Ideal Verge - Your Daily Dose of Knowledge and Inspiration.

Telescopes allow us to study our surroundings, to see the cosmos and understand the laws of physics that gave way to the development of multicellular lifeforms. Telescopes are also time machines. Through them, we can look back through the history of our universe and see some of the very first celestial objects that were birthed from the Big Bang.

But telescopes allow us to see far more than our past. With them, we see our future.

We can determine the rate at which the universe is expanding, see stars be born and die in equal proportions, detect changes in the atmosphere of distant exoplanets, and so much more.

It has been said that, due to the accelerating expansion of the universe, the sky we’re observing today will look radically different from the one that’ll exist in a few trillion (or even billion) years.

So, assuming the universe exists in a state similar to how it is now — without a big rip, big freeze, big bounce, big slurp, or any other cosmos-ending scenarios taking place — what will our descendants see when they look out into the vast reaches of the cosmos? Or rather, what will they not see?

Here’s what the future has in store.

1,000,000 YEARS – THE SUN’S NEW RIVAL

Betelgeuse, also known as Alpha Orionis, is located approximately 640 light-years from Earth in the constellation Orion, and it’s one of the biggest and brightest stars in our galactic neighborhood. It could swallow our Sun 20 times over and emits over 100,000 times more light.

If that doesn’t convey its sheer size, let me put it this way: If you were to replaced Betelgeuse with our Sun, Betelgeuse itself would extend all the way to Jupiter, engulfing Earth and all of the planets in the inner solar system.

And the star is nearing the end of its lifespan. It’s estimated that Betelgeuse could go supernova any time in the next million years. Don’t expect the explosion to be noticeable immediately, though. It would take 640 years of traveling through the interstellar medium before the light made its way to Earth. That means Betelgeuse could have already exploded hundreds of years ago, and we would have no way of knowing.

When that light does arrive, the intensity of the supernova as seen here on Earth is the subject of debate, but some think that we will be able to see it during the daytime and that it will outshine the Moon at night.

1.4 MILLION YEARS – TURBULENT TIMES

Models uncovered in 2010 say a rogue star could seriously upset the icy comets in the Oort cloud, a theoretical region located at the edge of our solar system. The star, tentatively known as Gliese 710, is an orange dwarf currently located some 63.8 light-years from Earth in Serpens constellation. It is relatively unremarkable, with only 60 percent of the Sun’s total mass and about 67 percent of its radius, but more recent simulations, undertaken by Vadim Bobylev from the Pulkovo Astronomical Observatory in St Petersburg, reveal that it could have a remarkable impact on us.

While working on the Hipparcos Catalog (a project that aims to collect a myriad of data centering on an object’s speed, velocity, and trajectory), researchers located over 100,000 stars, a whopping 156 of which need to be monitored very closely as they might someday pose an imminent threat to mankind.

It isn’t uncommon for stars to make an appearance at the outer end of a planetary system. In this case, however, the solar system in question is ours. In fact, it’s estimated that once every 2 million years, a rogue star arrives in our galactic neighborhood, which is defined as the area extending about 1 parsec (31 trillion kilometers/19 trillion miles) or 3.26 light-years from the Sun.

The last of those rogue stars, Gliese 208, passed within four light-years of us about half a million years ago. Skip forward 1.4 million years in the future, and you’ll find there is an 86 percent chance that Gliese 710 will come within half a parsec of the Sun, a place where millions of comets roam. If the dinosaurs were still around, I’m sure they wouldn’t approve.

STARS GETS RINGS

Located approximately 9,400 kilometers (5,800 miles) from the center of Mars and about 6,000 kilometers (3,700 miles) above the planet’s surface is Phobos, one of Mars’ two natural satellites. The moon orbits its parent planet from a distance shorter than that of any other known moon in our solar system.

Because of this short distance from Mars, Phobos completes one full orbit around the planet before it can make one full rotation around its axis. If one stood on the surface of the Red Planet and looked up, Phobos would zoom across the night sky in just under 4 hours and 15 minutes.

A combination of the rather short orbital period of the small moon, its close proximity to the planet, and tidal interactions between Phobos and Mars is causing its orbital radius to decrease even further, which will eventually give way to one of two things.

Either Phobos will break apart and form an intricate set of rings that could rival the ones that famously belong to Saturn, or Phobos will reach Mars’ Roche Limit, a region estimated to lie around 7,000 kilometers (4,350 miles) above the center of Mars or 6,200 kilometers (3,853 miles) above the Martian surface, at which point it will crash into the surface of Mars, acting as a giant nuclear bomb.

4 BILLION YEARS – OUR SOLAR SYSTEM DIES

You know the saying “Everything that lives must die,” right? One day, everyone you know will be gone, and then everyone they know will die, too. Our solar system and the universe itself aren’t immune to such things, though they meet their destruction on a much longer time-scale.

Thankfully, before the Sun dies, the Earth will be gone, possibly swallowed up by the Sun as it transitions from a main sequence star to a red giant. Regardless of whether or not Earth survives the Sun’s initial expansion, it will certainly be a fried hunk of rock that isn’t fit for human (or anything remotely similar) habitation.

Long before those events occur, all of the water on the planet will evaporate, the rolling hills of green will wither away, and the atmosphere will be lost permanently to space, taking away life and any remaining semblance of the features that make our planet our home.

If the surviving outer planets aren’t forced into wider orbits around the dying Sun, they might be flung from our solar system entirely. After that, some of the icy moons might see a glimmer of spring for the first time, allowing a small window of time to pass during which they thaw out and potentially become habitable.

5 BILLION YEARS – MILKDROMEDA IS BORN

Soon afterwards, the Andromeda galaxy will collide with our Milky Way, forming a large elliptical galaxy. Some have suggested we name it Milkdromeda. (We really need to start working on a better name — time is running out after all!)

Our solar system can currently be found in the Orion spur of one of our galaxy’s spiral arms, situated some 25,000 light-years back from the central core, but after the merger, it is expected to be pushed back to about 100,000 light-years from the center of the galaxy.

The central region of the newly-formed Milkdromeda will go through a drastic phase change of its own. The merger will inevitably result in the supermassive black holes from both galaxies combining to form an ultra-massive black hole with the combined mass of billions of Suns.

Throughout the gradual process of this merger, which will take place over the course of hundreds of millions of years, it’s unlikely that any two stars or planets will collide. Yes, that seems strange, but remember that space is called space for a reason. The distance separating each individual star is incomprehensibly vast. Even the regions that are densely packed — like globular clusters and nebular clouds — are very spacious.

However, new life is imminent. Along with absorbing all of the stars, planets, and black holes of Andromeda, the cache of the raw materials for star formation will combine, triggering the birth of hundreds of millions of new stars. All of our uncertainty about the event itself (and how much it will impact both galaxies as a whole) aside, there’s no doubt regarding the utter beauty our night sky will hold.

To paraphrase Carl Sagan, “We on Earth marvel, and rightfully so, at the daily return of our single Sun. But from a planet orbiting a star in a distant globular cluster, a still more glorious dawn awaits. Not a sunrise, but a galaxy rise. A morning filled with 400 billion suns, the rising of the Milky Way.”

10 BILLION YEARS – THE DUST SETTLES

After the merger is complete, the dust will finish settling, leaving behind scant evidence to suggest an epic merger took place at all. However, by observing white dwarfs and calculating their age (and their concentration of heavy metals), astronomers may be able to deduce the existence of an event that triggered furious star formation within the galaxy. Such an event could only be one thing: a galaxy merger.

After an uncertain number of years, new star formation will halt altogether in the newly formed elliptical galaxy. Once the last remaining bits of material for star formation are gone, a galaxy almost entirely devoid of gas and dust will remain. Some of the material will be recycled when the first generation of stars produced in Milkdromeda explode as brilliant supernovae blasts, but at this point, our galaxy’s best days will be well and truly over.

Moreover, some of the most famous far-off nebulae will be gone. Imagine a galaxy with no Orion nebula, no VY Canis Majoris, and no Pillars of Creation (granted, the Pillars might already be gone). It’ll be a very sad time, but perhaps the galaxy will construct even more elaborate nebulae in the wake of all we’ve already lost to time.

100 BILLION YEARS – THE LIGHT STARTS TO DIM

100 billion years from now, the ever-accelerating expansion of the universe — most commonly called dark energy — will cause all but 1,000 members of the Virgo Supercluster — where our galaxy, along with other members of our local group, reside— to red-shift into oblivion, never to be seen again by astronomers in our galaxy or any nearby.

The visibility of galaxies located on the horizon of the observable universe at this point can be likened to light that’s captured by the event horizon of a black hole. As an object approaches the “point of no return,” its image appears to freeze and fade away because you can’t see any of the light it emits from that point forward. It is much too far away and is traveling way too fast to ever reach our corner of the universe, no matter how much time the light has to traverse spacetime.

In a similar frame of mind, this period signals the regression of the universe. Instead of being diverse, colorful, and bright, as it is now, it devolves into the universe it once was long before Earth was even around: the cosmic dark ages.

1 TRILLION YEARS – GOODBYE FOREVER, CMBR

In a trillion years, evidence of the Big Bang in the form of the cosmic microwave background radiation, which was created a mere 379,000 years after the birth of the universe, will grow dim to the point of invisibility. From there, it will then be lost forever, perhaps leading future astronomers to believe the universe is static and unchanging.

However, future generations may eventually discover the process of nucleosynthesis (the fusion of heavy elements from lighter ones) in the core of red dwarf stars, which are smaller, dimmer, cooler, and much more common than stars like our Sun. They employ an internal process that allows them to burn for trillions of years.

Due to a number of obstacles, one of which is the dwindling supply of star formation materials, the production of stars will ultimately halt, leaving behind nothing but red dwarf stars. There will be no more supernova blasts to use as standard candles, no more food to quench the insatiable appetite of black holes, no new planets, and no more cosmic nebulae. The last is important because such nebular clouds are key to kick-starting the star formation process. (On this note, one paper has suggested that this process has begun already and more than 95 percent of the stars that will ever live have already been born.)

Another contributing factor to this is the perplexing existence of a little thing that is driving the universe apart, something we call dark energy. With all of the distant galaxies red-shifted out of view, how would the existence of this elusive force be known? This begs the question, “How will scientists know anything?”

According to Avi Loeb from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, hypervelocity stars — or “true” shooting stars that only occur about once every 100,000 years — that are flung out of our galaxy at incredible speeds may be the answer to this particular cosmic quandary. These stars are usually the lone survivors of a binary or multiple star system that went awry. One of these stars can be ejected from its typical orbit after its partner is devoured by a black hole that has wandered too close to a galaxy’s center.

When this occurs, the momentum of the dead star is then transferred to the partner, allowing it to break free of the black hole’s gravitational hold and speed off on a trajectory that takes it outside of the galaxy altogether — sometimes traveling at more than 1.6 million km/h (1 million mph), which is about 10 times faster than ordinary star movement.

After the star escapes from our galaxy’s confines some 1 trillion years in the future, it would continue to travel away from our galaxy into interstellar space, effectively becoming the most distant source of light from beyond our galaxy’s borders. Any observer would be surprised to see the star accelerating more and more quickly as it made its way into oblivion. Then they would witness it disappear over an “event horizon” beyond which information can no longer be received because of the rapid expansion of space, a product of dark energy.

Yes, it would take an extremely long time to see this play out, but it’s not like the universe will be teeming with things that warrant close investigation. Besides hypervelocity stars, other sources of information may exist in the future, clues that can help unlock important information about the standard model of cosmology and, essentially, the creation of the universe itself.

100 TRILLION YEARS – THE UNIVERSE DIES

A number of hypotheses that predict how the universe will end have been floated, but the most promising one is called “the big chill.”

Under this scenario, dark energy continues driving the expansion of the universe, resulting in temperatures dropping throughout the universe until it reaches absolute zero (or a point at which the universe can no longer be exploited to perform work). Similarly, if the expansion of the universe continues, planets, stars, and galaxies will eventually be pulled so far apart that stars will lose access to the raw material needed for star formation, and thus the lights will inevitably go out for good.

This is the point at which the universe would reach a maximum state of entropy. Any stars that remain will continue to slowly burn away until the last star is extinguished. Instead of fiery cradles, galaxies will become coffins filled with remnants of dead stars. It has been said that, in the very distant future, intelligent civilizations will look into the sky and think they are well and truly alone. At that point, they probably are.

High estimate for the time until normal 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

110–120 Trillion, The stellar-mass objects remaining are stellar remnants (white dwarfs, neutron stars, black holes) and brown dwarfs.

Collisions between brown dwarfs will create new red dwarfs on a marginal level: on average, about 100 stars will be shining in what was once the Milky Way. Collisions between stellar remnants will create occasional supernovae.

"There is no I in Team Work," as the saying goes, and each member must put the needs of his team first. Personal interests must take a second seat.

Any team's performance is directly proportionate to the relationship between its members and their combined efforts.

What is the definition of teamwork?

Teamwork is defined as the sum of each team member's efforts toward the fulfilment of the team's goal. In other words, any team's backbone is its ability to operate together.

To reach a common predetermined goal, each team member must perform and contribute to the best of his or her ability. Individual performance does not relevant in a team; what matters is the collective performance of the team members.

Let's take a look at a real-life scenario.

In any business, it is impossible to work alone, so teams are formed where employees collaborate to achieve a common goal. Peter, Michael, Jackson, and Sandra represented a leading organization's legal staff. Peter and Michael were always the ones to take the initiative and give it their all, but Jackson and Sandra were more laid-back at work. Despite Peter and Michael's efforts, their team was never able to reach their goals.

Why do you think Peter and Michael's team fell short of their goals despite their efforts?

In a team, everyone must contribute equally to achieve the best results.

The joint effort of each and every team member to attain their assigned goal is known as teamwork. No member can afford to sit back and wait for the other to perform for him. To avoid problems, team members must be dedicated to both their team and their organisation. Unnecessary confrontation produces nothing constructive and, as a result, diverts team members' concentration and focus. Every team member should develop a flexible and adaptable mindset. Team members should be viewed as members of one's extended family, all working toward a similar objective. For the best results, the team members must be reliant on one another.

Tips for a better team work

Let us go through some steps for a better team work

• Consider your team first - Every individual should prioritise his or her team over his or her own interests. Do not combine your personal and work lives. Separate them as much as possible.

• Never undervalue your team members - Instead of ignoring them, collaborate with them and pay attention to them. Never try to force your opinions on others. Demotivate no one in your squad.

• Discuss - Any new proposal should be debated with all members on an open platform before being implemented. Never discuss anything with someone individually because the other person will feel left out and will be hesitant to perform and contribute to the team.

• Avoid making fun of your teammates and criticising them. Help one another and work as a team. Be the first to break the ice and maintain a cordial atmosphere at all times. If you disagree with one of your team members, explain his mistakes to him in a friendly manner and offer guidance. Negativity should be avoided inside the team.

• Transparency must be maintained, and positive interaction among team members must be encouraged. So that every team member has the same vision, communication must be effective, crystal clear, and exact. Misunderstandings and confusions are also eliminated with effective communication. Conflicts arise as a result of confusion, and people waste time and energy fighting rather than working.

• The team leader must take responsibility for motivating team members to give their all and should intervene quickly if disagreements arise. The leader's demeanour should be such that every team member looks up to him and seeks his guidance whenever necessary. He should show no favouritism toward any of the members and should support them all equally. It is the team leader's responsibility to get the most out of his team members.

• To improve teamwork, make an effort to gain a thorough understanding of your teammates. It's fine if you go out to lunch with your team mates or attend a movie with them. It increases team members' relationships and strengthens their bonds. For maximum output, the team members must have complete faith in one another.

• Conflicts in your team should be avoided at all costs. Don't pick fights over little topics or point out flaws in others. Everyone should be a little flexible with each other and strive to come up with a solution that works for everyone in the team.

• Reward & Appreciation - Healthy competition among team members should be promoted. Every team member's performance must be evaluated on a regular basis, and the best performer must be appropriately rewarded so that the other members are likewise driven to perform. Team awards such as "Best Team Player" or "Best Performer" go a long way toward motivating team members. Recognize the member who goes above and above or does something unusual.

NASA's Parker Solar Probe passed into and through the solar corona, the Sun's upper atmosphere, on April 28, 2021. Not only did it survive – showing the effectiveness of Parker's high-tech heat shielding – but it also took in situ measurements, providing us with a trove of never-before-seen data on our Solar System's core.

"The Parker Solar Probe 'touching the Sun' is a watershed moment for solar science and a really extraordinary achievement," said astrophysicist Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator for NASA Headquarters' Science Mission Directorate.

"Not only does this achievement provide us a better understanding of our Sun's evolution and its effects on our Solar System, but everything we learn about our own star tells us more about stars throughout the Universe."

The Parker Solar Probe was launched in 2018 with the primary goal of studying the solar corona. It should make a total of 26 close approaches, or perihelions, to the Sun over the course of its seven-year mission, employing a total of seven gravity assist manoeuvres from Venus to bring it closer. The perihelion in April was the seventh and first to penetrate the corona.

Parker recorded variations in the Sun's magnetic field and sampled particles during his nearly five-hour stay inside the solar atmosphere. Previously, we depended on external data to estimate these qualities.

"Flying so near to the Sun, the Parker Solar Probe now detects circumstances in the magnetically dominated layer of the solar atmosphere - the corona – that we've never been able to detect before," said astronomer Nour Raouafi of the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory.

"Magnetic field measurements, solar wind data, and photos all provide evidence of being in the corona. The spacecraft can be seen travelling through coronal structures that can be seen during a total solar eclipse."

Above: Coronal streamers, which can only be viewed from Earth during an eclipse, are the brilliant features shown in these images. The Parker probe captured these images during the ninth perihelion in August of this year.

There is no solid surface on the Sun. Instead, the Alfvén critical surface, where gravity and the Sun's magnetic fields are too weak to hold the solar plasma, defines its border.

Above this point, the solar wind appears, sweeping powerfully through the Solar System and breaking away from the Sun in waves. The photosphere, which is made up of churning convection cells and plasma, is much below what we call the Sun's'surface.'

Parker's purpose was to learn more about the Alfvén critical surface, such as where it is and what its topography is like, because we didn't know anything about it. The Alfvén critical surface was estimated to be between 10 and 20 solar radii from the Sun's centre. Parker reached the corona at a distance of 19.7 solar radii and sank as low as 18.4 solar radii throughout its corona journey.

Surprisingly, the probe only encountered the corona's magnetic conditions on a sporadic basis, implying that the Alfvén critical surface is wrinkled. Parker came across a magnetic structure known as a pseudostreamer at a lower depth, which we can see arcing out from the Sun during solar eclipses. Parker's findings show that these structures are to blame for the Alfvén critical surface's deformation, albeit we don't know why.

Conditions were quieter inside the pseudostreamer than in the surrounding solar environment. Particles were no longer as chaotically buffeting the spaceship, and the magnetic field was more ordered.

Parker also looked on the occurrence of solar switchbacks. These are Z-shaped kinks in the solar wind's magnetic field, and it's unclear where or how they develop. Switchbacks have been around since the 1990s, but it wasn't until Parker examined them in 2019 that we discovered how ubiquitous they are. The data from the probe's sixth flyover revealed that switchbacks are caused by patches.

Parker has now discovered them within the solar atmosphere, indicating that at least some of the switchbacks originate in the lower corona.

"The structure of the switchback zones lines up with a small magnetic funnel structure at the base of the corona," astronomer Stuart Bale of the University of California, Berkeley, stated. "This is what some theories predict, and it identifies a source for the solar wind itself."

We still don't know how these strange structures came to be, but with dozens more perihelions on the way, some as close as 9.86 solar radii from the Sun's centre, we're sure to find out.

"

We've been studying the Sun and its corona for decades, and we know there's some fascinating physics at work to heat and accelerate the solar wind plasma. We still don't know exactly what that physics is "Raouafi explained.

"With the Parker Solar Probe now travelling towards the magnetically dominated corona, we will finally gain some answers about how this mysterious region works."

According to a new article by academics from the UK and Germany, full darkness and a functioning ecosystem have persisted for thousands of years.

"This discovery of so much life flourishing in such harsh conditions is a complete surprise and serves as a reminder of how rare and precious Antarctic marine life is," says lead author and British Antarctic Survey marine biologist David Barnes.

"It's incredible that we found evidence of so many different animal species, the majority of which feed on microalgae (phytoplankton), despite the fact that no plants or algae can survive in this environment. So, how do these animals survive and thrive in this environment?"

Back in 2018, the researchers used hot water to drill two boreholes on the comparatively modest Ekström Ice Shelf in East Antarctica. The first hole stretched down 192 metres (630 feet) of ice until it reached 58 metres of liquid water, while the second hole covered 190 metres of ice with 110 metres of water beneath it.

They discovered life in that dark, cold, and food-scarce environment beneath the ice, and plenty of it. The researchers discovered 77 species of bryozoans from 49 distinct genera, including Melicerita obliqua, a sabre-shaped worm, and Paralaeospira sicula, a serpulid worm.

All of these animals are suspension feeders, meaning they sit in one spot and pluck organic materials from the water as it flows around them with their feathery tentacles, implying that some form of food supply, such as sunlight-dependent algae, must be getting in under the ice sheet.

Given that the nearest open water source is 9.6 kilometres (6 miles) distant, this is somewhat remarkable. On larger ice sheets like the Ross and McMurdo Ice Shelves, earlier study has discovered life much further inland.

"Life has been observed even 700 km from ice shelf borders despite perpetual darkness for at least thousands of years," the researchers wrote in their report.

"The diversity and quantity of life beneath ice shelves was assumed to be in short supply. Even for open-marine Antarctic continental shelf samples, the biodiversity we discovered at both borehole sites would be considerable."

Fragments of four Cellarinella species even revealed development increments, comparable to tree rings, which the researchers noticed were similar to other sized growth increments seen in samples from around Antarctica.

The researchers didn't simply seek for today's filter feeders deep beneath the ice; they also looked for long-dead bits and carbon-dated them to figure out how old they were.

"Another surprise was learning how long people had lived here. The carbon dating of these bottom animals' dead fragments ranged from current to 5,800 years "Gerhard Kuhn, a geologist at the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research, is one of the researchers.

"Despite living 3-9 kilometres from the nearest open water, an oasis of life may have flourished under the ice sheet for approximately 6,000 years. Only samples taken from the seabed beneath the floating ice shelf will reveal information about the ice shelf's past."

This raises another issue: how did these dark ecosystems survive past glacial cycles when most of the Antarctic shelf was covered in grounded ice (ice that reaches all the way to the sea floor)?

According to the new findings, the organisms resided in small, un-grounded areas, whereas open areas of water surrounded by sea ice would have allowed phytoplankton to bloom and then be consumed by critters living far beneath the ice. The plankton would have been pushed beneath the ice by the water's flow, where it would have been within reach of the hungry critters below.

Unfortunately, despite these ecosystems' unusually long lives thus far, the researchers are concerned about their future.

"In most areas, it may be cold, dark, and food-scarce," the team writes, "yet the least disturbed habitat on Earth could be the first habitat to become extinct if sub-ice shelf conditions disappear owing to global warming."