The future according to Wikipedia

Wikipedia is, among other things, an account of world history that anyone can edit. It's become authoritative, too, not because of academic rigour but for its sheer prominence; if you type any year into Google, it'll be Wikipedia's crowdsourced version of events that pops up first in the search results. From this we learn, for example, that Dionysius II made peace with Carthage in 367BC, while in 1739 the Bible was first published in Estonian.

But it works for future years, too. Wikipedia contributors have, in their spare time, assembled a year-by-year account of the future that's rich with anticipation and speculation. From technological guesses to asteroid near-misses, they've made bold predictions about our destiny alongside various dates from science fiction literature to give the whole thing some kind of mad, unhelpful context.

Of course, the pace of technological change means that no one really has a clue what's going to happen beyond the second half of this century, but Wikipedia's projections continue well beyond the year 2525 (if man is still alive). Below are are some edited highlights from the web's premier collaborative soothsaying resource. Welcome to the future.

The Summer Olympics will be held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

International scientists intend to complete the world's first fully synthetic yeast

Estimated completion date for the Kingdom Tower in Saudi Arabia, expected to become the tallest building in the world

The setting for the film Blade Runner

London's Crossrail is scheduled to be in full service

Brood X, the largest brood of North American 17-year cicadas, will emerge [for the first time since 2004]

The setting for the 1991 video game Bill Laimbeer's Combat Basketball [a new basketball league with no referees, no rules, no fouls and use of weapons permitted]

The world's population is expected to reach eight billion

The autopsy report for Elvis Presley will be unsealed, 50 years after his death

The institution of the proposed African Monetary Union

The digital time capsule 'A Message From Earth' will reach its destination, the planet Gliese 581c. It contains 501 messages that were selected through a competition on the social networking site Bebo

Saudi Arabia will no longer have oil to export

The prog rock album 2032, by Gong, suggests that Planet Gong [home of the pothead pixies and octave doctors] will make full contact with Earth

The planned final phase of Britain's HS2 rail link is scheduled for completion

Alberto Fujimori, former President of Peru, is eligible for release from prison [at the age of 96, following his conviction for human rights violations]

[Biomedical gerontologist] Aubrey de Grey predicts by around this year there is a 50/50 chance that ageing will be brought under a "decisive level of medical control", paving the way for biological immortality in humans

The world's largest mud volcano, located in East Java, Indonesia, may have stopped erupting

The Year 2038 Problem: A common computing representation of date and time will overflow, with potential results similar to the Y2K problem

The setting for the animated TV series Batman Beyond

The Great Red Spot on Jupiter's atmosphere will become circular

Scheduled completion of a proposed project to create a railroad connecting Moscow to New York

A Nickelodeon time capsule, sealed in April 1992, will be opened [its contents include a CD copy of MC Hammer's Please Hammer Don't Hurt 'Em and some rollerblades]

The Kennedy Library will release to the public a 500-page transcript of an oral history about John F Kennedy given by Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis (if her last child has died) [according to conspiracy theorist sources]

Futurist Ray Kurzweil predicts a technological singularity, ie, a runaway cycle of self-improvement by intelligent machines

The present principle of "one country, two systems" in Hong Kong, guaranteed for 50 years starting from July 1, 1997, may end. What will be done is not stated in any document

The first instance of a full moon on February 29th since 1972

The outbreak of The Nine Years' War, a conflict which devastates the entire planet [according to Aldous Huxley's novel Brave New World]

The population of the United States will reach 400 million [according to the United States Census Bureau]

In Stephen Baxter's novel Flood, Mount Everest is submerged underwater

The setting for the film Minority Report

In the Warner Bros short film One Froggy Evening, a man discovers a singing frog in a box on a hi-tech street. He thinks he will make a fortune from the frog, but unfortunately the amphibian won't sing for anyone but him

The Midland Expressway Ltd contract to run the M6 Toll expires

The Beatles' catalogue will enter the public domain

Futurist Simon Hopkins predicts the collapse of modern economic systems

Commercial mining of the Moon's elements could be economically feasible

The setting for TV puppet show Fireball XL5

The setting for TV puppet show Stingray

The setting for TV puppet show Thunderbirds

According to Israeli futurist David Passig, there will be an undersea city

The Pew Research Center estimates that Muslim adherents will outnumber Christians

2072

The setting for the TV series My Life as a Teenage Robot

2081

The book 2081: A Hopeful View of the Human Future by Gerard K O'Neill envisages human emigration to colonies in free space

2084

The lease of Uluru to the Australian government by the Pitjantjatjara is set to expire

2085

The Sega Dreamcast's internal clock will reach its limit

2092

Work on cleaning up the site of the Oldbury Nuclear Power Station [in Gloucestershire] is scheduled to be completed

2095

The setting for 2Pac's music video California Love

2095

Based on current trends, gender equality in the workplace will be achieved

2233

The year of birth of Captain James T Kirk of the starship Enterprise

2300

Google's master plan to index all the world's information and make it searchable could be achieved, according to CEO Eric Schmidt

2525

In the Year 2525, a 1969 song by Zager and Evans, describes what life is like in 2525. Disturbing predictions are given for each selected year

2640

Performance of [John Cage's] musical piece Organ²/ASLSP (As SLow aS Possible), that started in 2001, will come to an end

3183

The Time pyramid, a public art work at Wemding, Germany, is scheduled for completion

4545

According to the song In the Year 2525, by Zager and Evans, man will be blind and fed through tubes

5555

According to the song In the Year 2525 by Zager and Evans, machines will have taken over all physical tasks, rendering man's arms and legs useless

6565

According to the song In the Year 2525 by Zager and Evans, mating will cease to exist in its current form and children will be chosen from a "long glass tube"

8510

In the song "In the Year 2525" by Zager and Evans, the songwriter expresses wonder as to whether, by the year 8510, god will be pleased with man, or destroy all of creation and start over

1000000000

Estimated time for an astroengineering project to alter the Earth's orbit, compensating for the Sun's increasing brightness and outward migration of the habitable zone, accomplished by repeated asteroid gravity assists