inevitability of this problem happening sooner. I predict that the overuse of antibiotics will also wreak havoc on our immune system. When the immune system is no longer required to operate at full capacity to eliminate infections and invading bacteria, I can imagine it devolving into a much more weakened state due to not having a purpose. Whenever these super strains do present themselves, our immune systems will be virtually defenseless against them, and the antibiotics which we have relied so heavily on and which precipitated the entire problem will be too. That will be the truly greatest epidemic we ever have to face, and I can only hope that we will have learned enough in the fields of medicine when that day arrives in order to find a cure before the entire human race becomes nothing but a memory.

I hate to burst your bubble of god like nano technology , but earth along with the milkyway will colide with andromeda in 10 000 - 11 000 years as predicted by physicists.
other than that i think that even is earth was to survive for another 1 billion years (without being engulfed by the sun in 10 million) it would turn to a neutral (as we always see in nature) eg everything would level off.. no mountains .. level plains or deserts created by errosion would cover the planet ... everything would be in places where least energy would be needed to sustain it.

Galaxies are not solid objects. They could pass through each other like smoke, there is so much empty space between stars. Stars will lose their current orbits, however, and clusters will be launched out of each galaxy.

And please note that the Earth has already been around for four-billion years and we still have tectonic motion. I have no doubt that we will still have it in another billion years.

Odin'Izm
where are you getting your figures from?

The Andromeda Galaxy is 2.9 million light years away. If we are going to collide with it in 10,000 years then the galaxies are approaching each other at 3000 times the speed of light. Somewhat improbable?
The correct figure is three billion years.

That's around about the same time frame till we are engulfed by the sun - not 10 million years. However,temperatures will have risen sufficiently in around one billion years to make life on Earth probably untenable.

Clockwood is totally correct on plate tectonics. Although activity is likely to decline somewhat, as the radioactive elements that power mantle convection are used up, this will still be a tectonically active planet.

Life on Earth - yes,
but by that time the habitable zone will be located further into solar system.
I don't know whether it will be Mars or the moons of Jupiter, but given the data, that can can be calculated. And by the time I'm sure we'll have technologies to move to other star systems (even if frozen in a slow 'generation' ship).

I didn't create
my system to last
until the Sun
explodes.

I didn't set up
a timer to death,
I didn't request
a ticket away.

The waters still clean,
the atmosphere can be breathed
and the birds still use their wings
to unleash their dreams.

I know I should design
an escape route
to a world far away,
I know the time flows,
I know I am weak
living for now.

Galaxies are not solid objects. They could pass through each other like smoke, there is so much empty space between stars. Stars will lose their current orbits, however, and clusters will be launched out of each galaxy..


The gravity would be distorted due to so many objects acting on eachother, and as far as i have heard the 2 black holes in the middle of each galaxy would create a binary black hole which would engulf alot of stars in the area. The earth would very likely be thrown out into cold space to freeze or it would be engulfed by the black holes or destroyed by the rubble created by the collisions.
as far as smoke goes, I'v never seen to streams of smoke passing through eachother unaffected, usually it results in it dissolving in the air into a haze.

as for my figures I think i got them wrong , i remember it being very soon but i'm not sure how long they said it was.. might be 10 million not 10 thousand.
;)

And please note that the Earth has already been around for four-billion years and we still have tectonic motion. I have no doubt that we will still have it in another billion years.

we have also seen ancient mountains such as the alps eroding away. but i suppose you are right we would need alot more time for the earht to turn into a lifeless ball.

Solar system most likely won't be affected much, because we are located at the very edge of our galaxy. The worst thing would be that our star system is set on a course to the centre of the galaxy.
I watched a program on Discovery channel (or PBS) discussing this Andromeda scenario.

as for my figures I think i got them wrong , i remember it being very soon but i'm not sure how long they said it was.. might be 10 million not 10 thousand..
I hope you wont take offence at my repetition. It is not very soon. It is 3 billion years. If it was only ten million then the two galaxies would be approaching each other at 1/3 the speed of light.

we have also seen ancient mountains such as the alps eroding away. but i suppose you are right we would need alot more time for the earht to turn into a lifeless ball.
The Alps are not especially ancient. They are a result of the recent, in geological terms, collision of the African and European plates, closing the Tethys Ocean. If it were not for the renewal of mountain ranges at colliding plate boundaries then your scenario of a 'flat' planet would be valid.

Lteran:

>I would predict that in the future, if society continued down the same path that it does now, >human bodies would eventually become less and less self sufficient until the day when we are
>all walking around full of genetic flaws requiring a lifetime of popping pills and relying on
>outside means to continue living. Luckily, at the current state of research into that field d

Thats already happening for most of us. Age expectancy is now closer to 80 than the 30 it was, thus most of us are only alive today because of external means. Those externals may be ongoing treatments, or one off events, either way.



>Another, more realistic scenario that I can see coming in the near future is super strains of
>bacteria which are resistant to all currently known types of treatment and possibly any future
>treatment too.

We already have those, and we already die from them today. Some cancers are known to be associated with certain infections, and sepsis is in the top 10 causes of death today. We've all heard of MRSA and HIV, neither of which have any well known cure. I say well known as I think I have a working treatment approach for antibiotic resistant infections.



> We have already seen certain bacteria that have developed immunities to specific antibiotics
>which were once effective against them, and that took only a matter of a few decades due to
>their much quicker evolutionary nature compared to us. The over-use of antibiotics in our
>society only speeds up the inevitability of this problem happening sooner.

small but possibly significant correction: the use of currently widely used antibiotics. There are antibiotic like checmicals such as triclosan where we have not (yet?) seen resistance develop, and there are also very old antibiotics such as silver based ones where even in a whole century we have seen no evidence of resistance developing.

We cant necessarily assume all future antibiotics will have the same problem as our main present ones: especially not after 1 million years of tech development. By then they ought to target basic common essnetial life processes for 1 celled bacteria, thus being able to kill all and every one, with no resistance developing.



>I predict that the overuse of antibiotics will also wreak havoc on our immune system. When the
>immune system is no longer required to operate at full capacity to eliminate infections and
>invading bacteria, I can imagine it devolving into a much more weakened state due to not
>having a purpose. Whenever these super strains do present themselves, our immune systems will
>be virtually defenseless against them, and the antibiotics which we have relied so heavily on
>and which precipitated the entire problem will be too.

This will not happen. Our immune system works every day, and maxes out many times during our life. It is only when it is entirely overwhelmed that we need turn to antibiotics, most of the time the immune system cells are doing their job fine. And they are busy every day. No real likelihood of atrophy.



> That will be the truly greatest epidemic we ever have to face, and I can only hope that we
>will have learned enough in the fields of medicine when that day arrives in order to find a
>cure before the entire human race becomes nothing but a memory.

We already have means to keep alive people with no immune T cells - though life expectancy is very short today, at, iirc, 1-3 years. The drugs are patchups not able to tackle everything, and are themselves a serious risk to life. Drugs in 1,000,000 ad would almost certainly be better out of all proportion.


Lava