250Million Years in the future








There will be changes affecting the Earth itself. In a few million years continental drift will change the map of the world. Antarctica will move away from the south pole and weathering will wear down the mountains. Together
these changes will probably bring the present ice age to an end. Between ice ages the weather is warm all over the world and the continents are flat and largely covered by warm shallow seas.


Perhaps, in 250 million years, another ice age will begin.


The Earth will be destroyed when the Sun changes into a red giant, in about 4 billion years from now.


Future of Medicine


Within the next few years it is likely that scientists will be able to grow organs to replace worn out or diseased organs. These will be grown from a single cell taken from the
person. This will enable us to extend the lives of people.


In the same way they will be able to take a cell from a plant or animal and grow an entirely new type of creature, for example an animal with two heads. The discoveries of science
have given us enormous power. This is one reason why this web site is important. You need to understand the basic facts of science so you can help to decide how these discoveries are to be used (or not used).


Future of Energy


There is no shortage of energy if we can learn how to use it. The Sun gives us a thousand times more energy than people use. Controlled nuclear fusion offers the promise of large amounts of energy with little pollution. As the
oil runs out more resources will be spent until a suitable source of energy of found.Future of Climate
Once the oil and coal run out the greenhouse gases will reduce. Then the climate will probably get colder and head towards the next glacial period
as it has been tending to do for the past 5000 years. The next glacial
will probably start within a few thousand years. This will be an even
greater challenge to the world than global warming.
Future of Computers
Computers
and telecommunications are already giving us access to large amounts of
information This is increasing our brain power, just as steam engines
increased our muscle power. As computers become more powerful they will
grow more intelligent There seems no reason why machines should not
become more intelligent than people in the future. Computers will start
to design and build other computers. They will then be able to evolve,
just as life evolves. There will then be two forms of "life". Many
thousands of years in the future there might be competition for power
between computers and life. Which will win?
Well, computers certainly have many advantages over life. They can

• process large amounts of information quickly
  
• be switched off for years, then start to work perfectly when
  they are switched back on (very handy for travelling over stellar
  distances)
  
• be made very small, and control tiny machines
  
• work together in networks to solve big problems
  

Furthermore

• Electronics is much simpler than life's chemistry and does not need liquid water.
  
• Unlike animals, which rely on plants to turn sunlight into
  chemical energy, semiconductors (the material that computers are made
  from) can turn sunlight directly into electricity.
  

When you compare computers to people the advantages are even more obvious.

• Computers do not have the instincts to fight which people seem to have.
  
• It takes only a few seconds to load a program into a computer but years to educate a human.
  
• When computers get out of date their information can be passed
  to new computers, but when people get old and die all their knowledge
  is lost.
  

For all these reasons I believe computers will be more successful
and important than life many thousands of years in the future. I expect
computers, not people, to colonize the other planets and explore the
Galaxy. Life will be left behind on Earth, as a treasured relic of
where computers came from.
However it is possible that computers and life might merge to make a new, even more powerful form of intelligent being.