• Question: when will the world actually end?

    Asked by totallygnarly to Charlie, Eoin, Jemma, Julian, Steve on 17 Mar 2011. This question was also asked by bethanyknight, grace01.
    • Photo: Eoin Lettice

      Eoin Lettice answered on 16 Mar 2011:

      Hi,
      Good Question!
      I’m not exactly sure of the numbers, but it is an unimaginably long time away.

      Eoin

    • Photo: Charlie Ryan

      Charlie Ryan answered on 16 Mar 2011:

      well assuming a large asteroid doesn’t come our way, or we manage not to blow ourselves up, then i think the world will end when the sun comes to the end of it’s life and swell up to a red giant. This will hapen in something like a billion years. It will eat up the inner planets (mercury and venus), and the earth will heat up to a point where life can’t exist!!
      I’m only an aerospace engineer though (with a big interest in astronomy) – you’d get a better answer from an astrophysicist!

    • Photo: Julian Rayner

      Julian Rayner answered on 17 Mar 2011:

      Lot’s of variations of this question going around at the moment, partly because of all the natural disasters (I had family in the recent earthquake in New Zealand – they are fine, but it was pretty scary).

      In general, people have been predicting the world will end for ages. The real science says that it will end one day, but not any time soon. So to me, it just isn’t worth worrying about. Life is WAY too short, and there is WAY too much to do (like figuring out a vaccine to stop a million kids dying from malaria) to worry about things like that which we can’t control!

    • Photo: Jemma Ransom

      Jemma Ransom answered on 17 Mar 2011:

      I’m ot sure of an exact date, but I think the theory is that during the suns (which is of course a star) life cycle, it will go through a phase called the red giant at which point it will expand such that it’s radius is beyond that of the Earths orbit. At which point the Earth will be engulfed. All this I presum will be many millions (if not billions!) of years away as the sun is at a relatively early point in the life cycle of a star.

    • Photo: Stephen Moss

      Stephen Moss answered on 17 Mar 2011:

      Hi totally
      Yesterday I forwarded your question on to the famous Professor Brian Cox, but he didn’t answer – either too busy or doesn’t know. I think current estimates are in about 5 billion years, which would mean that we’re roughly half way in the worlds existence.

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