• Question: how long do you think we have left to live?

    Asked by Hussain07 to Lewis, Hummy, James, Sandra on 13 Mar 2017.
    • Photo: Lewis Wright

      Lewis Wright answered on 13 Mar 2017:


      The Sun expands as it ages, and in 4-5 billion years it will have engulfed the Earth. The Earth will become uninhabitable from the heat before this though, so humans will have to develop large-scale space travel before then if we are to continue living.

      After that, it really is just guesswork. We could make it into space, and be hit by a freak meteorite, and thats us gone.
      Or, we could live until the very last stars – there is an estimated to be 1000 billion to 100 000 billion (1-100 trillion) years worth of fuel with which stars can form.

      We are still an incredibly young species, and we are having enough trouble keeping the one planet that we live on clean enough to support future life, so there isn an awful lot of uncertainty!

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