The Future, Part 3: The Far Future

20 – 40 million years Mars may get its own pair of rings! How? Well, Phobos, one of Mars’ moons, is slowly spiraling into Mars. It orbits around Mars like the Moon orbits around Earth, but it is getting closer and closer to Mars, like a boat getting sucked into a whirlpool. Eventually, this will cause rocks and other material to crumble and break off of Phobos. These rocks will form rings around Mars, just like with Saturn.

300 million years While Mars will have gotten some pretty sweet rings by this time, all of Saturn’s rings will have disappeared. Saturn’s rings are made of mainly rocks and ice, which are in orbit around the planet. However, gravity is slowly sucking in these rings into Saturn, also like a boat being sucked into a whirlpool, and eventually, there will be no rings left.

1 – 5 billion years All of the oceans on Earth will have boiled away! As the sun continues in its lifespan, it will eventually get hotter and bigger. Over the next 1 to 5 billion years, this will cause temperatures on Earth to increase by hundreds of degrees, leading to the boiling of all the oceans, rivers, and lakes on its surface!

Here are some really cool images of what the Earth might look like without oceans. Also, here is a link to a NASA animation that actually shows you how draining the oceans would occur!

5 – 8 billion years The Earth falls into the sun and burns up in a fiery hot ball of flame and lava… In about 5 billion years, the sun will enter into the Red Giant Phase, eventually expanding to become 256 times its current size today. It will first swallow up Venus, and then Earth will meet its fate… But, even if humans are still alive by this time, they will almost have certainly spread throughout the galaxy to more peaceful places, away from the terrifying expanding Sun.