One billion years into the future, you might imagine a world full of artificial intelligence, interstellar travel, and space colonies. Maybe we’ll see the end of poverty and hunger. A society where we’re all truly equal.
These are all incredible scenarios that may happen one day. But let’s take a step back from our usual human-centric approach of looking at the future.
100 Years Into the Future
You’d be surprised by how much things would have already changed just a century from now. Well, maybe you shouldn’t be totally shocked because even now, the effects of global warming are very real.
The biggest impact this will have is on sea levels, which, as you know, are already on the rise. You’ll see them climb higher and higher, threatening many of the world’s coastal cities. Bangkok, Miami, Venice, and many more around the globe could all be heavily submerged by 2124.
This would force humanity to redraw the world map, but, more devastatingly, rising sea levels would displace hundreds of millions of people worldwide. This would lead to chaos, causing political crises and societal transformations.
10,000 Years Into the Future
Welcome to a completely new era of Earth’s geological history. 10,000 years in the future, our landscapes and coastlines could be reshaped with new mountain ranges and large inland seas.
This would be thanks to the eruptions of more large supervolcanoes, mega-earthquakes, and, in general, the constant shifting of our planet’s tectonic plates. It would almost seem as if Earth is slowly sculpting itself into a new form. Geographically, we might experience as much change as when Earth formed into Pangea.
100,000 Years Into the Future
Jumping even further into the future, we’d only be a decimal point on the way toward one billion years. But by this time, Earth would have gone through at least one new ice age. Maybe even a couple.
Even Earth’s orbit could be different. This wouldn’t necessarily be a dramatic change, but the pull of other celestial bodies like Jupiter might bring us slightly further away from the Sun than we are today. This would change our day and night cycles and the temperature on Earth.
1 Million Years Into the Future
At this point, the big blue marble we once called home would be almost unrecognizable. For starters, the continents would no longer be where you thought they were. Maybe Canada will finally get more than two months of summer. And what was formerly the continent of Africa might now be covered in snow. Within these new continents, new ecosystems would emerge, making way for new life forms. Some of which might even be intelligent.
There’s no way of knowing exactly what these new dominant species would look like. But it’s likely that whatever they are, they’d be perfectly tailored to the environment.
1 Billion Years Into the Future
Finally, you arrive at your destination, even if you didn’t travel very far from where you began. Except for the one billion years of history you’ve witnessed, of course.
Earth 1 billion years in the future would be unrecognizable to you. By now, the Sun would be about 10% brighter than you remembered it, and this would mean that temperatures around the planet would be soaring.
Earth would be a completely barren, desert-like world without any of the oceans that used to cover a majority of it. Any sign of life would have to be resilient enough to live deep underground. Hopefully, humans, or any other intelligent species, have left Earth and started populating other celestial bodies.
