1. 7.59 Billion Years From Now: Destroyed By Falling Into The Sun
Spoiler alert: the Sun is essentially the Earth's arch nemesis in the story of the planet's final years, the supervillain which will ultimately be responsible for its demise. It's a cruel, tragic irony that the huge burning start which allowed life to flourish on our little celestial body is also the one to snuff it out, which is probably comparable to some old Greek play about a dude killing his kids by accident or something. If Freud didn't have a theory based around a myth, we probably haven't been told it by our therapists. Erm, we mean we haven't heard of it. So here it is, we reach the final curtain, the scientific fact which blows the minds and kickstarts the tear ducts of every child foolish enough to ask too many questions when learning about the solar system at primary school. Nearly 8 billion years from now, most life on the planet will have been expunged by the growing temperatures of the Sun. At this point even the single-celled organisms will have died out, with even the Earth's poles reaching an average temperature of 147°C (for comparison, that's way above boiling point, or round about the heat of a freshly-run bath when you dip your big toe into it). The freezing of the planet's core will have thrown us off balance as it is, and the Moon's increasing distance will make the Earth's tilt chaotic and extreme. Essentially this is around the time the Earth turns into a giant, dead spinning top, floating wildly through the cosmos without a care in the world (or at least anybody to give one). The planet will not appear anything like we know it today, with conditions on the surface having more in common with the Venus of today. Have you ever been to Venus? Of course you haven't, nobody has. Why would you. You'd die. Then, when all seems lost, the Sun will reach the peak of its red giant phase, ballooning to a size 256 times larger than it is today, swallowing up the Earth completely. And we are not afraid! Because we will have died a long time ago.
Tom Baker is the Comics Editor at WhatCulture! He's heard all the Doctor Who jokes, but not many about Randall and Hopkirk. He also blogs at http://communibearsilostate.wordpress.com/
