(Relatively uncontentious assertions appear as normal text. Potentially contentious assertions appear like this .)



2010 Automatic translators allow monolingual humans to converse with any speaker of any major human language.

2015 Bandwidth has increased enormously due to fiber optics and spread-spectrum radio.

2020 Almost all overt tyranny has been eliminated.

Physicists have confirmed that the fate of the universe is asymptotic expansion.

Most text, images, audio, and video is produced and consumed digitally. Unauthorized reproduction and distribution of such media is routine.

1st Martian sample return has revealed no conclusive fossil evidence of life.

2030 20% of former fideists have become mystics.

Radio astronomers have discovered signals from extraterrestrial intelligence.

Computer display technology plateaus with cheap flat panels and retinal projectors.

2040 Physicists have completed a quantum unification theory.

Personal bodily flight has become commercialized.

Transonic flight still serves just a few intercontinental routes.

2050 Molecular biologists have detailed description of how life on Earth began.

Computing is limited not by processing, storage, or bandwidth but by heat, latency, and batteries.

Fresh water availability is now limited only by energy costs of transportation and desalinization.

Automated vehicle/traffic control gives rail-like traffic flow to roads.

Privacy is curtailed by commercial availability of mobile remote-controlled microsensors.

2075 Physicists have reached limits of knowing why fundamental physical laws are as they are.

Hydrogen fuel cells are replacing internal combustion of fossil fuels.

VTOL aircraft are as widely owned as RVs in 2000.

2100 Expected and maximum human longevity have increased by 30 years.

Humans are able to record and archive all they ever see, hear, and say.

Most of humanity is using a common currency descended from the American dollar.

Unmanned radio observatory has been established on far side of moon.

2150 Remaining fideisms have diluted into agnostic mysticism; true fideists dwindle.

Fusion provides major parts of humanity's power.

Most psychotropic drugs are legal; addiction is prevented neurochemically.

2300 1st Von Neumann probes have been dispatched from Earth.

Most genetic, infectious, immunological, and cancerous disease is preventable or curable.

Most of humanity enjoys Western standards of living and productivity.

Earth's population has stabilized at around 20 billion.

The workweek has stabilized at around 20 hours.

2400 Extropian positivism has displaced most other belief systems.

2500 Heat pollution has become the last significant environmental problem.

A truly global federal government exists.

2880 Asteroid 1950DA (1km wide) has a 1/300 chance of hitting Earth March 16.

3000 Humans have created on the moon their 1st self-sustaining extraplanetary colony.

Earth has received 1st telemetry from unmanned probes to nearby stars.

Neurotechnologists have started to modify and augment natural human intelligence.

Genetic engineers have designed first artificially-created species.

English is the native language of 90% of humans.

Floating communities and estates have become increasingly popular.

4000 1st embarkation of mobile space habitat toward nearby star.

Humans culture animal tissue in bulk rather than raise animals en masse.

As the next ice age begins, Earth is about 0.5C cooler (relative to 2000 CE ) than it otherwise would have been.

5000 Humans mass-produce intravenous liquid food.

10K 1st terraforming (of Mars or a Jovian moon) has started to show progress. Another 90Kyr-long ice age has begun, and Earth is about 3C cooler (relative to 2000 CE ) than it otherwise would have been.

16K The precession of Earth's axis has made Vega the northern pole star.

23K The 1679-bit 1974 Arecibo interstellar message finally covers the 21Kly distance to its target, the globular cluster M13 (300K stars).

100K A majority of persons descended from H. sapiens lives beyond Earth.

250K An object more than a kilometer wide will probably have struck Earth.

Earth's magnetic will by now probably have reversed, as it does every few hundred thousand years and as it last did 780Kya.

1M A majority of persons descended from H. sapiens lives beyond the Solar system.

The red dwarf Gliese 710, currently 63ly away, will pass within 0.5 ly of Sol and appear at 0.6 magnitude.

2M Pioneer 10 (launched in 1972, 68 ly away) passes near Aldebaran at 44 Mm/h.

50M Africa has collided with Europe (closing the Mediterranean), Australia has merged with SE Asia, and California has slid up the coast to Alaska

100M Earth has information from probes to the Andromeda galaxy.

226M Sol has completed one more orbit around the Milky Way's center.

250M The Americas merge with Afro-Eurasia, reducing the (formerly growing) Atlantic to an inland sea.

1B Earth has information from probes to every star system in the Milky Way.

2B Increased Solar output has extincted any remaining Earth life due to runaway greenhouse effect.

6B Sun ends its main-sequence life as a red giant large enough to engulf and possibly swallow Earth, and then cools into a white dwarf.

Milky Way and Andromeda galaxies collide.

10B Milky Way galaxy's intelligent population stabilizes at its maximum.

100B Living systems are huddled around red dwarfs for light and warmth.

The charred and frozen Earth-Moon system (if not already swallowed by Sol's red giant phase) has stabilized to a 47-day rotation/revolution at a distance of 560,000 km.

150B Due to the universe's accelerating expansion, the view of everything outside the gravitationally-bound Local Group of galaxies stops changing and fades away.

1014 Almost all stars stopped shining, having become brown or white dwarfs. Little or no life remains.

1015 Planets have been dislodged from their solar systems by stellar close encounters.

1020 The remaining stars (brown or white dwarfs) have all either been dislodged from their galaxies, or collapsed into central galactic black holes. Dwarf collisions cease, and the last few stars formed thereby stop shining.

1040 Proton decay has left the universe with only black holes and subatomic particles.