I've come to the realization that humanity's presence won't mean anything

Look at all the great things we have. Vehicles to get us around, technology and gadgets, and all the other things man has created. And in 5 billion years from now, I know a very long time, the Sun will expand and destroy Earth. Unless man can figure out how to build starships and get around the galaxy like in the movies, humanity is screwed.

Of course there's more factors other than just the sun expanding, but if man is thinking they'll leave behind some Earthly relic for aliens to find in 10 billion years, welp, Earth and all of humanity's things left behind, will be gone by then.

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Zaphod42 · 46-50, M

Less time than that even. In just a billion years the sun will already expanded enough to heat the oceans to the boiling point. We’ll have needed to figure something out in less than 800 million years from now. But that assumes we survive the next hundred years with climate change. 🤷‍♂️

ArishMell · 70-79, M

@Zaphod42 Assuming our own species actually exists by then, by normal evolution, our descendants would be unable to survive that. Eventually all life on the planet would be destroyed.

twiigss · M

@Zaphod42 We ain't gonna figure anything out. Money is too important to do any kind of research on how to leave this rock we live on. Guarantee you in 100 years we're all either already gone or struggling to survive with no kind of research done on interstellar travel. It's a pipe dream and that's all it'll ever be, because money. It sucks that's how it has to be, but you can't tell these people common sense.

ArishMell · 70-79, M

@twiigss It's not just money, although that is an immediate barrier, that stops this romantic idea of colonising other planets being no more than a pipe-dream.

Apart from the sheer impracticality largely imposed by the physics, it does not address humanity's fundamental problem: not technical or financial wants, but its own nature.