Universe expected to decay in 10⁷⁸ years, much sooner than previously thought

Re:Universe expected to decay in 10⁷⁸ years, much sooner tha... by burnt-resistor on Monday May 12, 2025 @04:45PM (#43967283)

To survive beyond 1 Gy from now, life will need to move underground where the water is and hopefully much cooler than the eventual surface. Also, such life may/will become necessary to relocate to Mars, hopefully taking resources with them. (I don't say "us" because of likely dramatic evolution.)

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Re:Universe expected to decay in 10⁷⁸ years, much sooner tha... by zmgsabst on Monday May 12, 2025 @11:48PM (#43969511)

1 Gy ago, life wasn’t multicellular.

I don’t think we have the ability to meaningfully predict such scales.

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Re:Universe expected to decay in 10⁷⁸ years, much sooner tha... by thombat on Tuesday May 13, 2025 @12:44AM (#43969688)

The only reason that the subsurface rock is cooler than magma is being able to conduct heat through to a cooler surface. When that surface becomes exterminatingly hot and remains so for a while the subsurface will be heating up too. Since the sun is estimated to remain a red giant for about one Gy it will become hotter than the surface.

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Re:Universe expected to decay in 10⁷⁸ years, much sooner tha... by Timwi on Tuesday May 13, 2025 @06:52AM (#43971554)

At that scale of time, it's not implausible that we have the technology to relocate Earth itself by then (e.g. increase its orbit).

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Re:Universe expected to decay in 10⁷⁸ years, much sooner tha... by soulofmischief on Tuesday May 13, 2025 @07:39AM (#43971780)

Completely in line with our propensity for destabilizing harmonic systems in nature. Imagine we do that and all of the other planetary orbits degenerate or become dangerous.

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