8 Terrifying Ways The World Could Actually End

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^{Source: National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)}

The resulting flood of high-energy particles that slam into Earth's air can trigger beautiful auroras, or sometimes disruptive geomagnetic storms.

^{Kakslauttanen Arctic Resort}

^{Source: Business Insider}

But if the core cools, we'd lose our magnetosphere — and also our protection from solar winds, which would slowly blast our atmosphere into space.

^NASA

^{Source: Live Science, Tech Insider}

Mars — once rich with water and a thick atmosphere — suffered this same fate billions of years ago, leading to the nearly airless, seemingly lifeless world we know today.

^NASA

^{Source: Tech Insider}

2) The sun could start to die and expand.

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^{Source: The Conversation}

It's a more energetic reaction and will push the sun's layers outward, and possibly start pulling the Earth toward the sun.

^NASA

^{Sources: Cornell, Scientific American}

We'd be incinerated and then vaporized.

^NASA

^{Sources: Business Insider, Scientific American}

That or the sun's expansion would push the Earth out of orbit. It'd die frozen as a rogue planet, untethered to any star and drifting through the void.

^{Anton Balazh/Shutterstock}

^{Source: Business Insider, The Conversation}

3) Earth could get shoved into a deadly orbit.

^{Artist's impression of Fomalhaut b.NASA Blueshift on Flickr}

^{Source: National Geographic}

According to recent simulations, in fact, rogue planets may outnumber stars in the Milky Way by 100,000 to one.

^{NASA/JPL-Caltech}

^{Source: National Geographic}

One of those rogue planets could drift into the solar system and destabilize Earth into an extreme and inhospitable orbit.

^NASA

^{Source: Space.com}

As its own rogue planet, Earth would become an ice ball. Meanwhile, a significant gravitational shove could also make extreme and deadly seasons that alternate between blisteringly cold and searingly hot.

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^{Source: Space.com}

4) A rogue planet could hit Earth.

^NASA

^{Source: NASA}

A new collision would similarly send debris flying all over the solar system and melt Earth 100% through. And while the new planet would eventually reform and cool down, it's anyone's guess if it'd be habitable.

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^{Source: Purdue/Impact Earth!}

5) Asteroids could bombard the planet.

^{NASA/Don Davis}

^{Source: New Scientist}

The impacts were so intense that the oceans boiled for a full year.

^{Getty/MKnighton/Abu Dhabi Ocean Racing}

^{Source: Wired}

All life was single-celled at that point, and only the most heat-tolerant microbes made it.

^{Dr. Diana Lipscomb}

^{Source: New Scientist}

Today's larger lifeforms almost certainly wouldn't make it. Air temperatures could reach more than 900 degrees Fahrenheit for several weeks if we suffered a similar pummeling.

^{Bill Wechter / Stringer / Getty Images}

^{Source: Science News}

6) The Earth could pass too close to a wandering black hole.

^NASA

^{Source: NPR}

We don't know much about them, but we do know they're so dense that not even light can escape beyond a black hole's event horizon.

^{Alain Riazuelo of the French National Research Agency, via Wikipedia}

^{Source: NASA}

A small black hole might harmlessly pass through the Earth, though anything larger than mass of the moon would cause big problems.

^{Photo by NASA/Illustration by Dave Mosher}

^{Source: Business Insider}

If light can't escape, the Earth definitely won't. There are two ideas about what could happen after the point of no return, given a big-enough rogue black hole.

^{NASA Marshall Spaceflight Center}

^{Source: KIPAC/Stanford}

Beyond the event horizon, atoms might stretch until they're pulled apart entirely.

^{NASA/JPL-Caltech}

^{Source: Business Insider}

Other physicists have theorized we'd run right into the end of the universe, or end up in an entirely different one.

^{European Southern Observatory on Flickr}

^{Source: National Geographic}

Even if a recoiled black hole misses Earth, it might pass closely enough to cause earthquakes and other devastation, kick us out of the solar system, or spiral us into the sun.

^NASA

^{Source: AskAMathematician}

7) The Earth's atmosphere could be obliterated in a gamma ray burst.

^NASA

^{Source: Universe Today}

Most are the result of massive stars collapsing when they die. One short blast can emit more energy than our sun will over the course of its lifetime.

^{An image of the most powerful GRB ever recorded.NASA}

^{Source: National Geographic}

That energy has the potential to eradicate the ozone layer, flood the Earth with dangerous ultraviolet light, and trigger rapid global cooling.

^{NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio}

^{Source: International Journal of Astrobiology}

In fact, a GRB pointed at Earth might have caused the first mass extinction 440 million years ago.

^{YouTube/ScienceAtNASA}

^{Source: Live Science}

Luckily, David Thompson, deputy project director on the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope, told National Geographic that GRBs aren't really a big concern.

^{YouTube/ScienceAtNASA}

^{Source: National Geographic}

He told the magazine the risk was equivalent to "the danger I might face if I found a polar bear in my closet in Bowie, Maryland."

^{Or two.Polar Bear International}

^{Source: National Geographic}

8) The universe could go to pieces in its final "Big Rip."

^{Illustris Collaboration}

Kelly Dickerson and Sarah Kramer contributed to this post. Read the original article on Business Insider. Copyright 2016.

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