How will the World End? (Serious Replies please)

[Helljumper]

     Hey catalyst Gamers, Helljumper here. I've heard much controversy about how the World is going to apparently end these past couple years. So i'm wondering what you all think about this. Personally, i'm torn between Believing and being skeptic about this topic. So whether you believe or not i'm interested in why, how, when, and what YOU think about all this. As always, thanks for reading guys!

[Tyler]

Ofcourse the world will end, all things do. The world has passed peak oil, and eventually, if we don't keep up- we won't be able to drill deeper. Unless we have some form of alternative energy, everything will eventually go to chaos, as people need oil. I suppose war for oil would occur after this, maybe even nuclear war, and then we're back to square one.

[smt]

Ofcourse the world will end, all things do. The world has passed peak oil, and eventually, if we don't keep up- we won't be able to drill deeper. Unless we have some form of alternative energy, everything will eventually go to chaos, as people need oil. I suppose war for oil would occur after this, maybe even nuclear war, and then we're back to square one.

This is probably the most likely and realistic "short term" answer to your question, long term will just be the sun eating erry tang up 'round 'ere.

[A Dark Tree]

I think that humanity will end itself.

[Kryptic]

MANY of us are apt, not without some reason, to regard the world we live in as the centre of the universe, and to look upon the sun, the moon, and the stars as objects placed in the heavens for the special benefit of the human race. That the earth is but a minute object in the Cosmos; that it forms one of a number of bodies, many of them larger than itself, revolving around their central luminary, the sun; that there exist in the realms of space myriads of similar suns, centres themselves of other solar systems; that millions of planets, which we cannot see, are inhabited with races of intelligent beings -- these are facts of which almost everybody must cognisant, but on which few bestow much time or thought.

Astronomy teaches that, just as our solar system had a beginning, so it must have an end, and that, as at one time life was impossible upon the earth, so there will come a time when man will no longer be able to exist.

Science, cold and calculating, has foretold the physical end of the world -- has prophesied the destruction of the globe and all its contents.

Birth, life, death -- it has been well been said --appear to be the rule of the universe at large, as well as in our own little corner of it. Suns and planets are evolved, they flourish, and at length decay; and new suns and systems will arise to take their places.

The "End of the World" may be taken in two different senses, as meaning either the annihilation of our planet by sudden catastrophe, or by gradual decay, or else the disappearance of human life from the face of the globe, owing to some state of circumstances, possible, at any rate, if not probable.

It is our purpose in this article briefly to consider some of the opinions held by men of learning and repute regarding the end of the world, and to emphasise the lesson taught by Nature that the individual counts for nothing in the history of the race, the race for nothing in the life of the planet, and the planet for nothing in the duration of the Universe.

Very many derive their inspiration on this absorbing subject from the Bible, where we read: "The day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night; in the which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heal, the earth also, and the works that are therein, shall be burned up."

Every child knows that water was the agency of destruction in the ancient world, and that the rainbow was placed in the sky as a token that life should never be destroyed by this cause again. All through the Bible we may trace the prophecy that the world would come to an end by being consumed with fire.

It is out of our province here to touch on the signs given in the Bible whereby the arrival of the last day may be predicted. Certain preachers have brought great ridicule on themselves by their very certain statements on this point, but they seem little abashed when their prophecies do not come true, and merely alter dates and times to suit the next occasion.

Many readers will call to mind a rhyme which at the time terrorised the minds of hundreds of thousands of young and ignorant people --

"The world unto an end shall come
In Eighteen Hundred and Ninety-One."
The date has been often changed and will (it may safely be said) continue to be changed for the benefit of future generations. It is curious to notice that hardly two philosophers agree as to the manner in which the end of the world may be expected to arrive. Some put their faith in a celestial catastrophe so terrible as literally to wipe our earth out of existence, while others prefer to believe that though man may no longer be able to exist, the world will still continue its appointed motions.
Lord Kelvin startled us not long ago by affirming that there was only oxygen in the atmosphere sufficient to last mankind for some 300 years, and that the world was doomed to die of suffocation. Everyone knows that in an atmosphere devoid of oxygen no animal being can live for long. Put a mouse under an air-tight glass containing some burning substance that exhausts the oxygen, and it will be speedily suffocated. Thus will it be (so says Lord Kelvin) with man, who is himself lighting the fires for the suffocation of his progeny.

On an average it requires three tons of oxygen to consume one ton of fuel, and the oxygen that exists in our atmosphere is practically all the supply available for the purpose. As shown by the barometer the average weight of the air is 14.9 pounds to the square inch, which gives a total weight for the earth of 1,020,000,000,000 tons of oxygen. At the rate of three tons of oxygen to one ton of fuel, the weight of fuel which can be consumed by this oxygen is 340,000,000,000 tons.

Now to see how the oxygen can keep pace with the fuel. The whole world consumes about 600,000,000 tons of coal a year, and to this must be added the consumption of oxygen by wood and other vegetable substances which raises the equivalent coal consumption of the world to not less than 1,000,000,000 tons a year.

Thus, even at the present rate of fuel consumption there is only oxygen to last 340 years, and long before this time the atmosphere would have become so vitiated with carbonic acid gas, and so weakened in oxygen, that either we should have to emigrate to some other sphere, or else give up the habit of breathing altogether.

Following in Lord Kelvin's footsteps, Professor Rees, a prominent American scientist, has been going further into the question of the exhaustion of the air supply of the world. He gives definite warning of the coming "failure" of the air.

"'Free as the air we breathe,'" he writes, will, in the distant future, become an out-of-date, misleading expression. Air will no longer be free, for it will be manufactured and sold like any other necessary. Those who will not work for their daily air supply, and who cannot afford to buy it, will perish, for Nature will have exhausted her supply. The artificial air will be stored up in enormous reservoirs, and to these receptacles applicants will come for their daily supply of oxygen. This will then be carried home and doled out to the family as part of the day's means to support life. The manufactured oxygen will be breathed in as a diver inhales the air supplied him when he sinks beneath the waves.

"'Died from air starvation' will be a connmon verdict in the coroners' courts of the future, for 'no money, no air,' will be the rule of life. The wealthy will gain a reputation for charity by free gifts of air to the aged poor at Christmas time. Men and women will no longer be able to look at each other with eyes of love, for everyone will be clothed in a great air helmet, like a diver of to-day."

There is, however, a silver lining of hope fringing these gloomy clouds of speculation. Lord Kelvin himself is not wholly a prophet of evil, neither are his views of an entirely pessimistic nature. He looks to the agriculturist to improve his methods, so that the plant life on the globe may be able to absorb the surplus carbonic acid gas and to release sufficient new oxygen to cope with the growing consumption of fuel.

Those sources of Nature at present allowed (except in a few instances) to run to waste -- the tides, the ceaseless movement of the waves, waterfalls, solar energy, the wind, the ether, atmospheric electricity -- all these in times to come will be made to supply the energy that we require for daily needs. If this be the case, we shall not die of suffocation after all.

But though we may escape suffocation, there is yet the chance that some day there will be no air for poor humanity to breathe. Mr. Nikola Tesla, of world-wide fame, announces that if we are not cautious we may set light to the atmosphere with our electric discharges of a "few million volts."

He suggests that "periodical cessations of organic life on the globe " might have been caused through the ignition of the air by flashes of lightning. Electricity is, indeed, a mysterious force, and Mr. Tesla's warning certainly appeals to the imagination. It would be interesting to know if the distinguished American electrician has a remedy to propose.

Mr. H. G. Wells has drawn in his romance, "The Time Machine," a strangely impressive picture of the end of the world as he conceives it. The last man, according to his conception, freezes to death, and life becomes unsupportable on our planet, not because of great heat, but rather from intense cold.

Mr. Wells has the testimony of science on his side. and has indeed based his assumptions on the learned treatises of Professor J.H. Darwin.

By dint of laborious calculation it has been shown that the sun's heat is by slow degrees becoming less and less, and that some day, long years hence, the sun will no longer give out the warmth necessary for human existence. Mounting his "time machine," Mr. Wells plunges off into the future, and, when he has journeyed millions of years hence, he finds a slowly freezing world in which man and beast fail to find the means of subduing the pangs of hunger or of protecting themselves from the cold. The sun hangs in a grey sky -- a pale, weird, ash-coloured ball, incapable of supplying light and warmth.

Loathsome animals of huge size, brought into existence by the altered condition of affairs, creep over the masses of ice and crawl over the frozen seas and lakes. Little by little all trace of vegetation disappears -- a steady snowstorm settles down over the earth, and our planet revolves in space for a short time only to fall a frozen mass into the bosom of the dying sun.

That the solar temperature is declining is, I think, universally conceded by astronomers, who also admit the steady contraction of our great luminary. The sun is now apparently contracting at the rate of 220 feet per annum, and if we look forward through a vista of many thousands of years we see the sun ever diminishing in dimensions. There is, however no cause for immediate alarm, and millions of years must elapse before our sun will have vanished from the heavens.

Looking back at the past history of the earth the astronomer pictures a time when the earth was a sun. Coming down the ages he shows us a globe whose condition resembles that of Jupiter and Saturn, planets at the present time with dense atmospheres still loaded with the waters which are to form their future oceans. Peering into the future he recognises in the moon's actual condition a stage through which our planet will assuredly have to pass.

The earth's inherent heat must pass away, the life on her surface slowly disappear, until she becomes made up, as we believe the moon to be, of desert continents and frost bound oceans, lifeless as at the beginning of her history, but no longer -- as Mr. Proctor put it -- "possessing that potentiality of life which existed in her substance before life appeared upon her surface. Long as has been, and doubtless will be, the duration of life upon the earth, it seems less than a second of time compared with those two awful time-intervals, one past, when as yet life had not begun; the other still to come, when all life shall have passed away."

There are writers who combat the theory that all orbs in space tend towards death and declare that this seeming tendency will be counterbalanced by some restorative forces.

Scientific men, however, reply that they are at present unaware of any such forces, and that in the light of their present knowledge every sun and every planet must be slowly yet surely wasting away.

Reference has been made to the possible annihilation of our planet by some dire catastrophe. One of the supporters of this theory is Professor Falb, a well-known astronomer, who prophesied the destruction of the world on November 13th, 1899, through collision with a comet known as Biela's. On the 29th of October, 1899, came a telegram from Santiago, Chili, announcing that Biela's comet had been observed from there and was visible to the naked eye. This announcement following on Prof. Falb's prophecy actually caused no little dismay among the poorer classes of the Continental peasantry, though in England and America little alarm was felt. Needless to state, the 13th of November came and went without the occurrence of any untoward event.

This is not the first time that this particular comet has been credited with being the instrument by which the Creator was to bring to a conclusion the existence of mankind on earth.

Between 1828 and 1832 it was generally prophesied that Biela's comet would come into collision with the earth during the latter year (the year of its first return after discovery), and there is reason to believe that a good deal of alarm was caused by such assertions.

The history of this comet may be told in a few words. On February 27th, 1826, M. Biela, in Bohemia, discovered a faint comet whose orbit -- or path round the sun -- was traversed, he calculated, in about six and three-quarter years. It was found that in 1832 this comet would pass within 20,000 miles of the earth's orbit; but, as the earth would not reach that particular point till one month after the comet had passed it, no danger to the world need have been apprehended. The assurances of the astronomer failed, however, to satisfy the minds of many ignorant and unscientific persons who pretended to be greatly alarmed at the imminent destruction of our planet.

Astronomers predicted that Biela's comet would be visible at intervals of six and three-quarter years. It returned regularly up to 1846, when it appeared divided into two distinct comets. Such a celestial apparition had never been observed before, and astronomers viewed it with the keenest interest and excitement. On January 14th the distance between the two bodies was 177,000 miles, and this was increased on February 23rd to 191,000. On the 22nd of April the comets had disappeared.

In 1852 they returned, and the distance between them now was 1,624,000 miles, and, as neither contained a proper "nucleus," it was decided that they were in process of disintegration. Since 1852 the two comets have never been seen again, and since 187 Biela's comet has not been seen, and astronomers conclude that it must have undergone the fate of all comets which approach the sun frequently and nearly -- they either fall into its vast mass and are consumed like moths around a candle, or else they waste their substance in forming tails of such extreme length that they become so attenuated as to be no longer visible.

But, the reader may ask, are there not other comets against which the earth is likely to collide with disastrous consequence to herself and to her inhabitants ? It is estimated that there are about 17,500,000 comets in connection with the solar system alone. Is it not possible that any of these may come into contact with the earth?

In 1832, our planet is known to have actually passed through the tails of comets, hut nothing came of it. What would happen if we unfortunately encountered the actual nucleus of one is a question more easily asked than answered.

Such a catastrophe, though possible, is exceedingly remote, however. Another question now arises: may not the extinction of the human race be brought about by some lower order usurping dominion over and finally destroying mankind ?

At first sight the idea seems absurd. Man, the lord of creation, to be driven off the globe by the creatures over whom he has so long held dominion! Preposterous! Let us see what science has to say to this.

Countless ages ago in the world's past history there was a time when huge monsters, both on land and sea, were common. These reigned supreme for a time, only to succumb at length and disappear. Many species even within our own time have become extinct; can man then always hope to have the preeminence?

"When once a type is gone," said the late Mr. J. F. Nesbit, "Nature never renews it. So infinite are her resources that no pattern, no number of patterns, matters. And it may be that man, a late arrival, is destined to a far shorter use of the earth than the cockroach or the lobster."

Not over flattering to human vanity, but nevertheless true!

It is conceivable that changes of climate, and gradual developments and modifications of which we know little, might concur in bringing some land species into dangerous prominence.

The vivid imagination of Mr. H. G. Wells, ever ready -- like the fat boy in Pickwick - to make our flesh creep, once pictured a world devoured hy ants! We have all read of the migratory ants of Central Africa, against which no man can stand. On the march they swiftly clear out whole villages, drive men and animals before them in headlong rout, and kill and eat every living creature they can capture.

At present they are kept under by animals which prey on them, but supposing these checks to be removed!

We know how easy it is to disturb Nature's balance; rabbits introduced thoughtlessly into Australia and Californlia rapidly became a serious pest; sparrows have in many cases brought ruin to the farmers; hyacinths, planted in Florida rivers, so multiplied that navigation soon became impossible.

Nature, again unassisted by man, sometimes produces what we call plagues of certain species. Must we then not allow the possibility of the extinction of man by the enormous increase and spread of a lower order?

If the reader be still unconvinced let him turn to Mr. Wells' picture of the sudden appearance out of the sea of a race of amphibious monsters, capable of sweeping man and all his contrivances out of existence.

Fossil remains of crabs, 6ft. in length, have been discovered, and such enormous creatures might -- owing to some cause or other -- multiply exceedingly.

If we imagine a shark that could raid out upon the land, or a tiger that could take refuge in the sea, we should have a fair suggestion of what a terrible monster a large predatory crab might prove. And, so far as zoological science goes, we must, at least, admit that such a creation is an evolutionary possibility.

Then there are the cuttlefish, the octopus, and other denizens of the deep, any of which might conceivably grow in numbers, and extinguish man. And even if we escape death from monsters, there is the chance of our falling victims to those invisible enemies. the insidious microbes.

At present, it is true, conditions do not favour their rapid spread, but some radical change in the climate might flood the world with death-dealing micro-organisms. The fact is, we know little about the origin of diseases, and why at certain seasons certain epidemics arise.

The bacillus of plague, of influenza, of cholera, of typhoid, or any other disease propagated by germs, finds that the climatic or atmospheric conditions are favourable, and promptly proceeds to multiply, and, once it had a free run, it could destroy the entire human race in a month.

Turning now to another side of the question, we may consider the condition of man in the event of some radical change in the constitution of our planet. Suppose another glacial epoch should occur, would man survive ? He might retreat into the tropics where ice has never been; but so would also all the animal life, and one shudders to contemplate the entire animal kingdom huddled together in a circumscribed area in the centre of the earth.

A famous savant has imagined that the force of the earth's gravitation might be doubled by some cause hitherto undreamt of, and that marked changes in the structure of human beings would take place. Men and women would appear in these altered circumstances stunted, thick-limbed, flat-footed, with enormous jaws underlying diminutive skulls. Along with the change in man's structure would come a change in the animal kingdom, so that four-footed, six-footed, and eight-footed monsters would arise, and if these increased rapidly, they would soon rid the world of their two- footed adversaries. Or, if on the other hand, through some cause, the force of gravity were to diminish, we might find ourselves flying into the unknown regions of space!

An alarmist correspondent recently wrote to a daily paper foretelling the collapse of the earth by reason of the constant drawing out of her vital fluid in the shape of -- oil! This theory is a novel one, and deserves a word of explanation here. According to the writer, the interior of the earth is liquid oil, and if this is drawn out the outside crust must give way. Each country, urges the terror-stricken individual, should pass a law constituting it a criminal offence to draw a drop of liquid oil out of the earth.

In his imagination he sees cities and towns engulfed in vast chasms, and mountains shifted from their bases, while millions of human beings, old, young, rich, and poor, each with their different lamps, are marching on to destruction, sitting by their funeral pyre, the burning lamp, while smoke, fire, darkness, horror, confusion, cover the face of all things. Truly, a dire disaster, but one which we cannot take quite seriously.

According to a French savant, M. de Lapparent, man will finally disappear from the globe because, in 4,000,000 years, the rivers and seas will have completely washed away all solid land. Man, however, is an adaptive creature, and may escape extinction by assuming the shape and nature of a fish.

Lastly, the extinction of the human race by starvation or by thirst may be considered. Sir William Crookes recently startled civilised nations by affirming that in 1931--just thirty-one years from this present year of grace 1900--there will not be enough wheat to supply the needs of the bread eaters of the world. The failure of our food supply is a calamity too awful to contemplate, and the prospect of mankind slowly dying from starvation is calculated to plunge into the depths of despair the cheeriest optimist that ever lived.

It may be interesting to mention the reasons which led Sir William Crookes to prophesy that in thirty-one years from now the world will not be able to produce enough bread for man's needs.

He argued thus:

In 1871 the bread-eaters of the world mumbered ... 371,000,000
In 1881 the bread-eaters of the world numbered ... 416,000,000
In 1891 the bread-eaters of the world numbered ... 472,600,000
In 1898 the bread-eaters of the world numbered ... 516,500,000
In 1931 the bread-eaters of thc world will number . 746,500,000
The augumentation of the world's bread-eating population in a geometrical ratio is evinced by the fact that the yearly aggregates grow progressively larger. In the early seventies they rose 4,300,000 per annum. In the eighties they increased by more than 6,000,000 per annum, necessitating annual additions to the bread supply nearly one half greater than sufficed twenty-five years ago.
To supply 516,500,000 bread-eaters in 1898 required 2,324,000,000 bushels of wheat; to supply 746,600,000 in 1931 will require 3,357,000,000 bushels.

Should all the wheat-growing countries add to their area to the utmost capacity, on the most careful calculation the yield would give us only an addition of some 100,000,000 acres, supplying at the average world-yield of 12.7 bushels to the acre, 1,270,000,000 bushels. Adding 2,324,000,000 to 1,270,000,000 we get 3,594,000,000 bushels, or just enough to supply the increase of population among bread-eaters till the year 1931.

While these lines were being written, the writer chanced upon a paper in a German magazine, by Dr. Albert Battandier, on the absorbing topic: "Is the world nearing starvation ?"

The raison d'etre of this article was a statement by a Belgian statistician, General Brialmont, that in less than 180 years the population of the globe would be so dense that the earth could no longer nourish its inhabitants, and that hundreds of millions of human beings must die yearly of hunger.

General Brialmont, though he postpones the evil day, agrees with Sir William Crookes as to the failure of the world's food supply sooner or later, if things go on as they are doing at present.

"It is the chemist," says Sir Wiiliam Crookes, "who must come to the rescue of the threatened communities. It is through the laboratory that starvation may ultimately be turned into plenty."

Since by the year 1931 the area of cultivation can be no further extended, the farmer must endeavour to raise the average yield per acre. If atmospheric nitrogen could only be made generally available as manure in accordance with Nikola Tesla's great scheme, then the ground might be made to bear twice as large crops as it does at present.

Then there is the view, held by many eminent natural philosophers, that in the near Iuture the chemist will produce food artificially in his laboratory, thus rendering the tilling of the soil no longer a necessary labour.

M. Berthelot, the great French chemist, is an ardent supporter of this theory. According to him bread, meat, vegetables, etc., will some years hence be only a distant memory, and a dinner menu will be made up as follows:--

A small tablet of nitrogenous matter.
Pastilles of fatty material.
A little sugar.
A little seasoning.
"And then," exclaims the enthusiast," when the nourishment of man is no longer a daily problem, when we are no longer forced to ask humbly of God our daily bread, the earth will become a vast garden, natural subterranean streams will rise to the surface, and the human race will live in the legendary abundance of the Golden Age."
Others might be apt to view a world like this as a very dull place for mortals. Still, one might get used to tablets and pastilles in time.

As to the death of man from thirst a word must be said. The originator of this theory is M. X. Stanier, Professor of Geology at the Agricultural Institute of Gembloux.

M. Stanier allows that the idea of mankind dying from thirst seems paradoxical when we consider the seemingly inexhaustible supplies man possesses in the oceans and seas which cover three-quarters of the surface of the globe. Still, there is some danger of this vast quantity disappearing. In the past the terrestrial crust, says M. Stanier, has absorbed large quantities of water; this action is always going on, and is likely to assume greater proportions in the future. On account of its weight water tends to descend into deep holes; while the centre of the globe remains in a fiery condition this absorption is slow, but as the cooling of the interior goes on, the surface water will penetrate more and more, and will enter into combination with the recently solidified rocks in the heart of the earth, which are specially absorptive by reason of their metallic composition.

"The oceans," prophesies M. Stanier, " will grow smaller and smaller; the rains which nourish the continents will become rarer and rarer, while the deserts will enlarge their boundaries and gradually absorb the fertile plains."

In order the better to point his moral, M. Stanier asks us to consider the planet Mars, the inhabitants of which are slowly dying from want of water. What were formerly supposed to be Martian seas are, on the contrary (so M. Stanier would have us believe), nothing but immense arid plains.

"One stage more, and all life will have disappeared on the planet Mars."

These, then, are some of the predictions as to the end of the world. Whichever of these may come true, man seems doomed to destruction. Fortunately the evil is a long way off yet.


tl;dr what smt said

[Somone77]

Don't try to be deep saying that human's greed will destroy our entire species, it won't. Nor will our machines or our quest for more power. These events have come and gone throughout history, mass genocides that our species has thrived under.

Will the planet Earth be destroyed, yes. We are too close to the sun for us not to be. In about 3 billion years (longer than Human beings have been around, for your information) the sun will enter a stage known as the "Red Giant" where it enters a period of rapid expansion before undergoing its own supernova stage. During the red giant stage the Earth will be consumed by quite a margin.

The thought is that, by that time, humans will be planet hopped or at least have created a generation ship to carry our species away from this planet. However, the only thing getting in the way of those plans is public opinion and government. NASA needs more funding, people! Mars is a planet one which we could LIVE! It has WATER! Survivable temperatures! To avoid destruction of our species in the distant future we must act now and expand to the stars. This rock is where we were born, but we can't stay in mom's house forever!

tl;dr what Kryptic said

[Martinerrr]

The thought is that, by that time, humans will be planet hopped or at least have created a generation ship to carry our species away from this planet. However, the only thing getting in the way of those plans is public opinion and government. NASA needs more funding, people! Mars is a planet one which we could LIVE! It has WATER! Survivable temperatures! To avoid destruction of our species in the distant future we must act now and expand to the stars. This rock is where we were born, but we can't stay in mom's house forever!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colonization_of_Mars

If interested in this subject, it's fun to read.

Now, this is what I think about the oil levels. It's very simple, nuclear energy. Dangerous but will greatly help.

[Monkey with a gun]

The sun will enter a stage known as the "Red Giant" where it enters a period of rapid expansion before undergoing its own supernova stage. During the red giant stage the Earth will be consumed by quite a margin.

Nope.

Back on subject. The recent fear-mongering that has been going about regarding the 2012 supposid end of the world really is quite humorous, the concept that an ancient civilization predicting the end of the world thousands of year in advance (which by the way way, they never did.) and that people actually believe that shit just sends tickles of pleasure down my spine. May 21st 2011, anybody?

[Helljumper]

Great replies guys i'm loving them, keep it up! I am very interested in what you all think about this subject.

[Martinerrr]

Great replies guys i'm loving them, keep it up! I am very interested in what you all think about this subject.

Well, I do enjoy astronomy - chemistry etc. and I am quite sure there's some others who do as well, so this is a nice discussion subject indeed.

May 21st 2011, anybody?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_dates_predicted_for_apocalyptic_events

Hah.

[Rory]

Without reading anything, i'm going to go ahead and tell what i think.

Global tempature will eventually rise so much, the Earth will burn, turn into a big fireball, and absorb into the sun making the sun bigger. But humanity won't stop there... The Earth will still rise by 1C in global tempature maybe every 30-50 years from now, but when it does burn, it will not be until we have a new Ice Age so i'm thinking maybe in 2300 it will be a new Ice Age, and by the time Mars it terraformed for humans to live and breath on, the earth will burn and absorb by 2400-2600ish.

I'm pretty sure by 2250 humans will have enough technology to fit lots of passengers in space stations.

[Mr Jive]

I personally think you are getting confused. The earth is home to trillions of micro species which will long surpass our own existence (assuming we can't escape from this rock). Earth is also home to many other forms of life; mammals, plants, fish and shit. Humans make up a small portion of Earth history and we will eventually die out, through whatever way it happens (assuming we can't get off this rock). If we do die though that does not mean the end of the world, because the world is not made for humans. So if we die in the next 100 years because lol oil war, that means humans are dead, it does not mean the world has ended (and even then humans would probably live on in certain places). No to answer your question specifically its is roughly 1 and half billion years till life on earth ends (if that's what you mean) and it is roughly 8 billion years till the earth is engulfed by the sun.

There its a simple as that, that IS how the world will end, all other theories would have to be coincidence. For example a meteorite large enough to knock us out of orbit and/or completely destroy the planet would not be predictable and could even be preventable depending on our tech.

However you may have meant when will human life end. Well gee again that is a very hard question to answer (sort of). Assuming we live long enough and don't make it off the planet and don't get a dooms day war we have time limit of roughly 600 million years. After that due to carbon dioxide levels rising (assuming this doesn't happen early because of global warming or something) plant life will no longer be sustainable and there will be an unbalance of oxygen causing majority species to die out (including us, assuming we don't come up with some fancy way of artificially converting oxygen and holding back the suns rays, or some bull shit like that). But we could die early? Perhaps, but it would be difficult. The largest known disease ever wiped out roughly 5% of the human population, bearing in mind that this was at a point where medical science was less developed and the human population was much smaller. So we can kind of scratch that out

Then there is nuclear warfare, for whatever reason. This again is unlikely, if you wondering why, do some research on the cold war and look up MAD theory. Seriously, unless the world leaders all had negative IQ nuclear Armageddon that cause full extinction is an unlikely scenario and shouldn't be looked at as something that is likely.

But who knows, perhaps a 'skynet' scenario will take place, or maybe shit tons of zombies will appear for some reason (but then in some senses that would simply be an evolutionary step backwards and it would just be another form of humans, a homo immortui if you will. And we can't forget that on the verge of discovering Fusion and other great leaps in science we could probably sustain ourselves in a different region of space. If that is the case though we have a maximum of 10^10^120 years (give or take) before the universe is fully black (lol racism) and there is no chance then of survival (assuming we can't figure out how to leave the universe, but I could go on and on).

tl;dr Earth has minimum of 8 billion years before destruction
Humans have anywhere between 600 million years (earth become uninhabitable) to 10^10^120 (universe become nutin') years before definite death (assuming we are not killed sooner)

[The Mysterious Stranger]

 There are a variety of ways that the world will end itself, mostly by the human beings today. One possible way is World War 3 with nuclear missiles and war-on-war in countries, both citizen and soldier. After that, countries start to decay the eletrical buildings to start to be unmanned, therefore blacking out most cities. In my opinion, people will be using mobile generators and will fight against other citizens aswell and then the old world turns on itself, the environment growing in places that aren't suppose to be there in a few more years from then. Plants begin to grow here and there in unexpected areas like going through the cracks of cement. Just take Tschernobyl and the future Fukushima, do you really think we want them but in other regions of the Earth aswell? Apparently, a mad man will start this all by the click of a button. Radiation will be lurking under your feet everywhere you go. You are not safe no more.

 Hear of mad scientists? Yeah, they will cause epidemics on the world today with diseases that are fatal. We probably won't have a vaccination. Remember the epidemic back somewhere in the 18th - 19th century that killed a massive population in the world ranging from China to North America to Europe? It will probably be much more worse than we expected. Although, there is many disastererous things like cancer to flesh-eating bacteria to diabetes to flu to even chickenpox. We never know what is going to happen.

 Probably aliens... or zombies... or robots... or humans?

 The environment. Not caused by humans but the world itself. Probably in a billion or so years from now. The world will start to crack in half to the villages, towns, city being flooded by a massive loads of water.  a lot of signs are predicted by a lot of people. Fuck conspiracy theorists, let's move on!

 Oh wait, I have no more. That's all I have left. I guess that's the only announcement I had.

 I guess we have to wait and found out. Also, the above users that commented are probably right about it too.

 

 

[Anzu]

c. 500,000,000: The level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will drop as to make Earth unhabitable.

c. 4,000,000,000: The Andromeda–Milky Way collision is a predicted galaxy collision that will take place in approximately 4 billion years' time between the two largest galaxies in the Local Group—the Andromeda Galaxy and the Milky Way, which contains the Solar System and Earth.
 
c. 5,000,000,000: The end of our Sun's current phase of development, after which it will swell into a red giant, either swallowing the Earth or at least completely scorching it. It is widely accepted by the scientific community that the earth will be destroyed around this time. However, as the Sun grows gradually hotter (over millions of years), the Earth may become too hot for life in only a billion years' time.    

10^100 years: The heat death of the universe is a suggested ultimate fate of the universe, in which the universe has diminished to a state of no thermodynamic free energy and therefore can no longer sustain motion or life.

^ Those seems to be the most likely, imo. I dont believe all this religious crap and i will laugh at this so called doom day 2012

If we think besides natural ends, probably a global nuclear war, similar to Fallout and such. Could see that happening if people dont start to agree.

[Mr Jive]

There are a variety of ways that the world will end itself, mostly by the human beings today. One possible way is World War 3 with nuclear missiles and war-on-war in countries, both citizen and soldier. After that, countries start to decay the eletrical buildings to start to be unmanned, therefore blacking out most cities. In my opinion, people will be using mobile generators and will fight against other citizens aswell and then the old world turns on itself, the environment growing in places that aren't suppose to be there in a few more years from then. Plants begin to grow here and there in unexpected areas like going through the cracks of cement. Just take Tschernobyl and the future Fukushima, do you really think we want them but in other regions of the Earth aswell? Apparently, a mad man will start this all by the click of a button. Radiation will be lurking under your feet everywhere you go. You are not safe no more.

 Hear of mad scientists? Yeah, they will cause epidemics on the world today with diseases that are fatal. We probably won't have a vaccination. Remember the epidemic back somewhere in the 18th - 19th century that killed a massive population in the world ranging from China to North America to Europe? It will probably be much more worse than we expected. Although, there is many disastererous things like cancer to flesh-eating bacteria to diabetes to flu to even chickenpox. We never know what is going to happen.

 Probably aliens... or zombies... or robots... or humans?

 The environment. Not caused by humans but the world itself. Probably in a billion or so years from now. The world will start to crack in half to the villages, towns, city being flooded by a massive loads of water.  a lot of signs are predicted by a lot of people. Fuck conspiracy theorists, let's move on!

 Oh wait, I have no more. That's all I have left. I guess that's the only announcement I had.

 I guess we have to wait and found out. Also, the above users that commented are probably right about it too.

 

 

WW3 probably (and I mean seriously) won't happen. I have said this before and I will say it again but the cold war is all you need to look at to understand why WW3 probably won't happen. Even if it does happen there won't be human survivors, anyone within a blast radius would turn to dust, anyone within the fallout radius would be dead within 6 months. It would be the end of civilized human society in 1st world countries. However in more out of the way places that are not effected by super power relations life would go on as normal, until they figure out what went down. It wouldn't equal the end of the world, or humanity. Well perhaps humanity but life would go on. I don't see why in a ww3 scenario every country will be nuked? Unless of course countries have "hostage countries" but still, it seems unlikely.

Mad scientists? Seriously? Do you think that a scientist in this day and age would be able to manufacture a super virus that could wipe out 7 billion humans, a virus that could spread itself globally and a virus that could bypass all forms of medical science without being noticed? The largest natural virus only killed less than %10 of the human population, this was before modern medicine and when (I think) there were less than 2 billion humans. Super viruses are pretty much out of the question in terms of dooms day events.

Unfortunately, aliens is the only logical one because aliens would be the only thing capable of destroying our entire planet, but still, that's just silly. Zombies would be fun but it is scientifically impossible, it would have to be some sort of primitive virus that causes madness, but again see my mad scientist post.

The earth will eventually end by its self, but it will take billions of billions of years, and humans will probably be gone by then anyway (well unless space travel is perfected they will definitely gone by then).