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The greatest long-term threats facing humanity
How long can civilisation survive? To thrive for billions of years, there will be a few troublesome problems to solve – from the death of the Sun to the decay of matter.
Can we actually say anything about the far future?
- Anders Sandberg
- BBC
If we can’t predict when it will rain next month, forecasting billions of years hence might seem impossible.
However, not everything is as chaotic as the weather: even predictions very far ahead are sometimes possible, especially in astrophysics and cosmology.
We can be confident that there will be a total solar eclipse in the UK on 23 September 2090 because the…