• Question: is the world going to end?

    Asked by saida123456 to Claire, Joanna, Kapila, Renata, Suzanne on 20 Jun 2013.
    • Photo: Renata Medeiros

      Renata Medeiros answered on 20 Jun 2013:

      Well… the sun is a star and we know stars don’t last forever so the world as we know it will certainly get to an end (sorry for the bad news but don’t worry too much, we still have a few million years before that happens). The question of how humans then will be able to respond to that is a different one – maybe we’ll be able to find another planet to live in, maybe we’ll find another source of energy for planet earth, or maybe we’ll just disappear! Who knows?

    • Photo: Claire El Mouden

      Claire El Mouden answered on 20 Jun 2013:

      Eventually – because the sun will run out of energy. But don’t worry, that won’t happen for millions and millions of years yet!

      I think we need to worry more about taking care of our planet in the short term so that it is kept beautiful for your grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

    • Photo: Joanna Bryson

      Joanna Bryson answered on 20 Jun 2013:

      Actually, it will be another 4,000,000,000 years before we expect our sun to die, but there will be very many changes before that. Species evolve quickly – our species, homo sapiens, has only been around for about 200,000 years. The English language has only been around for about 1200 years. We’ve only had mobile phones & the world wide web for about 20 years. So depending on what you mean by “world”, all kinds of things might change during your life time, but many other things probably won’t. As a human being, you get to live a pretty long time on average, and you are very, very smart and will be able to adjust to quite a lot of changes. So change isn’t something to be afraid of, but knowing that changes will always come is a good reason to spend time learning, and a good reason to do science to understand them.

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