The Planet Earth will eventually end

"The planet is a very powerful emblem of our own inner Universe"I am referring to our planet Earth, no metaphors, no similes, no "emblems." Although I see what you mean, I am not referring to our personal thoughts on what Earth represents, I am talking about the planet itself.I am also not considering the planet ending a "big deal." I embrace death, and I embrace life, and everything in between. I am simply arguing the fact that it will end some day, which (for the purpose of this debate) doesn't have any significance to our "fears" of the planet being uninhabitable or just dying altogether.I agree that people care more about themselves ceasing to exist if Earth does, but once again, that isn't the topic. Good point, though.I thought you would bring up something like that. For sure, we can say that because matter cannot be created or destroyed completely (according to our current understanding of matter and anti-matter) then Earth, or anything for that matter, can not be completely destroyed (taken out of existence) by any means we know of today. But that doesn't change the possibility (a very good one) that eventually, an astronomical event can in fact create anti-matter, or take existing matter out of this existence.To say the universe "took 16,000,000,000 years to create human life" is incredibly (I hate this word) ignorant. We have absolutely no idea if life has spawned on other planets in other galaxies in other constellations, billions of light years (one light year is 5,878,000,000,000,000,000,000 miles) away.Nobody said it will end in a billion years, if you have a source that claims that, I'd love to read up on it. I have nowhere seen that Earth will cease to exist in a billion years; the only thing I understand (that is widely accepted by scientists and astronomers/cosmologists) is that in about a billion years, our sun's luminosity (amount of energy generated by a star) will have increased by about 10%, and turned Earth into basically a huge greenhouse gas planet. Simpler life forms will most likely still survive at the poles, so the eradication of all life on Earth most likely will not even happen in a billion years.You're also giving the impression that you believe the Universe was designed, or created, with purpose, or reason. You're also giving the impression that it has a conscience, something I obviously cannot "prove" wrong, but if you are to make a claim like that, I'd like to see a source that backs that claim up. As far as we currently understand, the Universe consists of gases, solids, and liquids, as the "main" materials. We have not found any sign that it is an intelligent mind or thought process or conscience yet.I appreciate your last statement, that all the doomsday scenarios produced by the media and superstitions do distract us from what's really going on, economically. When people talk about the end of Earth, dozens of scenarios go through their head. Black holes(1), meteor impact(2), with a high chance that (within 100,000,000 years) a meteor will strike Earth much like the one that caused the extinction of the dinosaurs 65,000,000 years ago(3), the Andromeda galaxy colliding with the Milky Way (4), and so on.Supervolcanoes(5) are currently alive and well on Earth, and with evidence of past supervolcanic eruptions(6)(7) well supported, there is no reason to rule out the possibility that one of them won't erupt in the future.With evidence of large asteroid impacts(8), we also cannot rule that possibility out.To top if all off, if nothing manages to destroy the Earth, meaning our sun doesn't swell enough to ever burn Earth to a crisp, a meteor bigger than a couple kilometers doesn't smack into us, any of our active large volcanoes don't erupt in billion, trillions, quadrillions of years, our moon stays in orbit the right amount to not severely disrupt our oceans, any collisions on a grand scale in our galaxy doesn't happen, or doesn't affect Earth, and the collision with Andromeda either never happens or doesn't have any negative effect on our entire solar system, we still need to take into account the constant loss of solar energy. A theory called the "Heat Death(9)," simply put, is the idea that once there is no more consumable energy in the Universe, the stars will die, the planets will lose all life, and the current black holes will eventually destroy everything. However; the chance that quantum fluctuations(10) create another Big Bang are high in approximately 10^56 (1 followed by 56 zeros, aka 100 nonillion) years.The main thing I'm saying is that no matter what happens to Earth, the Universe will collapse in on itself, or expand to such a great distance that gravity will have no relevance and after the stars die out, black holes will take over and erase everything from existence. If a physical catastrophe doesn't happen to Earth (the sun expanding to burn Earth to a crisp is incredibly likely, and has been recorded to happen to other stars (11) ) it will be eradicated via black hole or the Universe collapsing in on itself; a theory for what happened before the Big Bang, 13.4 billion years ago. Mind you, this is said to happen in 10^10^120 years, which is (correct me if I'm wrong) 1 followed by 120,000 zeros. So we have some time.(1) http://en.wikipedia.org...(2) http://en.wikipedia.org...(3) http://en.wikipedia.org...(4) http://en.wikipedia.org...(5) http://en.wikipedia.org...(6) http://curiosity.discovery.com...(7) http://en.wikipedia.org...(8) http://en.wikipedia.org...(9) http://en.wikipedia.org...(10) http://en.wikipedia.org...(11) http://www.space.com...