When Will The World End?

When Will The World End?
Answer 1:With the recent oddball predictions of the end of the world from a one Harold Camping, and the ever impending 2012 Mayan calender prediction in just a year and a half, talk of the end of the world has been rife among many sources. But just when will it end? Well, in this piece we will be disregarding any religious, cultural, or supernatural predictions (there are hundreds of those, we'd be here all day), and instead focusing on scientific theories, backed up with evidence and cold, hard logic.

Here are a few 'end of the world' predictions, or at least factors that could contribute to the destruction of our world:

• Stellar evolution of our sun
• Andromeda Galaxy collision
• Eventual heat death of the universe

Our sun has a finite resource of hydrogen (the fuel needed to keep it burning) at its core, and the evolution of stars theory suggests that once this reserve has been exhausted, the Sun will balloon in size and so the Earth would then only orbit at 250,000 miles from the star. Unlike most ideas, the Earth will not be consumed by the Sun itself, although most if not all life on the planet will perish due to the Sun's proximity. But, the Earth's orbit will be disrupted heavily due to a phenomena called tidal drag, causing it to enter the Sun's expanded atmosphere. The Earth's oceans will evaporate entirely before the planet is finally pulled apart by gravitational forces. This will happen in approximately 7.4 billion years.

Calculations also suggest that our nearest galaxy (the Andromeda galaxy at about 2.5 millions light years away) is on a crash course with our own galaxy, The Milky Way. Even at an alarming speed of 87 miles per second, it would still take the galaxy 3 billion years to reach us. The following merging of galaxies could cause the solar system to be ejected on an eccentric orbit to and unwanted position, meaning our planet will become near uninhabitable within The Milky Way.

The eventual heat death of the universes is a theory that suggests the universe will diminish to a state of no thermodynamic free energy and so can no longer sustain motion or life. It's basically the eventual cooling down of everything in our universe, ever. In the language of physics, the universe will have reached maximum entropy. It is understood that the universe will reach maximum entropy after a time period much greater than the 13.4 billion years it has taken for the cosmos to get this far, so you don't have much to worry about. Yet.

Source: http://www.blurtit.com/