mickledore
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Earth is rather unusual in having a very large moon which has taken a lot of hits from meteors over millions of years.
Earth is even more fortunate in having Jupiter nearby - in stellar terms. That pulls in an awful lot of meteors etc that would otherwise have caused problems here.
The big question is what happens when our sun runs out of energy. It's about 5 billion years old, and approx halfway through it's life. It will eventually form a red dwarf star and Earth will be swallowed up into it. Whether the outer planets will also be sucked in is anyone's guess.
After that the dying sun will gradually fade away until it falls in on itself under the weight of gravity. This will happen to all of the billions upon billions of stars that are out there.
Then the interesting question. Once all the stars have collapsed will they they all reverse their outward spread and under the weight of gravity come back together. If so will that then lead to another big bang when all the elements start reacting with each other and form a new universe? If that happens what is to say that it hasn't already happened many times over, although each cycle might take a million billion years to complete.
So many questions, but only one certainty - none of us will ever know the outcome!
