Do you think there is a chance of our world ending one day?

Question

I think in the far future a meteor will hit the the earth but I think it won't be in our lifetime. Our the sun will fade away and the ice age would be back and our earth will freeze over. I know this sounds crazy but I do think it's possible. I'm saying like in a million years there's a chance but in our lifetime I don't think but you never know.

Answer 1

Yes, I agree with you. If you have studied star-life cycles, you would know that our star "Sun" is middle-aged. One day it's going to come to an end of its life. It will swallow the smaller nearer planets, and will be blown up. It will become a small dwarf star which does not shine much.

Another way is to say, as you said...that a meteor may hit us and cloud the sky and all...leading to an ice-age.

But one thing that may happen is either that we humans would use our nuclear weapons against each other, with the sudden on-set of the ice-age, or by global warming, we'll destroy our climate/atmosphere and gradually die off.

I think if you watch the serial DVD set "Cosmos" by Carl Sagan, you would have a very good insight into all the possibilities.
It is also very much possible that by that time, humans would have migrated to some other habitable planet...in some other galaxy far away.

Answer 2

Yes.

Two things are forecasted to happen.

The first is in 4 to 5 Billion years, and it will be the beginning of the death of our Sun. It is supposed to expand in size by a factor of four to five. That means that the heating effect here on Earth will be four to five times more than it is now. As a result, everything on Earth will be burned to a crisp.
At that point the Sun is supposed to begin devouring everything in its near vicinity. Mercury and Venus are sure targets and the Earth is next in line.

Or, some 6 to 9 Billion years from now, the Milky Way Galaxy is supposed to merge (via collision) with the Andromeda Galaxy. The chaos that results will last for a long long long time and finally settle down one way or another. No idea what will result from that.

Others will say that in the time span of either of those two end game scenarios, a stray Asteroid will strike the Earth and kill everyone. Yes, that is possible. I cannot see much we could do about it either.

Answer 3

Without question the world will end. Possibly this afternoon, possibly as long as 4 to 5 billion years.
When you use the phrase "world ending" are you referring to the entire planet, all life, or just human life? For the entire planet to be destroyed would require the impact with either a rogue planet or a rogue star. Not likely. The planet came close several billion years ago when a major collision with a planet sized object led to the formation of the moon.
To kill all life would require nearly the same level of collision since microscopic life dwelling deep in the earth can survive very high temperatures.
To kill all higher forms of life other than these bacteria the possibilities are basically collision with a large enough body to cause the seas to boil. those sorts of objects are unfortunately not that uncommon.
There are other scenarios which could wipe out the biosphere. A gamma ray burster, still not understood, could fry the planet in a couple of days. The passage of a rogue star could tear the earth out of its orbit and we would freeze to death, in a few weeks. A nearby supernovae probably wouldn't be particularly healthy.
In about 4 billion years the sun will expand into its red giant stage, engulfing the earth. That will be quick but the earth itself probably wont cease to exist immediately although life will be toast.

Answer 4

Not only will it not be in our lifetime, but it is possible that the human race will be extinct when this event happens. However, it is possible that a catastrophic event may happen to wipe out mankind without the world necessarily ending. Even an asteroid impacting the Earth may not necessarily destroy the Earth, but it may certainly destroy and wiping out most, if not all, of the lifeforms and most of the vegetation. It has happened in our past and seems inevitable to happen again in our future.

There are also other ways to cause extinction. War, pandemics by natural diseases or biological warfare, solar flares stripping our atmosphere, a unified global tectonic shift causing massive earthquakes, tsunamis, and volcanic activity.

But, again, as most people here have stated, it is just a matter of time, in all probability millions of years if not billions into the future, the Earth is bound to have an extinction of itself if not being completely destroyed.

I do not want to be around for that.

~jaz~

Answer 5

I think its not a question of if, but when. It is quite obvious that our world will end, but I doubt it will be in our lifetime. But you never know. It could be a large meteor that will destroy earth. It could be our sun that reaches the end of its life and goes into the red giant phases and burns most of the planets. And it could be something else we don't know of yet. There are so many things we have not yet discovered about our huge world. After all compared to our galaxy we are smaller than a virus.

Answer 6

Sometime in the next few billion years, according to new studies presented at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the third rock from the sun will either freeze or fry. Unless things simply dry up much sooner.

The life-giving, aging star we orbit is using up its fuel supply and will collapse within 7 billion years. Before that, though, there will be an agonizing period of repeated swelling, as the sun grows into a red giant. How giant?

"Earth will end up in the sun, vaporizing and blending its material with that of the sun," said Iowa State University's Lee Anne Willson. "That part of the sun then blows away into space, so one might say Earth is cremated and the ashes are scattered into interstellar space."

As the sun burns its core of hydrogen, gravity will force a collapse. When compacted, the sun will heat up and burn the small amount of hydrogen that remains in a shell wrapped around the star's core. This will force the sun to expand into a red giant. Eventually, the core will heat up enough to burn stored helium and the sun will fluctuate in size before collapsing into a white dwarf.

"Earth will get scorched as part of the process the sun will go through as it transforms from being a red giant into a white dwarf,""If the sun loses mass before it gets too big, then Earth moves into a larger orbit and escapes," Willson told SPACE.com. "The sun would need to lose 20 percent of its mass earlier in its evolution, and this is not what we expect to happen."

Answer 7

2012 matter of fact Dec 21st 2012 there is too much info to toype here on why this is the day the world will end but it has to do with ancient beliefs of many cultures and scientific proof that there is a supermassive black hole in the center of our galaxy. Also a phenomenon called polar reversal in which north pole and south pole will swap places meaning the earth is going to rotate in such a way. And if you ask me that explains Global Warming it has nothing to do with greenhouse gases but the fact that the suns energy is foucsing on a different spot. will take place in 2012 you can google a thing called Webbot which will blow your mind on the acurate predicitons it has made and also there is the fact that the earth is long overdue for a meteor to hit .

Answer 8

The sun will begin to die in about 5 billion years and when that happens it will expand and become a red giant and pretty much take over the earth and anything still alive will be gone. So yes in about 5 billion years the earth will be nomore. I have read about a scientists idea of how to lasso a large meteor with some space crafts and slowly use its gravity to pull the earth further away from the sun as it grows larger, and keep the climate the same. Thats a long way out though and who knows if humans will even still be around then.

Answer 9

At the rate we are going, it won't need a meteor to end the world. Man is perfectly capable of doing it singlemindedly.

Answer 10

I think that you are right and I sure hope it never happenes in our life time. I think that the world is going to end and I feel so bad for out future generation who is going to have to suffer. I dont think that there will be another ice age but I think that we will have a droute and then starve to death.