My son is 9 and this is his theory:

What will happen when you are long gone and the planet is ruled by apes,big fat ones,
every ?????? trillion years the milky way galaxy
will implode.everything will go over again and single celled organisms will go through the evolutionary cycle into homo-sapiens....or maybe something even more bizzare,like from "evolution" or maybe something even more twisted and bizzare,who knows?

what do you think about my theory?
thanks,Noah

Noah

You have a very good imagination, and it is obvious that you know an awful lot about science. That is very good.

Scientists also know a lot about science and how it works. One of the most important things they have learned is that in order to predict something for the future there must be good reasons for doing so. If a scientist were to say that he thought the Moon was going to crash into the Earth next month he has to have a good reason for saying this or no one will believe him. If he hasn't any good reason people will wonder why he made such a thing up. Now, making things up or trying to imagine what will happen in the future isn't bad, in fact it can be fun, but when a person does this he has to remember that it's just made-up stuff and that there is no real reason to believe that it could be true. In the future something you made up now might really come true, but for now we can't know this, so we have to let it be just made-up stuff until we know better.

Minnesota

Maybe it already happened, and we are the 'twisted, bizarre creatures'. What we know about earth's history is mostly in the rocks, and they would have been melted (perhaps re-melted?) by the cataclysmic events you describe, and no longer show the evidence.

Minnesota: Great answer. "Four stars"

Noah:

I agree with what Minnesota said.

Scientists study very hard to learn everything known about a subject, such as how stars burn or how galaxies move or how animals evolve. But it's connected to reality by actual physical observations of the real world -- lots of them. It's not just "made-up stuff," to use Minnesota's words.

For instance if you study stars you might compare carefully measured light waves coming from stars with light waves made in labs on earth, or order to learn something about the stars. Meanwhile you take school courses or read textbooks in order to learn about what has already been observed and explained by other people.

Predictions of the future are more properly called "conjectures" rather than "theories." Many kids and adults don't realize that in science, the word "theory" means far more than just "a guess."

The "planet of the apes" movie plot is not taken seriously as a prediction of the future because it doesn't agree with what scientists already know about humans, apes, and evolution.

If evolution "started over" (or started elsewhere!) it's very unlikely that Homo sapiens, or any other particular species, would occur again exactly the same as it has on Earth.

If you are interested in evolution, try reading books about it (from a mainstream secular publisher). Ask lots of questions. Good luck!

Well that is a very valid theory. Although, me being the devil's advocate, what if the universe didn't stop expanding? what if we as a galaxy were doomed to be stranded far away from everything else. Then it might not be able to start all over again. The reason I would think this is because there is no attraction that I know of (I'm not very good with the universe so correct me if I'm wrong) that could pull the universe. But potentially a black hole could become the next "Big Bang" but it'd have to be an extremely strong black hole.