Editing 1606: Five-Day Forecast

{{comic
| number    = 1606
| date      = November 20, 2015
| title     = Five-Day Forecast
| image     = five_day_forecast.png
| titletext = You know what they say--if you don't like the weather here in the Solar System, just wait five billion years.
}}
A different user-made version for the picture using Celsius instead of Fahrenheit can be found here: [[:File:five_day_forecast_Celsius.png|Five day forecast in Celsius]].

==Explanation==
{{w|Weather forecasting}} is an extremely difficult task, even if it is only for five days. In numerical models, extremely small errors in initial values double roughly every five days for variables such as temperature and wind velocity. So most {{w|Meteorology#Meteorologists|meteorologists}} only provide us with a five-day forecast.

In this comic [[Randall]] takes this to the extreme by first showing a '''Five-Day Forecast''' and then progressing to five-month, year, million, billion and finally trillion-year forecast, {{tvtropes|WeirdWeather|leading to weather patterns that we don't usually see on a regular basis.}}

Since the first weather symbol is the same in all six rows, we must assume this indicates the weather today (and not tomorrow or in a trillion years). It is first in the second panel that we have made the first jump according to the label. Consequently, the last column gives the predictions for four days, four months, ...,  four trillion years from today.

When moving past the five days, the forecast is just a qualified guess based on the time of year. In a month it is Christmas as shown in the second panel of the second row. And then it is winter with January and February so snow is likely, but certainly not something that happens on all days of a winter month.

Looking at the five-year forecast, guesses are made as to what the weather will be like at the same time of year. For these first three predictions the weather symbols are all of the same three types. Sun, clouds and some kind of {{w|precipitation}}, rain or snow. And the temperature range from 21 to 44&nbsp;°F (-6.1 to 6.6&nbsp;°C), winter temperature.

Then we go into the far future, jumping a million years from panel to panel. But still the weather symbols stay the same. However, in 3 million years time aliens (or advanced humans) attack with energy beams from something looking like {{w|flying saucers}}. They are gone a million years later. The temperature range is still the same (except that it rises to 52&nbsp;°F or 11.1&nbsp;°C, a possible reference to global warming) in one panel. But then while the attack is going on the temperature rises to 275&nbsp;°F (135&nbsp;°C).

Once we get to the billion-year mark it actually becomes more meaningful to try to predict the "weather". Because now we reach the times when the {{w|Sun}} begins to change. Although the Sun will continue to burn hydrogen for about 5 billion years yet (while in its {{w|Sun#Main sequence|main sequence|}}), it will still grow in diameter as it begins to exhaust its supply of fuel. The core will contract to increase the temperature, and the outer layer will then compensate by expanding slightly. This is what is indicated in panels two and three where the color of the Sun changes towards red as the surface becomes less hot as it expands away from the center of the Sun. The temperature will rise on Earth as indicated in the panels (105&nbsp;°F = 40.5&nbsp;°C and 371&nbsp;°F = 188&nbsp;°C). So in two billion years the temperature is hot enough that all the earth's oceans will have boiled away… Actually this will happen already in about [http://phys.org/news/2015-02-sun-wont-die-billion-years.html a billion years].

Then once there is {{w|Sun#After core hydrogen exhaustion|no longer enough hydrogen}} the Sun will truly expand into a {{w|red giant}}. This should not happen until five billion years from now,{{Citation needed}} but in the forecast it is indicated to happen already in three. Maybe this is Randall taking liberties to show what happens during this phase, which would not fit into a five-billion-years forecast. Alternatively it is just indicating how uncertain these kinds of forecasts are, or a statement that we may not know for certain that it will take five not three billion years.
Disregarding this, the fourth panel shows the temperature at Earth's position inside the red giant Sun. The color of the panel indicates that we are inside the Sun. The temperature is 71,488,106 degrees Fahrenheit (39,715,597 degrees Celsius). The current temperature of the center of the Sun is "only" 27 million degrees Fahrenheit (15 million degrees Celsius). And although that may rise by a factor of ten during {{w|Stellar nucleosynthesis|helium fusion}} then that will only be at the very core and not out in the solar atmosphere reaching out to Earth Here the temperature would only be of the order of thousands of Fahrenheit, since the Sun's outer temperature decreases as it increases its diameter. So this panels temperature also makes little sense. It may involve some ambiguities regarding what the forecast means; the edge of the red giant Sun is predicted to be somewhere near the current orbit of Earth, but the position of the Earth could change. The most likely prediction at the moment is for Earth to move outward, but if the planet is engulfed by the Sun, it would spiral inward, and at some point fall apart. So in some sense "here" for the forecast could become a position deep inside the Sun, where core temperatures could reach 100 million Kelvin.

The red giant phase only lasts half a million years, so a billion years after the Sun has been a red giant its outer atmosphere will for sure have disappeared leaving only a {{w|white dwarf}} to cool down. Given Randall's version of this time schedule, then it will have had about a billion years to cool down, but would still likely be the brightest object in the sky as seen from where the Earth once was. It is not indicated in the last panel, where we just see other stars of the Galaxy. The temperature is down to that of the {{w|Cosmic microwave background|background radiation}}. Today this radiation has a temperature of 2.72548 kelvin = -270.4245&nbsp;°C = -454.7641&nbsp;°F. So this is a few degree F colder than what is shown in the comic which states the temperature is -452&nbsp;°F = 4.26 kelvin. This higher temperature may have been chosen to reflect that even the star light from other stars would increase the actual temperature.

In the last panel with trillion years, we jump right past the Sun's Red Giant phase, to a panel looking much like the one after five billion years with only other stars. Over the next three trillion years the stars become fewer and fewer and dimmer and dimmer as they run out of fuel and fewer new stars form. After four trillion years the background temperature even decreases one degree to -453&nbsp;°F as the universe keeps expanding and the wavelength of the radiation does the same, thus decreasing its temperature.

The title text is a play on comments referring to fast-changing weather on a more ordinary human timescale, such as Mark Twain's quip "If you don't like the weather in New England now, just wait a few minutes."

A ten days forecast was used in [[1245: 10-Day Forecast]]. In [[1379: 4.5 Degrees]] Randall looked at the weather over long periods of time as well.

==Transcript==
:[A grid with six rows of five columns, where each row is labeled to the left. For each of the 30 squares a temperature is given in Fahrenheit at the top left. The rest of the square represents the weather as in a weather forecast (or some other relevant items for the comic), mainly in bright colors. Below are the six labels given above each of their five weather symbols with temperature given below these symbols description.]

:'''Your 5-day forecast'''
:[A bright yellow sun.]
:38°F
:[A grey cloud.]
:41°F
:[A grey cloud with six lines of blue raindrops below.]
:36°F
:[A grey cloud in front of a yellow sun.]
:40°F
:[A bright yellow sun.]
:44°F

:'''Your 5-month forecast'''
:[A bright yellow sun.]
:38°F
:[A green Christmas tree with red presents beneath it.]
:29°F
:[A grey cloud with four snowflakes below.]
:21°F
:[A grey cloud with four snowflakes below.]
:24°F
:[A grey cloud.]
:35°F

:'''Your 5-year forecast'''
:[A bright yellow sun.]
:38°F
:[A grey cloud.]
:25°F
:[A bright yellow sun.]
:36°F
:[A grey cloud with six lines of blue raindrops  below.]
:37°F
:[A bright yellow sun.]
:41°F

:'''Your 5-million-year forecast'''
:[A bright yellow sun.]
:38°F
:[A bright yellow sun.]
:52°F
:[A grey cloud.]
:40°F
:[Two red flying saucers (with bright domes) are shooting energy beams downwards. One of the beams seems to impact with something at the bottom of the panel, which then explodes. Two plumes of smoke rises up from below, drifting to the right.]
:275°F
:[A grey cloud in front of a yellow sun.]
:40°F

:'''Your 5-billion-year forecast'''
:[A bright yellow sun.]
:38°F
:[A larger orange sun.]
:105°F
:[A very large red sun.]
:371°F
:[A pale yellow panel with no drawing.]
:71,488,106°F
:[A night sky with many bright stars.]
:-452°F

:'''Your 5-trillion-year forecast'''
:[A bright yellow sun.]
:38°F
:[A night sky with many bright stars.]
:-452°F
:[A night sky with many stars.]
:-452°F
:[A night sky with fewer not so bright stars.]
:-452°F
:[A night sky with few dim stars.]
:-453°F

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Comics with color]]
[[Category:Science]]
[[Category:Space]]
[[Category:Astronomy]]
[[Category:Weather]]
[[Category:Aliens]]