Short Answer: Earth will not end soon, and no known event ends it in our lifetimes. Complex life on Earth has roughly another billion years before the planet’s air and oceans fail. Earth itself, as a planet, will face its final crisis in about 5 to 7.5 billion years, when the aging Sun swells into a red giant. The exact ending, whether Earth is swallowed or left as a scorched remnant, is still debated, but the planet will be uninhabitable long before that final stage.

When Will the Earth End?

It is one of the oldest questions people ask, and one of the most searched. The answers online range from “next month” to “never,” which is why the question deserves a careful, sourced answer. The scientific picture is actually clear on the big points, even though scientists still debate some details. Earth ends in stages, not in a single moment, and the first stage is about a billion years away.

This article follows the evidence in order: what ends first, what ends last, why different sources quote different dates, what could (but almost certainly will not) end Earth sooner, and why a 1960 paper about November 13, 2026, is going viral again even though it predicts nothing physical at all.

The timeline at a glance

Stage	Roughly when	What happens
Earth today	Now	A living planet, about 4.5 billion years old, with liquid oceans and an oxygen rich atmosphere
The air begins to fail	About 1 billion years from now	Oxygen levels fall as the brightening Sun starves plants of carbon dioxide
The oceans boil away	About 1 to 2 billion years from now	A moist greenhouse carries water into the upper atmosphere, where it escapes to space
The red giant	About 5 to 6 billion years from now	The Sun swells enormously; Mercury and Venus are swallowed
Earth’s final fate	About 7.5 billion years from now	Earth is either swallowed by the Sun or left as a scorched, airless remnant
Afterward	Billions of years later	The Sun’s remnant cools as a white dwarf; its cast off material may one day form new stars and planets

Every date in this table is a model estimate, not a scheduled appointment. The order of events matters more than any single number, and the gaps between stages are hundreds of millions of years wide.

Why different sources give different dates

If you search this question, you will find figures of 1 billion, 5 billion, 6 billion, and 7.5 billion years, sometimes presented as if they contradict each other. They do not. They describe different endings.

One billion years is roughly when Earth stops supporting complex life, because its air and oceans fail. Five to 6 billion years is roughly when the Sun reaches its red giant phase. Seven and a half billion years is one estimate, from University of Washington astronomer Donald Brownlee, for when Earth itself is finally swallowed or scorched beyond recognition. A source that says “5 billion years” and a source that says “7.5 billion years” are usually answering different questions: when does the Sun become a red giant, versus when does Earth itself finally go.

There is also genuine uncertainty. Computer models of stellar evolution agree on the sequence but differ on details, such as exactly how much mass the Sun will lose and how strongly its tides will grip Earth. That uncertainty is why honest answers give ranges, and why this article does too.

Stage 1: A brighter Sun

The story starts with the Sun itself. Stars like the Sun grow brighter as they age, because hydrogen fusion in the core gradually converts hydrogen into helium, raising core temperatures and quickening the fusion rate. The University of Washington Magazine reports that the Sun is already about 30 percent brighter than it was when Earth formed.

That slow brightening drives everything that follows. Over hundreds of millions of years, a brighter Sun warms Earth, and warmer air holds more water vapor, which traps more heat. At the same time, the planet’s long term climate thermostat works against life in an unexpected way. Rain weathers rocks, and weathering pulls carbon dioxide out of the air. As the Sun brightens, weathering speeds up, and carbon dioxide levels fall. Plants need carbon dioxide for photosynthesis, so a future Earth could paradoxically starve its plants even as it warms. This is the mechanism behind the first great ending: not fire, but a slow loss of the air that complex life breathes.

There is a neat check on this story in Earth’s own past, known as the faint young Sun paradox. Billions of years ago, the Sun was much fainter than today, yet geological evidence shows liquid water on early Earth. The resolution is that Earth’s early atmosphere held far more greenhouse gases, which kept the planet warm despite the weaker Sun. The same physics runs in reverse in the far future: as the Sun brightens, less greenhouse gas is needed to keep Earth warm, and the weathering thermostat draws carbon dioxide down further. The paradox confirms that the Sun’s slow brightening is real, and that Earth’s climate has always been a negotiation between sunlight and atmosphere.

Stage 2: The air fails first

In 2021, researchers Kazumi Ozaki of Toho University and Christopher Reinhard of the Georgia Institute of Technology published a study in Nature Geoscience that changed how scientists order Earth’s final chapters. Running nearly 400,000 computer simulations of Earth’s future climate, oceans, atmosphere, and life, they found that Earth’s oxygen rich atmosphere will most likely last about another 1.08 billion years, give or take 0.14 billion years, before oxygen falls to less than 1 percent of its present level.

The striking part of their result is the order of events. Their model projects that deoxygenation will most probably happen before the moist greenhouse stage and before the extensive loss of surface water. In plain terms, the air could fail first. As carbon dioxide falls, photosynthesis falters, oxygen production drops, and the atmosphere returns to something like the oxygen poor air of Earth’s youth, long before the oceans themselves are gone. Complex animals, which need abundant oxygen, would have no future on such a planet, even though microbes could persist far longer in sheltered places.

This is a model result, not a measurement, and its authors give it an uncertainty range. But it is the most detailed study of its kind, and it sets the most widely quoted date for the end of complex life on Earth: roughly a billion years from now.

Stage 3: The oceans boil away

After the air thins, the oceans go. As the Sun keeps brightening, Earth enters what climate scientists call a moist greenhouse. Water vapor, itself a powerful greenhouse gas, rises high into the atmosphere in ever greater amounts. High in the atmosphere, sunlight splits water molecules apart, and the light hydrogen escapes to space forever. The oceans do not vanish in a single boil. They evaporate over hundreds of millions of years, and the water they lose never comes back.

How long this takes depends on the model, but the window most often quoted is roughly 1 to 2 billion years from now for the loss of the oceans as we know them. By that point, Earth would be a dry, hot world, its blue oceans gone, its surface baked. If anything still lived, it would be deep underground, near the last pockets of moisture. The planet would still exist, but the Earth we recognize, the blue marble, would be over.

Stage 4: The red giant

Billions of years later comes the dramatic finale. NASA’s exoplanet science series explains that when the Sun approaches its red giant phase, some 6 billion years from now, it will run out of hydrogen fuel in its core. The core will contract and heat up, igniting helium fusion and hydrogen fusion in a shell around the core, while the extra heat puffs the Sun’s outer layers outward enormously.

Mercury and Venus will certainly be swallowed. Mars will certainly survive, pushed outward as the Sun loses mass. Earth sits between those two certainties, and its fate is genuinely unclear. Astronomer Dimitri Veras of the University of Warwick, quoted by NASA, puts it plainly: “I am confident that the Sun will swallow Mercury and Venus, and not Mars. But the fate of the Earth, which resides in between, is less clear.”

Two forces pull in opposite directions. As the Sun loses about half its mass, its gravitational grip weakens, and Earth’s orbit drifts outward, which could save it. But the expanding Sun’s tides drag on Earth, pulling it inward, which could doom it. Recent modeling leans toward Earth not surviving intact, but even a surviving Earth would be a scorched rock bathed in intense radiation, with no air and no oceans. Other estimates, such as Brownlee’s 7.5 billion year figure, place the final engulfment or scorching somewhat later, reflecting different assumptions about mass loss and tides. The honest summary is that Earth becomes uninhabitable billions of years before anyone can say whether it is swallowed or merely toasted.

Stage 5: After the red giant

What remains after the red giant phase is a cooling ember. According to the standard model of stellar evolution, the Sun will shed its outer layers into space, briefly lighting them as a glowing planetary nebula, and leave behind a dense white dwarf remnant that cools slowly over billions of years. Any planet that survived, scorched and airless, would orbit that fading ember in the dark.

There is a quieter coda to this story. The material the Sun sheds does not vanish. It joins the interstellar medium, the gas and dust between the stars, where it can one day collapse into new stars and new planets. The atoms of Earth, and of everything on it, are not destroyed. They are recycled. That is small comfort on a human timescale, but it is the scientifically accurate ending: not annihilation, but transformation.

Could something end Earth sooner?

Short answer: nothing known, and nothing on any schedule that matters to us. But the question deserves its parts answered separately.

Asteroids. Astronomers track near-Earth objects, and no known object is on a collision course that would end Earth. A large impact could devastate civilization, which is a different and much smaller scale of disaster than ending the planet, and it is the one cosmic risk that space agencies actively monitor. It is not, however, a dated appointment.

Supervolcanoes. A colossal eruption could darken skies and cool the planet for years, with catastrophic effects on civilization. It would not destroy Earth, and no eruption of that scale is predicted.

The Andromeda collision. In about 4 billion years, our Milky Way galaxy is expected to meet the Andromeda galaxy, based on measurements from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope. This sounds violent, but stars are so far apart that individual stars are not expected to collide. NASA’s own summary of the 2012 Hubble result is that the Sun will likely be flung into a new region of the galaxy, but Earth and the solar system are in no danger of being destroyed. Newer measurements, using Gaia and Hubble data, have made the merger itself less certain, with one recent analysis putting the odds near 50-50. Either way, the collision is not an end for Earth, and it arrives after Earth is already uninhabitable from the brightening Sun.

Human made risks. Climate change, nuclear weapons, and pandemics are real dangers to civilization and to millions of lives. They operate on timescales of years to centuries, and they deserve serious attention precisely because they are near and actionable. None of them can destroy the planet itself, and none of them changes the billion year timeline above.

The November 13, 2026 claim, explained

If you have seen posts claiming the world ends on November 13, 2026, here is where that date comes from, and why it is not a prediction about Earth at all.

On November 4, 1960, the journal Science published a short paper by Heinz von Foerster, Patricia M. Mora, and Lawrence W. Amiot titled “Doomsday: Friday, 13 November, A.D. 2026.” The authors, who worked in electrical engineering at the University of Illinois rather than demography, fitted a curve to about 24 historical estimates of world population, from the first century to the late 1950s. Their curve did not level off. It climbed toward infinity at a mathematical point their fit placed in late 2026, give or take about five and a half years. They wrote, memorably, that our great-great-grandchildren “will not starve to death. They will be squeezed to death.”

What the paper did not do is just as important. It predicted no asteroid, no war, no epidemic, and no physical catastrophe. Its “doomsday” was a mathematical singularity in a population model: the point where the formula breaks, because no real population can become infinite. The authors’ real point, as later scholars have noted, was that the centuries old pattern of accelerating growth was about to change into something different.

And it did. The model tracked population growth well into the 1970s, then began to diverge. Birth rates fell, the demographic transition spread, and growth slowed. Run for the mid-2020s, the 1960 formula gives roughly 76 billion people. The United Nations puts the actual figure at about 8.2 billion. The model failed because its core assumption, that growth would keep accelerating forever, stopped being true. November 13, 2026, is therefore not a date on which anything is scheduled to happen to Earth. It is the date a 66 year old equation reaches infinity, and the world has already refused to cooperate.

What different traditions say

Science is not the only way people have thought about the end of the world, and a complete answer should note that respectfully. In Norse mythology, Ragnarok describes a final battle followed by a renewed world. Some Christian traditions hold beliefs about a final judgment and a new creation. Hindu tradition describes vast cycles in which the universe is created, preserved, and dissolved over immense spans of time. These are matters of faith and story, held differently by different communities, and they are not scientific predictions. This article presents them only as what those traditions hold, and takes no position on them.

What this means for us

The honest takeaway is a matter of scale. On the timescale that matters to us, Earth is stable. The Sun will shine much as it does today for hundreds of millions of years. The threats that deserve our attention are the human scale ones: a warming climate, fragile ecosystems, and the weapons and diseases we ourselves control. Those are the ends we can actually influence, and the ones that could arrive within our lifetimes.

The billion year story matters for a different reason. It tells us that habitability is temporary, that planets have life stories with beginnings and endings, and that the same physics shaping Earth’s future shapes every planet astronomers study. Earth will end, eventually, in stages, over billions of years. Nothing in that story says it ends soon, and nothing in it says we should stop caring for the only home we have.

Frequently asked questions

Will the world end on November 13, 2026?

No. That date comes from a 1960 population model whose formula reaches infinity in late 2026. It was never a prediction of physical destruction, and actual population growth diverged from the model decades ago. The world population is about 8.2 billion, not the roughly 76 billion the formula gives.

Will the Sun swallow the Earth?

Possibly, but it is not certain. Mercury and Venus will be swallowed when the Sun becomes a red giant. Earth’s fate depends on the balance between its orbit drifting outward as the Sun loses mass and the Sun’s tides dragging it inward. Recent modeling leans toward Earth not surviving intact, but the planet will be uninhabitable billions of years before that question is settled.

When will life on Earth end?

Complex life, which needs abundant oxygen, has roughly another billion years, according to the 2021 study by Ozaki and Reinhard, which puts the lifespan of Earth’s oxygen rich atmosphere at 1.08 billion years, give or take 0.14 billion. Microbes in sheltered places could last longer, but the age of animals and forests is the first age to close.

Could humans survive the end of Earth?

Only by leaving. No existing technology can move a civilization to another star, and the distances and timescales involved are enormous. Survival would require a civilization far more advanced than ours, with somewhere to go, and billions of years in which to develop. That is a subject for speculation, not planning.

What happens to Earth after the red giant?

If Earth is swallowed, its material joins the Sun. If it survives, it remains as a scorched, airless rock orbiting the Sun’s white dwarf remnant, which cools over billions of years. Either way, the material is recycled into the galaxy, where it may one day form new stars and planets.

Will the Andromeda collision destroy Earth?

No. When galaxies merge, their stars are so far apart that they do not collide. NASA’s Hubble based modeling says the Sun may be flung to a new part of the galaxy, but Earth and the solar system are not in danger of destruction from the merger. Newer measurements have also made the merger itself less certain.

Is the Sun making Earth hotter right now?

No, not in any way that matters on human timescales. The Sun’s brightening works over hundreds of millions of years, and its output varies only slightly from decade to decade. The warming measured over the past century is driven by human greenhouse gas emissions, not by stellar evolution. The cosmic timeline in this article and the climate story of our own century operate on scales so different that they barely overlap.

Sources & references

• NASA Science, "Chapter 6: Aging Into Gianthood," NASA exoplanet life and death series. https://science.nasa.gov/exoplanets/resources/life-and-death/chapter-6/
• Ozaki, K. and Reinhard, C. T., "The future lifespan of Earth's oxygenated atmosphere," Nature Geoscience (2021). https://reinhard.gatech.edu/uploads/5/4/1/0/54106417/ozaki_natgeo_2021.pdf?trk=article-ssr-frontend-pulse_little-text-block
• University of Washington Magazine, "Earth is doomed (eventually), UW scientists say." https://magazine.washington.edu/feature/earth-is-doomed-eventually-uw-scientists-say/
• CK-12 Foundation, "Will the Earth ever die or get blown up?" https://www.ck12.org/flexi/earth-science/age-of-earth/will-the-earth-ever-die-or-get-blown-up/
• Scientific American blog, "How it all ends," by David Bressan. https://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/history-of-geology/how-it-all-ends-8230/
• Von Foerster, H., Mora, P. M., and Amiot, L. W., "Doomsday: Friday, 13 November, A.D. 2026," Science (1960), as reported by Phys.org. https://phys.org/news/2026-09-scientists-friday-november-doomsday.html
• Daily Galaxy, "They Will Be Squeezed to Death: Why Scientists in 1960 Predicted Doomsday for Nov. 13, 2026." https://dailygalaxy.com/2026/10/doomsday-november-13-2026-prediction/
• ScienceDaily, "Crash of the Titans: Milky Way is destined for head-on collision with Andromeda Galaxy," reporting NASA Hubble results. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/05/120531135438.htm
• IFLScience, "Is Andromeda Really Going To Collide With Our Galaxy?" https://www.iflscience.com/astronomers-place-5050-odds-on-andromeda-colliding-with-us-75543
• Kasting, J. F., Toon, O. B., and Pollack, J. B. (1988), on moist and runaway greenhouse theory, via Rutgers University. https://www.physics.rutgers.edu/~ajbaker/honors292/KastingToonPollack1988.pdf
• Scientific American, "Fact or Fiction?: We Can Push the Planet into a Runaway Greenhouse Apocalypse." https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/fact-or-fiction-runaway-greenhouse/