| Summary: | The future of the Earth will be determined by a variety of factors, including increases in the luminosity of the Sun, loss of heat energy from the Earth's core, perturbations by the other bodies in the Solar System and the biochemistry at the Earth's surface. Milankovitch theory predicts the planet will continue to undergo glaciation cycles because of eccentricity, axial tilt, and precession of the Earth's orbit. As part of the ongoing supercontinent cycle, plate tectonics will probably result in a supercontinent in 250 million–350 million years. Some time in the next 1.5 billion–4.5 billion years, the axial tilt of the Earth may begin to undergo chaotic variations, with changes in the axial tilt of up to 90°.
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