Earth may have a Finite Life, but Human Life, and the Life we bring with us, Could Conceivably spread out into the Universe.

How humans might outlive Earth, the Sun, and even the Universe itself

Nuclear war. Runaway climate change. A global pandemic. Today our world faces all manner of existential threats. But scary possibilities like these are nothing compared to what astronomers say lies in store for Earth. Our planet's ultimate destiny is to be baked, blasted, and eventually disintegrated.

 From article, (Nuclear war. Runaway climate change. A global pandemic. Today our world faces all manner of existential threats. But scary possibilities like these are nothing compared to what astronomers say lies in store for Earth. Our planet’s ultimate destiny is to be baked, blasted, and eventually disintegrated.

There’s nothing we can do to prevent this cataclysm. Yet according to scientists who study the far future, including University of California astronomer Gregory Laughlin, the prospect for life is, oddly, rather bright. Given technological advances and the continuing evolution of our species, humans should be able to survive — in some form — long after Earth has ceased to exist.

But our distant descendants are going to have to do some planet-hopping.

The first major cosmic crisis will strike in about 1.5 billion years. At that point, according to projections by environmental scientist Andrew J. Rushby at the University of East Anglia in England, the brightening sun will set off what might be termed “super-global” warming. Earth will be heated until the oceans boil.

By then, though, will we care? We already have the technology to establish bases on the moon and Mars. So a billion and a half years from now, we’ll likely have colonized the whole solar system — and perhaps other star systems in our Milky Way galaxy.

Fortunately, Laughlin points out, there are 200 billion other stars in the Milky Way, most with planets of their own. Perhaps our descendants will have mastered near-light-speed travel. Even with current technology, however, interstellar travel is conceivable on the kind of timescales we’re talking about.

The fastest spacecraft built to date, Voyager 1, is racing away from the sun at 38,027 miles per hour. At that speed, it would take 70,000 years to reach the nearest star. But future humans might build interstellar arks, giant ships on which generations of travelers would live and die before delivering colonists to a new destination. Such star-hopping colonists could spread across our entire galaxy before Earth overheats, even assuming no advances in rocketry.)