Okay, this thread is necessarily very speculative. Look at all that has happened in the last thousand years! How can we even imagine what will happen in the next few billion years? I'd give us a much better chance than that, but it's hard to know.

With the rate that technology is progressing, I'm sure we could make the technology to do almost anything - it's just a matter of whether we'll have it before a potentially apocolyptic disaster occurs.

Most likely, the human race will slowly or suddenly replace itself with bio/machine hybrids to achieve virtual immortality and other enhancements. So perhaps humans wouldn't exist in the same form. By the time the time the sun becomes a red giant, I'm sure it would be rudimentary to be able to change the orbit of a planet.

I find it arrogant to think that humans will never become extinct. We are just one of many species that has inhabited this planet. Who knows, maybe alligators, sharks and cockroaches shall inherit the earth as they have been here for a long time.

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Nothing sticks to teflon

Hijack a Starship

No doubt. Hopefully by the time the sun burns out we'll have the capability for interstellar travel.

The destruction of the Earth could occurr at any moment,in an instant.If a large enough Asteroid strikes the Earth, life on
Earth could be extinguished in a matter of
hours.This Asteroid strike could occurr at any moment.So your statement that the destruction of the Earth is Billions of years
away is technically incorrect.This Asteroid strike situation, is what many scientist say exterminated the Dinosaurs.

Actually at the least we would probably have several months warning (a rare comet) and at the worst we could have decades of warning before anything impacts the Earth.

Astronomers are constantly looking for threats to the Earth and computers pick up objects moving in our solar system based upon digital imaging.

That's true. An asteroid impact could come much sooner. I wasn't claiming it was a logical argument. I was merely commenting and hoping that we would have centuries to prepare.

I'll be long since passed on, so will everyone else reading this, so why bother to ponder this kind of stupidity?

All things considered, it is highly unlikely that any humans will be around to witness the literal end of the world. The earth sits in a cosmic shooting gallery, and it is only a matter of time until we get wacked again by a large comet or meteor. Plate techtonics will eventually set off another super eruption on the scale of Yellowstone that will hugely impact human survival. Throw in runaway global warming, eventual return of the ice ages and human inability to restrain population growth, and the prognosis is not all that promising. Hate to be a wet blanket, but thems the facts.

I am pretty sure that by that time we will have populated other areas of space and with the impending Earth-ending we will just go elsewhere and mess that up also

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Political Disgust