The timeline of Earth, mankind and the universe has been mapped out

SORRY, folks. It's all downhill from here. Scientists have predicted what will happen to Earth and mankind in the distant future. And it ain't pretty.

CONTINENTS fuse, galaxies collide, man dies out and the Earth plunges into the Sun.

This is what will happen in the future (but don't worry, you've got a few quintillion years yet).

We find it hard enough to plan ahead to the weekend, but some scientists have mapped out what will happen to the Earth and the universe's major events all the way to over one hundred quintillion years from now.

BBC Future created a meandering infographic based on research and hypothesis from scientists and NASA with major natural milestones laid out in front of our worrying eyes. The ambitious predictions begin around one thousand years from now, when most of our words would have become extinct, up to the moment when the Earth stops spinning and falls into the Sun.

We've plucked the biggest events worth looking out for (if you live to one hundred quadrillion years old, that is). These are all years from now:

One thousand years to ten thousand years from now.

1,000: If civilisation fails to make it another thousand years, all the buildings, dams and bridges decay and fall

1,000: Most words are extinct due to the rapid evolution of languages

2,000: Greenland ice sheet melts

5,125: Mayan time ends again. World didn't come to an end last time. Probably won't next time.

13,000: Earth's axial tilt reverses. Northern hemisphere suffers extreme weather due to higher percentage of land

20,000: Chernobyl finally safe

One hundred thousand to one million years from now.

50,000: Niagara Falls disappears

100,000: Laptops dissolve. The titanium in MacBooks will corrode

100,000: Global disaster. A supervolcano or climate-altering asteroid would have affected the Earth by now.

1,000,000: All glass created will have degraded.

One hundred to one billion years from now.

10,000,000: New ocean formed. Red sea flooded dividing Africa.

50,000,000: Australia and Indonesia merge.

250,000,000: All continents fuse to make one supercontinent.

1,000,000,000: Game over. The sun's luminosity rises by 10% evaporating the Earth's oceans.

2,800,000,000: The end of all life on Earth. Even cockroaches.

One trillion to one hundred quintillion years from now. Game over.

5,400,000,000: Sun's hydrogen exhausted and begins to swell into a red giant consuming nearby planets.

20,000,000,000: All matter is torn apart by the expansion of the universe. All distances become infinite.

110,000,000,000,000: All stars have died.

100,000,000,000,000,000,000 (that's one hundred quintillion years from now): Earth dies. If not already consumed by a swollen sun, the Earth's orbit will have decayed and it will plunge into the sun.