Earth & Beyond 17 October 2014 | Page 6

When Is The End Of I The End? In 600 million years year mark, our Milky photosynthesis be- Way galaxy collides n 100,000 comes impossible as with the Andromeda years the too much carbon di- galaxy but, although position of Earth in oxide gets trapped they the Milky Way will in Earth's crust. have changed to interact, most of the galaxies A billion years from are empty space. such a degree that today all multicelluthe will This means that constellations lar life, including us, only about six out of will look completely a trillion stars might actu- different in the night sky. Any time in the next 500,000 y e a r s , meanwhile, we can w i l l ally collide. expect Earth to be be eradicated as the In 7.9 billion years, hit by an asteroid sun boils our oceans when our sun runs large enough to sig- and destroys nificantly alter our greenery. climate our out of gas, it starts to expand and con- At the four billion sumers the inner