RVCA

Our star isn't massive enough to become a black hole. It will expand at the end of its life (and engulf earth), but eventually it will retract and become a white dwarf, smaller in diameter than the current sun.

Guybrush

I didn't actually mean that it's the fate of every star to become a black hole at the end of it's life, even if my post may seem to suggest that. Our star will become part of a black hole when it's mass is one day swallowed up by one.

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RVCA

Oh, yeah, I'm no astrophysicist either, but I don't think we know enough about black holes to say with confidence that everything will eventually converge into one superdupermassive black hole (singularity) at some point in the very distant future. I mean, if I understand what you're saying correctly, you're repeating the theory known as the Big Crunch which predicts that everything in the universe will eventually stop expanding and begin contracting.

Guybrush

Ehr, no .. I never wrote that everything will converge in one superduper black hole

Note that "holes" is plural, although yes, I see .. there's an it there instead of them at the end of the sentence. Sigh

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Dr_Rez

Point taken, but for the threads sake it sounds 10x better if the title is WORLD ENDING! Anyways if there is no more people to verify the worlds existence we may as well call it over since we would have no way of knowing.

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GuitarBizarre

Because this thread title is snappier and encompasses at least one way of viewing the sentence you're taking issue with.

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Listening to: RushEsque2 [foobar2000 v1.0.3]

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Janszoon

Well in that case, here's what I think: we'll keep evolving until we are no longer human, at which point the world will cease to exist because there will be no more people.

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25 Albums You Should Hear Before the Moon Crashes into the Earth and We All Die

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Guybrush

That's a potentially interesting discussion on speciation and taxonomy

If I remember correctly, Willi Hennig, the father of modern cladistics, suggested that a species goes extinct (changes) when it has diverged into two species that are sexually isolated from eachother. At that point in time, as if that could happen in one recognizable moment, the parent species is considered gone and two new species have appeared. From some points of view, it makes a lot of sense, but alas not always and becomes horribly impractical in practice as taxonomic relationships are probed, tested, reviewed and changed over time.

Divergence of the human species is a possibility though. Perhaps we'll one day genetically design humans which are sexually isolated from us "naturals", but are still able to successfully have sexually viable offspring with eachother. Or perhaps we'll colonize a distant planet, but then a catastrophy isolates a colony for many hundreds of thousands of years so that they evolve differently from other humans.

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Janszoon

Have you ever heard of the book Man After Man? It's pretty much about that exact thing. It's an illustrated future history of the human race that starts with some groups of humans being genetically engineered for various reasons and then throughout the ages follows the evolution of these divergent human species. Kind of an interesting cross between science fiction and evolutionary biology and definitely worth checking out if you find that kind of speculation as fascinating as I do.

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Freebase Dali

I'm bored, and will construct a theoretical scenario for the end of our world (as we know it) on this planet.

• In the same way that old "future" movies got prediction [unfashionably] wrong, the argument about world-wide nuclear war proves to be a gross miscalculation, seeing as civilized countries with nuclear weapons didn't suddenly all decide to bomb each other in a futile attempt at... saving themselves.... by eradicating everyone they depend on economically. Instead, driven by greed and a desire for bank notes as an alternative to any representation of real worth as nations, they formed a new United Nations which was composed of all countries with nukes or any significant military force. They way they did this was to accuse any other country in the process of developing nuclear material (or other potential weapons of mass destruction) of being "terrorists", thus gaining approval of the rest of the allies [who were equally threatened by being shown up by the underdogs], to destroy the stability of these countries and create dependency without the ability to resist on an impacting scale.
• With all outside threats dissolved, this new union of profitable/powerful nations had no one to distrust. Eventually, suspicions turned inward. Union nations became increasingly scrutinized, because all of them assumed someone wanted to be on the top of the totem pole, and innocent actions were viewed as disguised treachery. So there was a treaty to disarm themselves of nukes and other weapons of mass destruction. But unfortunately, there were several nations who would not agree to do so. The rest of The Union knew this was a sign of intent to dominate (and rightly so) and these nations were then cast in a light much the same as the light cast on the nations already taken out. It worked before, and it worked again.
• Nations that refused to disarm were attacked and defeated by the rest of The Union. Nuclear stockpiles were all depleted. Man felt that the great human triumph was at hand. But growing suspicions about the technology advantages and lesser weapon advantages of other nations painted the picture that they were too unbalanced to maintain a state of equality across nations. Nukes were gone, but there still remained advantages, should war break out in The Union.
• A treaty to disarm nations of missiles, missile defense systems, aircraft, aircraft carriers, and all other technologically advanced systems of warfare was created. Any nation that refused to comply would be treated as terrorists, and dealt with by The Union. Unfortunately, there were nations in The Union that would not comply. They were overpowered and disarmed by the rest of the allies in The Union and their power dissolved.
• By this time, the technology and defense capability of nations were reverted to earlier ages. To defend your country would mean you did so with rifles and, most likely, your life. For a long time, The Union was at peace, but secret manufacturing processes were revealed by spies and The Union discovered that several nations were trying to advance their capabilities, should something happen.
• The last treaty was proposed, which would destroy all weapons completely. The few remaining Union nations that agreed naturally overtook the nations that didn't (before signing the treaty) and eventually, there were no weapons apart from what knives you found, or what knives you could make. What stones you could throw.

• The decline of technology brought humanity back to the stone ages. Government dissolved, and the remnants of civilization, the roads, the buildings, remained as headstones of our buried past. All our advances were a weapon against us. And although disease wiped most of the population out, due to the lack of medical treatment we once enjoyed, there were a few who survived in small tribes. And through the ages, stories of the old world became legends, then myths. Then after all the remnants were gone, the surviving population began to advance. And then... there was a very creative man... He changed their world. He invented a gun.