The Federation in the far future

[Voth commando1]

So Trek's timeline goes around to the 31st century or the beginning(roughly) of the fourth millennium AD. I wonder though where will humanity and the federation be in the far future?

By far future I mean geological time-millions and hundreds of millions of years. Will humanity have joined or surpassed the Q?

What will earth look like in a billion years? Surely the future intergalactic sipping tea with Q Federation will be able to preserve both the life of Sol and the Earth?

Thoughts?

 

[DimesDan]

Well, what do you think it would be like?

 

[F. King Daniel]

So Trek's timeline goes around to the 31st century or the beginning(roughly) of the fourth millennium AD. I wonder though where will humanity and the federation be in the far future?

By far future I mean geological time-millions and hundreds of millions of years. Will humanity have joined or surpassed the Q?

What will earth look like in a billion years? Surely the future intergalactic sipping tea with Q Federation will be able to preserve both the life of Sol and the Earth?

Thoughts?

Forget a billion years, remove the 42-minute reset and humans circa 2287 should be capable of...

Telekinetic superpowers via magic serum ("Bread and Circuses")

Teleportation anywhere ("Star Trek") via commbadge-sized transporter ("Nemesis")

Which can cure all illness with each teleport (TNG: "Unnatural Selection") and reverse ageing.

A bit more effort and we can duplicate people at will (TNG: "Second Chances"), beam through time (DS9: "Past Tense") or to other universes (DS9: "Shattered Mirror")

Death can be reversed with Borg nanoprobes (VOY: "Mortal Coil") or if you're only "barely dead", Augment blood ("Into Darkness")

I'd love to see a Trek sequel embrace all of this and show humanity's evolution to near-Q status. But of course it wouldn't be recognizable as Star Trek.

 

[Voth commando1]

Well, what do you think it would be like?

I'm asking for everybody's else's opinions.

I like to think humanity will transcend the mortal plane altogether and will sip tea with Q yet will continually strive even as ascended energy beings/gods to grow and change and be better than what they are.

 

[JirinPanthosa]

They become the Q, of course.

 

[Tim Thomason]

Our Million-Year Mission from Strange New Worlds VI is a good read. It was the Grand Prize winner of that contest for a reason.

The best take I've seen of the far, far future Trek universe.

 

[Paul Weaver]

There was a voyager episode that didn't get developed which was set billions of years in the future

http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Undeveloped_Star_Trek:_Voyager_episodes#Home

 

[C.E. Evans]

A billion years from now, Humans and the Federation will only be a dim memory to their replacements.

 

[at Quark's]

^if even that. A billion years is an incredible amount of time. On the face of the earth, huge empires and cultures have been entirely forgotten about in no more than a couple of hundreds of years.

 

[Paul Weaver]

You're orders of magnitudes off. 10.000 years and it will be a memory - at most. 100k-10m years will be archeological, like the tkon or iconians. 100m there will be nothing but very occasional fossils. 1b and nothing at all.

 

[The Old Mixer]

What will earth look like in a billion years? Surely the future intergalactic sipping tea with Q Federation will be able to preserve both the life of Sol and the Earth?

If humanity did manage to become Q-like...why would they? Hanging onto the ol' solar system would be like saving a soiled diaper.

 

[Voth commando1]

Because it's only natural humanity would wish to preserve and cherish its cradle as it were.

 

[Paul Weaver]

How many people still own their own cribs?

 

[Sir Stewart Wallace]

Even under wonky Trekscience, I don't see how any living creature can evolve into a noncorporeal form unless it's directed, and even then. Why are humans the ones with all the potential, too? A species of Mary Sues, I tell ya!

 

[Paul Weaver]

Transfigurations had a coporeal being "evolving" into energy

 

[Samuel]

1) Easy high speed terraforming. There will be no saying "it's a Class M planet". Technology will allow any reasonably sized rock to be turned into an Earth like environment (or other environment) for colonization. Each ship would probably carry the equipment to do so.

2) Most space travel between star systems and even galaxies will be near instantaneous via something similar to the StarGates from the series of the same name. Only the most distance clusters of galaxies will take noticeable time to travel to.

3) Transporters will be a thing of the past. Antigravs worn by people along with force fields and anti acceleration fields will enable starship personnel to simply "step outside" in order to make planet fall.

4) Solar exchange. Humans will be able to trade out the dying Sol for a younger but similar star. Outlined I a book on the subject of terraforming by the way

 

[Butters]

There was a voyager episode that didn't get developed which was set billions of years in the future

http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Undeveloped_Star_Trek:_Voyager_episodes#Home

That sounds like a good episode.

The far future federation though? Its on borrowed time from the time Janeway returned. Thousands of worlds and Trillions of inhabitants and not one with anything meaningful to do. The march of Pseudoscience will render every endeavour meaningless. They can't all push the envelope or cut their fingers at the bleeding edge of knowledge. Once every star is catalogued, every spec of space dust mapped, what's to be done then? Seek to improve themselves? To what end?

The people of the federation will literally bore themselves to death.

 

[Timewalker]

What will earth look like in a billion years?

Very dry (due to the Sun's impending red giant phase) and uninhabitable for humans (according to an article I read on an astronomy website, we've got less than a billion years left before Earth gets too hot for humans).

I would expect humans to be extinct long before that, or at least evolved into something else (preferably not salamanders).

Because it's only natural humanity would wish to preserve and cherish its cradle as it were.

Humanity doesn't seem to care much about preserving and cherishing it right now.

 

[Paul Weaver]

Once every star is catalogued, every spec of space dust mapped, what's to be done then? Seek to improve themselves? To what end?

See Death Wish for thoughts on that

 

[Butters]

See Death Wish for thoughts on that

Boom! That's the episode I was thinking about.

Its only a matter of time before t federation starts flicking the ears of the civilisation in front. With all the spare time to contemplate 'stuff', existential depression kicks in and utopia goes gradually insane.

The nova that destroyed Romulus. Natural disaster or Munchausen's by proxy on a galactic scale?