To put 2023 into perspective, here's a brief timeline of the entire future in 23 key moments:
1. 6,091 years from now The Crypt of Civilization, a time capsule buried in Atlanta, Georgia, is scheduled to be opened.
2. 10,000 years from now the Svalbard Global Seed Vault in Norway will have reached its lifespan.
3. 15,000 years from now the oscillation of Earth's poles will cause the climate of the Sahara Desert to become tropical, as it was in the past.
4. 24,115 years from now - the half-life of plutonium-239 - Chernobyl will return to normal levels of radiation.
5. 50,000 years from now Niagara Falls will have eroded all the way back to Lake Erie, meaning that they will no longer exist.
6. 1 million years from now footprints left by the Apollo astronauts on the moon will finally erode because of space weathering.
7. 7.2 million years from now Mount Rushmore will erode beyond recognition.
8. 10 million years from now the Red Sea will flood the widening East African Rift Valley and a new ocean will divide the continent of Africa.
9. 80 million years from now all of the current Hawaiian Islands will have sunk beneath the surface of the ocean, but a chain of new islands will have emerged to replace them.
10. 90 million years from now the Rings of Saturn will have disintegrated.
11. 100 million years from now the world's largest cities will have become fossilized layers in the earth. Future archaeologists should be able to figure out what they were.
12. 300 million years from now all the continents of the earth will merge into a new supercontinent.
13. 800 million years from now, because of the sun's increasing luminosity, most of earth will have become a barren desert and plants and animals will be living, if at all, in the oceans.
14. 900 million years from now carbon dioxide levels will fall to the point where photosynthesis is no longer possible, and all plant life will die out.
15. 1 billion years from now any remaining animal life - which does not depend on living plants, such as termites, or which lives around hydrothermal vents - will die out.
The only life left on the Earth after this will be single-celled organisms.
16. 1 billion years from now information stored on the two Voyager Golden Records launched in 1977 - containing a history of life on earth - will degrade and become unrecoverable.
17. 2.8 billion years from now all remaining life on earth will become extinct.
18. 3.5 billion years from now the sun's luminosity will cause all remaining water to evaporate, and the earth's surface temperature will rise to 1,130 °C, hot enough to melt some kinds of rock.
19. 8 billion years from now the earth and moon will most likely fall into the sun as it approches the climax of its red giant phase.
20. 150 billion years from now the universe's expansion will cause all galaxies beyond what was the Milky Way to disappear beyond the cosmic light horizon - they will fade from the observable universe.
21. 100 quintillion years from now, if earth didn't fall into the sun during its red giant phase, its orbit will decay and the earth will collide with the black dwarf sun.
22. 10 duodigintillion years from now the universe will be almost empty. Photons, baryons, neutrinos, electrons, and positrons will fly from place to place, rarely encountering one another...
23. At a point in time too incalculably distant to be written in numbers, the universe will reach its final energy state and then... another Big Bang may occur.
The cycle begins again.
These are, at least, some speculative scientific predictions about the future.
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Neuschwanstein Castle in Germany isn't a real Medieval castle.
It's less than 150 years old and there are even photos of it being built.
But that isn't unusual — because lots of famous old buildings aren't as old as they seem...
Neuschwanstein was built by King Ludwig II of Bavaria, an eccentric man obsessed with Medieval romances and myths.
Inspired by the operas of Richard Wagner, he had Neuschwanstein built in the 1870s as a literal fairytale castle where he could live in his own dreamworld.
And there are plenty more "fake" castles along the lines of Neuschwanstein.
Like the fabulous Pena Palace in Portugal, built in the 19th century as a summer residence for Ferdinand II.
No real Medieval castle would have looked like this.
Although there's evidence that a game sort of similar to tennis was played in Ancient Egypt and Greece, the story of modern tennis begins in 11th century France.
What happened? Monks started playing a game in monastery yards where they hit a ball back and forth.
This game came to be called "Jeu de Paume", meaning Game of the Hand, because they hit the ball with... their hands.
It was controversial — the monks should have been contemplating God, not playing ball games — but it caught on quickly and soon spread around Europe.
Times change, jobs change, and technologies change... but some things never change.
A wonderful and witty snapshot of ordinary life in the Netherlands as it was 400 years ago.
3. Summer Evening at Skagen by P.S. Krøyer (1892)
The perfect blue solitude of a summer evening by the sea — you can almost hear the waves lapping on the shore, almost sense the light reflecting on your face.
We see the artist's wife and dog; his affection for them is clear.
He's one of the most beloved architects in the world, and that makes sense — his style is utterly unique.
But Gaudí only designed 17 buildings...
Antoni Gaudí was born in Catalunya on the 25th June 1852.
He spent eight years training as an architect, and although involved in some projects at university, his first solo commission was designing... lamp posts.
For the Plaça Reial in Barcelona, in 1879:
Thus began the career of one of history's greatest architects.
After designing some furniture, church interiors, and a pharmacy, in 1880 he was asked by Manuel Vicens to design a house.
It was completed a few years later — nothing quite like this had been seen before.