Michael here. And the year 6009

will be the very first year since 1961 that a year

when written in Hindu-Arabic numerals can be inverted

and still look the same. But you and I

probably won't live long enough to enjoy the year six thousand

and nine. Human lives just aren't long enough.

We will miss out on that. What other cool future offense will we be

missing? Well, first of all,

you and I will probably be gone before the completion of the time

pyramid in Wemding, Germany. It will eventually be a pile of

120 concrete blocks. But the builders

are only adding one block every 10 years.

Since beginning in 1993 they've added

only the first three. At this rate the pyramid will be completed in the year

3183.

The final block placed by

our great great great great great great, more than 30 greats

grandchildren. But even they will miss

an opportunity to frolic and play safely in the Chernobyl

Exclusion Zone. The zone of

alienation, where radioactive contamination from the 1986 disaster

will remain at levels too high

for safe human activity until not the year 4000,

not the 5000, not the 6000. It will finally be safe

probably in the year 22 000.

Possibly within our lifetimes but definitely within the next one

million years,

stars like Betelgeuse and Eta Carinae

will explode in brilliant supernovas

visible from earth. I'm bummed I'm probably going to miss out on these

events because

for a few weeks it will look almost as if earth

has two Suns. Despite being hundreds, thousands of light-years away,

their supernovas will shine brighter than the full Moon

at night and be visible even during daytime.

But the real sky show comes in 3.75

billion years. Our galaxy

is full of stars, viewed from the surface of the earth

they look like little drops of milk in the sky,

which is why we call it the Milky Way Galaxy.

But all galaxies are named after

milk. Milk, lactose,

lactic, ga-lactic, galaxies.

And every drop of milk in the sky, every star that you can see,

is inside our galaxy, the Milky Way.

But there's a blurry distant

shape. This one. It's not a star, it's not a cloud of gas

in our galaxy, it is an entirely different

Galaxy - the Andromeda Galaxy and it's two-and-a-half

million light years away from our own. It contains twice as many stars as the

Milky Way

and it is coming our way. Headed toward us

at 300 kilometres a second, faster than a

bullet. Right now, the sky looks like this.

In 2 billion years Andromeda will have approached so closely

that people will look up at the sky and see

this. In 3.75 billion years the night sky will be like

a scene from a science fiction movie or an awesome desktop wallpaper.

Incredible and kind of scary.

After this scene, the sky will literally be glowing with the birth of new stars

as the Milky Way and Andromeda collide, mixing up into a brilliant cosmic

tie-dye. This simulation shows how Andromeda might collide with the Milky

Way,

but keep in mind that you are watching billions

of years pass every second. These galaxies

are moving fast but they're also huge

and covering even huger distances. They

will collide in the future but within the briefness

of a single human life they appear almost frozen,

unmoving. A couple billion years after colliding

the course of both galaxies will be married together

in a bright glowing centre. Earth, now

a stepchild to what was once Andromeda,

part of a new, bigger family called

Milkdromeda. It would be so cool to be alive to see our galaxy

colliding with another. But don't get all fomo,

consumed by a fear of missing

out. Because whatever life is around then will have plenty to envy us for.

They may have spectacular nightly views, but secretly wish they'd been born in

our time

to experience, say, the beginning of the Internet.

They will actually miss out on a lot of things.

Because the Moon moves one centimetre further away from

earth every year, 600 million years from today

the Moon will no longer be close enough to earth to completely

block out the Sun.

Future humans or descendants of humans will therefore

miss out on a chance to ever see for themselves

the beauty of the total solar eclipse from the surface of Earth.

Long before earth dries up

Niagara Falls will dry up. Well,

not the water part, but the falls part.

Every year the rushing water of Niagara erodes the rock at the top of the

falls

one foot backward. By the year 52 000

it will have eroded all the way to Lake Erie and our progeny will have no

Niagara Falls

to enjoy. Granite has an erosion rate of about

one inch per ten thousand years.

So, certainly by the year 7 million

Mount Rushmore, especially its faces, will no longer

exist. And because they slowly get

pulled in or rejected into space, in 50 to 100 million years

Saturn will no longer have its lovely rings.

So, life on earth in the future

might have awesome supernovas and galactic collisions to look forward to

but they probably won't have Niagara Falls,

Mount Rushmore, total solar eclipses or Saturn's rings.

They also won't have you. But

you have you. Except not all of it.

Babies don't begin to form episodic memories right

away, meaning that you missed out on. You don't remember two of the most seminal

events in your life.

Your conception and your birth.

But you can experience a bit of those moments

right now. First of all,

When Was I Conceived? dot com lets you enter your birthday

and get back the week your parents probably made

you happen, as well as the number one song and the number one movie of that

week, which may have also been involved.

Light travels quickly, the most quickest

in fact. But it can take a photon millions

of years to escape from the interior of the star it was created in through nuclear fusion.

It takes time, just like your own gestation

in your mother's womb. Newly conceived photons

struggle through a dense stellar jungle

of atoms and molecules and electrons that absorb and reemit the photon, taking a

little bit of energy from it as a randomly

rolls around like a pinball. Sometimes after thousands or millions of

years it's random walk finally leads it to the stars'

surface, where it pops out into space.

In a way, is born. A lucky, tiny tiny tiny percentage of the photons that reach the

surface of a star

find themselves on a path that will intersect

with earth. And if you are lucky, those photons will

end their journey by being absorbed

under your own retina. If you enter the date of your birth or the

approximate date of your conception into this online calculator

you can find a star that is as many light years away from

earth as you are old. When you look up at that start today,

you are seeing light that left the star the very month

you were born or photons that left that star

and entered space when your entire body was just

one cell.

Space is really big and your life is very short

but space is so gosh darn big you don't have to miss out

on everything.

And as always,

thanks for watching.