NOT talking about 2012 here, just speaking in general, is it possible to predict when the world will end?

Sure. It's possible to predict when the world will end. But, it can be hard to be right about the prediction.

It's much easier to be right when one has good data and logic backing up the claim.

Of the near-term predictions I've seen made for when the world will end, inevitably the predictors have bad data, bad logic, and often both.

(Thank you for not talking about the year 2012 hogwash.)

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Absolutely.
Pick your poison.
GRB? Supernova?
Major Impactor?

Grey goo? Bioweapon? Clanking replicators? Antimatter? Close pass by a rogue star? Galactic jet? Alien pest control, such as a relativistic weapon to eliminate the competition? Berserker swarm? Planet hatching? Sudden Existence Failure?

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"If this were play'd upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction."
Shakespeare, Twelfth Night
"The Mayan symbol for "book" looks a lot like a triple hamburger, but I've never seen them claiming it as proof the Mayans had Big Macs." - KaiYeves
"Distance doesn’t matter much in space, where if you just start a thing off with the right kind of shove, sooner or later it will get where you want it to go." -Frederik Pohl, Mining the Oort

Oh, that one is one of my personal favorites.

Wandering Damage. [points if you figure out what it means]

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Fiction has to be plausible. Reality is under no such constraint.

This is how the world will end: misadventure with a pie and copper lawn ornaments.

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---"Why do things have to suck so bad?" a friend once asked me.
"Because space is a vacuum and that's a lot of suck." I replied.
(Actual quote)---

WORLD ends with D.

I think my shins figured that one out years ago. Usually on the edges of beds.
The top of my cranium too- usually victim to cabinet door corners.

I have some Art Deco metal chairs with curved backs, and if wander into their corners... ouch!

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Fiction has to be plausible. Reality is under no such constraint.

The funny thing is, after I posted that I went to the kitchen thinking daydreamy thoughts of breakfast... and discovered that I had jinxed myself.

Making predictions is hard, especially about the future. I believe Yogi Berra said that.
Though as everyone else has pointed out, it is accurate predictions that are the real brain busters.
And isn't Wandering Damage some old Dungeons and Dragons table?

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No, it was a joke on a Dungeons and Dragons table. "Wandering monsters" were not a fixed part of a dungeon, but would randomly appear, usually generated by random rolls on a Wandering Monster Table. They were a way for the DM to weaken a too-strong party before it reached its main goal, or just to be sadistic. The joke was: since the only purpose of Wandering Monsters is to inflict damage on the party, the DM could save time by skipping the middleman and just rolling for Wandering Damage. Or, as a friend of mine liked to say, Wandering Case of Brain Death (she claimed to know a lot of people in real life to whom that happened).

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Fiction has to be plausible. Reality is under no such constraint.

Dear Unregistered:

You'll like the thread The Carter Catastrophe.

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"A witty saying proves nothing" Voltaire.
"All your bias are belong to us" Ara Pacis.

Reminds me of that Shakespeare play where one guy says he can call spirits, and another guy goes "Anybody can. But will they come when you call?"

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I want to go back to the moon.
I don't care which rocket you use, whichever one you pick, I'll like it, I swear.
"If you think the LHC will create black holes, you might as well believe Hobbits are at the bottom of your garden."- Dr. Mike Inglis
Rovers forever! - ToSeek

The world ending? If we knew that a giant meteoroid was going to hit Earth and when, but would that mean the world would absolutely end? I don't know.

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We'll have to outwit the fiend with our superior intelligence.
Yukon Cornelius

I am glad it was a joke, because if my DM tried that on my I would personally leap across the table and rip out his throat with my teeth. Either that or send him a nasty sounding letter, I can't decide.

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I suppose it depends on whether you are playing in person or over the Internet...

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Fiction has to be plausible. Reality is under no such constraint.

hi,

I'm new to this board, so i still haven't learned enough to reliably predict if/when a "Vacuum metastability event" will take place.

According to wikipedia, Coleman and de Luccia noted in "Gravitational effects on and of vacuum decay". Physical Review D21: 3305.:

wikipedia further tells:
I'm sure this qualifies for "end of the world" - enjoy!

yes you can

i predict in roughly 5 billion years from now our sun will grow and then blink out

i also predict that in 5 billion years from now our sister galaxy Andromeda will hit the milky way and throw oour sun to the other side passing the center of the milky way



with the only thing left at the end of it all is a 2 headed man wondering around arguing with himself about what just happend

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WE did go to the moon so get over it

That may not be the end of mankind, just the End of Earth. And anyway, unless mankind (or another intelligent life form) does something, life on Earth will be impossible in about 70 million years.

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Impossible from.... The Micro Black Holes?

No, from the sun heating up as it ages. That's what I heard any way. Not the red dwarf stage, nowhere near it, but enough over time to evaporate the oceans and turn Earth into a Venus.

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The sun will heat up and evaporate the Earths oceans in 70 million years?
Hmmm...
I never heard that one...

Sorry, at least 500 million years, not 70.
And we probably will adopt - the killer would not be the temperature but the depletion of CO2 due to it, which we are richly dispersing even now

Anyway, if humanity survives for 500 million years then it long wouldn't be humanity, but something more akin to gods.

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"A witty saying proves nothing" Voltaire.
"All your bias are belong to us" Ara Pacis.

A fine list of how to destroy the Earth

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At night the stars put on a show for free (Carole King)

One Earth, One Sky - IYA 2009
All moderation in purple

"End of mankind" and end of "the world" can be two different things. Considering the end of the human race as we know it today and barring all the calamities that the planet itself could face as described in Phil Plait's new book, we know from studying life on Earth that the human species of today will one day become extinct.

This need not be a totally depressing prospect because it is possible that we might evolve into a distantly related life-form, if there was a reason for it, or if we ourselves manipulated our own DNA for whatever reasons. (i.e. Future human colonists living on Mars might eventually evolve very differently from Earthbound relatives.) One could arbitrarily set a broad average, based on our studies of life on earth and say that mankind, if overcoming possible outside threats and avoiding our own stupidity, might last within approximately 100 thousand more years before dying off and/or changing into a hybrid humanlike new species. That's only a guess based on how long we've been here since CroMagnon times, about 40 thousand years ago.

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"Insignificant molehill sometimes more important than conspicuous mountain." - Charlie Chan

The End of Everything, by none other than Fraser himself.

End of Stars - 100 trillion years from now

The End of Regular Matter - 10^30 years

Some theories of physics predict that protons are unstable over long periods of time. They just can't last. Any matter that wasn't consumed by a black hole will start to decay. The protons will turn into radiation, leaving a fine mist of electrons, positrons, neutrinos and radiation to spread out into space.

Theorists anticipate that all protons in the Universe will decay over the course of 1030 years.

Then the gods m1omg mentioned will say: Fiat Lux!

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What brings us together is stronger than what pulls us apart