11th millennium and beyond

Several predictions have been made concerning the future following the 11th millennium and beyond. This article is a compendium of these predictions ranging from factual astronomical knowledge to predictions of science fiction productions.

Astronomical events

This section lists several rare astronomical events expected to occur after the year 10,000.

All dates are in a uniform time scale like Terrestrial Time. When converted to our ordinary solar time or Universal Time, which is decidedly non-uniform, via ΔT, the dates would be a few days earlier. Because of this difference, these dates have no anniversary relation to historical dates. Furthermore, they are only astronomical dates, so they are given in the astronomical format of Year Month Day.

Barnard's Star

• 11,800: Closest approach of Barnard's Star to the Sun at 3.8 light-years.

Coincidences of nodes of planets

• 12,720: Coincidence of the nodes of Mercury and Venus
• 67,730: Coincidence of the nodes of Mercury and Venus

Special transits

Simultaneous occurrence of solar eclipse and transit

• 10,663 August 20: Similar occurrence of total solar eclipse and a transit of Mercury
• 11,268 August 25: Similar occurrence of total solar eclipse and a transit of Mercury
• 11,575 February 28: Similar occurrence of annular solar eclipse and a transit of Mercury
• 15,232 April 5: Similar occurrence of total solar eclipse and a transit of Venus
• 15,790 April 20: Similar occurrence of annular solar eclipse and a transit of Mercury

Simultaneous transits of Mercury and Venus

• 13,425 September 13: In a time interval of only 16 hours a transit of Mercury and a transit of Venus takes place
• 69,163 July 26: Simultaneous transit of Mercury and Venus
• 224,508 March 27: Simultaneous transit of Mercury and Venus

Occultations of bright stars by planets

10,000-11,000

• 10,032 November 1: Venus occults Regulus
• 10,494 November 9: Venus occults Regulus
• 10,674 October 5: Mercury occults Aldebaran
• 10,956 November 16: Venus occults Regulus
• 10,974 April 28: Ceres occults Antares

11,000-12,000

• 11,398 December 11: Mercury occults Regulus
• 11,418 November 24: Venus occults Regulus

12,000-13,000

• 12,063 July 28: Mars occults Regulus
• 12,115 December 5: Venus occults Regulus
• 12,233 December 23: Mercury occults Regulus
• 12,308 January 10: Mars occults Regulus
• 12,347 July 30: Mars occults Regulus
• 12,812 December 15: Venus occults Regulus

13,000-14,000

• 13,189 February 9: Mercury occults Regulus
• 13,207 January 25: Mars occults Regulus
• 13,534 November 28: Mercury occults Aldebaran
• 13,595 January 11: Mercury occults Regulus
• 13,744 December 29: Venus occults Regulus
• 14,121 January 18: Mercury occults Regulus

14,000-15,000

• 14,161 March 11: Venus occults Regulus
• 14,384 January 22: Mercury occults Regulus
• 14,619 August 10: Mars occults Regulus
• 14,647 January 26: Mercury occults Regulus
• 14,910 January 29: Mercury occults Regulus

After 15,000

• 22,767 April 18: Ceres occults Aldebaran
• 23,527 August 1: Pallas occults Castor
• 40,529 January 11: Ceres occults Aldebaran
• 41,367 January 7: Ceres occults Aldebaran

Events after 1,000,000

• 200,000,000 (two hundred million): Red Supergiant, Betelgeuse explodes as a supernova
• 700,000,000 (seven hundred million): The Earth's oceans start to evaporate and the Earth becomes uninhabitable. [1] Future civilization may avoid this by using advanced technology to move the Earth further away from the Sun (or entirely leave Earth altogether in a mass exodus to other habitable planets or on space colonies).
• 3,000,000,000 (three billion): The Andromeda Galaxy and our Milky Way Galaxy are predicted to collide (they may merge and become one larger galaxy, but only a small percentage of stars will actually collide with other stars mostly because of the vastness of space).
• 5,000,000,000 (five billion): The Sun becomes a red giant and all life on Earth, possibly Earth itself, is destroyed, barring unforeseen circumstances, unless advanced technology can prevent this.
• 7,000,000,000 (seven billion): The Sun becomes a white dwarf about the size of the Earth.
• 1,000,000,000,000 (one trillion): The Sun becomes a black dwarf.
• 1,000,000,000,000,000 (one quadrillion): The Big Freeze according to many cosmologists. Intelligent life existing then may flee to other universes, as suggested by the physicist Michio Kaku.
• 10¹⁰⁰ (one googol): If the theory of black hole evaporation is correct, it is predicted by many astronomers that all the black holes in our universe will evaporate by around this year.

It is possible that the universe stops expanding and starts to contract ultimately disappearing in the Big Crunch, the event where the universe collapses back to singularity. Alternatively, the universe may face the Big Rip, where the expansion of the universe becomes so powerful that even the spacetime breaks apart. According to current knowledge, both possibilities seem unlikely. The universe is believed to expand forever in an ever faster pace.

Eras

• 428,899: The last year of the Kali Yuga, the current and last of four Hindu Yugas (eras).

Technology

• 52,007: The KEO satellite returns to Earth carrying messages for future humanity.
• December 4, 292,277,026,596: 64-bit Unix time resets to zero.
• December 31, 17,014,118,346,046,923,173,168,730,371,588,410: 128-bit Unix time resets to zero.

Science fiction

• Around 12,000: The events of Vampire Hunter D take place.
• 12,469: The setting of the science fiction project Orion's Arm.
• 14,292: On July 6th, Takaya Noriko and Kazumi Amano will return to Earth after detonating the Black Hole Bomb in 2048, according to the last episode of the Japanese animation OVA series Gunbuster.
• 17,276: The events of the game Xenogears begin.
• 20,001: The events of the epilogue to 2010: Odyssey Two occur.
• 21,592: It is estimated that the events of the first Dune novel take place.
• 25th millennium: The events of Isaac Asimov's Foundation take place.
• 28,702: In the Anarchy Online universe, the planet Rubi-Ka is discovered by the Omni-Tek Corporation.
• 31st millennium: In the Games Workshop universe, the events of the Horus Heresy take place.
• 85,271: Many of the events of the DC Comics' DC One Million series take place. Superman emerges from his 15,000-year exile in his Fortress of Solitude inside the sun.
• 200,000: The year that the British science fiction television program Doctor Who episode The Long Game takes place in.
• 200,100: The year that the British science fiction television program Doctor Who episodes Bad Wolf and The Parting of the Ways take place in.
• 802,701: The year that the Time Traveller meets the Eloi and the Morlocks in The Time Machine by H. G. Wells.
• In the Babylon 5 universe, approximately one million years after the founding of the Interstellar Alliance (2262 AD), humans evolve into beings of energy. They leave Earth for the old Vorlon homeworld — and ultimately destroy the solar system to keep any remaining technology out of the hands of younger races.
• In the show Red Dwarf, Red Dwarf is a gigantic spaceship belonging to the Jupiter Mining Corporation. An on-board radiation leak kills everyone except for Dave Lister, who was in suspended animation at the time. Three million years later, Lister emerges from stasis as the last human being alive.
• In the documentary The Future is Wild, scientists believe that in 5,000,000 years time, the world will be in an ice age. The Mediterranean Sea will be a vast salt plain and the Amazon rainforest will be no more. Creatures of this land include huge killer birds, thin-legged pigs, sticky-frilled lizards and birds that act like whales. Humans, by this time, have either gone extinct or have left the planet.
• 30,000,000: The Time Traveller finds himself on a shoreline with a thin atmosphere, a black sky with few stars, the moon gone, & no evidence of intelligent life - HG Wells' The Time Machine
• In the documentary The Future is Wild, scientists speculate that in 100,000,000 years time, the world will be very hot due to excess volcanic activity. Antarctica will be a lush rainforest. Creatures of this world include enormous tortoises, amphibious octopuses, four-winged birds and rodent eating spiders. At this time, there is also only one species of mammal left, which is preyed upon by the spiders.
• In the documentary The Future is Wild, scientists speculate that in 200,000,000 years time, the world will contain one global ocean and one continent, like Pangea. Approximately 100,000,000 years before this time, there was a mass extinction and now most the world's land is desert, with a couple of rainforests around the edge. Creatures of this world include air-breathing flying fish, giant plankton, various huge worms, highly specialized insects and intelligent, arboreal land-squid. There are no mammals, no birds, no reptiles, no amphibians, only one species of flowering plants and only sharks left to represent aquatic fish. Other creatures have moved in to fill these niches.
• In the show Time Squad, main characters live in the year 1,000,000,000.
• Approximately 5 billion years away from now: The year of The End of the World in the British science fiction television program Doctor Who. The date is given as 5.5/Apple/26 - implying that the explanation of 5 billion was an approximation.
• In the British science fiction television program "Doctor Who", in the episode New Earth, Humans are shown to have moved to a new planet and called it New Earth in the galaxy M87, this is based in the year 5 billion and 23.
• In Stephen Baxter's Manifold: Time novel, the last descendants of humanity, close to the Big Freeze, make some changes to our near present in order to release the universe's vacuum energy, spawn new universes, and avoid letting the Big Freeze happen.

See also

• Alpha Centauri
• Ultimate fate of the universe