The blue dots in this image are boulders ranging in size from 3 to 22 feet (0.9 to 6.7 m) that were thrown off the asteroid’s surface by the impact. After NASA’s Double Asteroid Direction Test smashed a half-ton spacecraft into Dimorphos, the asteroid sprouted a tail of dust. Wildfires that consumed continents and bone-chilling nuclear winters ended the 180-million-year reign of giant reptiles in the geological blink of an eye. Most famously, 66 million years ago, a miles-wide asteroid slammed into the ocean near the Yucatán Peninsula and plunged the planet into chaos. The most obvious threat is the one that has been featured in countless sci-fi stories and films: asteroids. Each one represents a countdown to a different apocalypse, with some more imminent than others. But other apocalypses are inevitable as the solar system ages: a runaway Moon, Earth’s collapsing magnetosphere, the Sun’s flagging heart. Asteroids can be diverted and power grids hardened. In the short term, we may be able to manage or mitigate some of these threats. Errant asteroids, soaring superflares, and exploding supernovae are just a few of the calamities that might befall our fragile world. Earth may seem quite solid beneath our feet, but the continued existence of the thin layers of rock, water, and air that sustain us is in no way guaranteed. The universe is a terrifying place, filled with existential threats. And Earth’s oceans are in the process of boiling away - the ultimate fate of our world in roughly 1 billion years, due to the Sun’s gradual increase in brightness. At left, a nearby supernova bombards Earth with fatal radiation, causing aurorae to dance above the planet. At the bottom, an active Sun bedecked with prominences unleashes a flare and a coronal mass ejection. From upper right, an incoming asteroid impacts Earth. Earth faces a plethora of threats in this collagelike illustration.