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Comment by kregasaurusrex | Hacker News Reader

Time to reference my favorite Wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_far_future

From a logarithmic standpoint, around 1 billion years is when geologically interesting things happen to the earth as it's no longer to sustain life an have the oceans boil over as well.

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My favorite datum from this page is that the days will be 1 hour longer in 180 million years. If the year lengths are constant, by linear interpolation some time around 63 million years from now the years will be exactly 360 days, just like the ancient Babylonian calendar. What a great time that will be to be alive and to be a programmer, with exactly 30 days every month.

What makes you think that a 360 day year would be 12 months of 30 days each? We'll probably do something weird, like take all 5 out of February.

Just imagine the nightmare for the poor programmers who will have to maintain backward compatibility for 63 million years of timekeeping.

This all assumes we survive the unix 2036 apocalypse.

/s I mean it apparently is so bad they sent time travelers back in time to try and fix it. (Google: John Titor)

Also nevermind the nightmare of 9999-12-31.

The Moon will also change its orbit (it's what's slowing Earth's days), so the length of a month will change, becoming longer.

He meant a month as defined by 1/12 of the tropical year, not a month as defined by a lunar cycle.

There's a wonderful Wiki-dive on these topics too:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_month#Synodic_month

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tropical_year

The calendar month derives, roughly, from the lunar month.

Though yes, they're already non-identical. Some correspondence might tend to continue, whether it's humans or other intelligence applying it.

And yes, ultimately, definitions matter and tend to define arguments.

> While the future can never be predicted with absolute certainty,[1]

I love how Wikipedia likes to cite things like this.

I think it needs to have another citation. What if the future can SOMETIMES be predicted with absolute certainty?

Typically: someone questions a claim, or requests a cite. Cite is added.

and there goes my productive afternoon, again. The same as it does everytime this gets posted. Fascinating

We could have adjustable rings of reflective shielding orbiting the Sun and throughout the entire Solar System - well before then. Potentially even be capable of slowly moderating the Suns evolution. A billion years has unfathomable potential for technological development.

We don't have to do all that. The earth can be moved -

https://astronomy.stackexchange.com/questions/5914/is-it-pos...

https://worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/questions/44910/how-...

Right but I think were only scraping the surface of whats possible over millions of years meddling.

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