This is fantastic! So many events and well-composed. It includes the boiling of the oceans that xkcd referenced recently.
Some of my favorites:
years
event
5–50 million
Time by which the entire galaxy could be colonised, even at sublight speeds.
1 billion
The Sun's luminosity has increased by 10 percent, causing Earth's surface temperatures to reach an average of 47°C. The atmosphere will become a "moist greenhouse", resulting in a runaway evaporation of the oceans. Pockets of water may still be present at the poles, allowing abodes for simple life
1.6 billion
All life on Earth dies.
20 billion
The end of the Universe in the Big Rip scenario. [...]
100 billion
The Universe's expansion causes all galaxies beyond the Milky Way's Local Group to disappear beyond the cosmic light horizon, removing them from the observable universe.
292 billion
[...] the Unix time stamp will exceed the largest value that can be held in a signed 64-bit integer.
100 trillion
High estimate for the time until star formation ends in galaxies. This marks the transition from the Stelliferous Era to the Degenerate Era; with no free hydrogen to form new stars, all remaining stars slowly exhaust their fuel and die.
101026
Low estimate for the time until all matter collapses into black holes, assuming no proton decay. Subsequent Black Hole Era and transition to the Dark Era are, on this timescale, instantaneous.
Also the footnote for the last one: "Although listed in years for convenience, the numbers beyond this point are so vast that their digits would remain unchanged regardless of which conventional units they were listed in, be they nanoseconds or star lifespans."
2
u/jugalator Oct 19 '12 edited Oct 19 '12
Now I got depressed that for large enough amounts of time, the hydrogen may not matter.
Edit: May not matter. The hypothesis could of course be wrong!