To worry that once the sun explodes there will be

[ArtVandeelay]

no intelligent life in the universe. Just vast space. It makes me sad: the slow evolution of man over billions of years; the art; the culture; to go from living in caves to flying to the moon in a blink of an eye.

Me too.... I'll let you know if the penny drops
🌇

The solar system is just a very minor part of the Milky Way galaxy which is just one of billions of galaxies in the observable universe. The Drake equation estimates a very minimum of 1000 civilisations just in the Milky Way, so there are likely to be millions of civilisations in the whole universe. But we may never ever meet any of them if dark forest theory is correct. That would be the tragedy, and what a little part of me would like to live long enough to find out 🙄

My colleague says we should be more concerned about the super volcano under Naples. If that blows, it could cause untold havoc across Europe. That said, it might just rumble on for centuries and explode outside our lifetimes. ⛰️ 🌋

OP you should look at the circles of influence and control.
www.clairenewton.co.za/my-articles/circles-of-control.html

oh, there still will be. just not in the vicinity of this particular Sun.
the universe is far too vast for only one planet in one Solar system to have intelligent life, culture, the arts etc.
there is no way we are the only planet in the entire universe with such things.

YABU to think that our planet hosts the only intelligent life in the universe. In fact, I would argue that it hosted much at all!

In 2-3 generations, you will be forgotten anyway... no point worrying about billions of years in the future.

Just remember that you're standing
On a planet that's evolving
And revolving at nine hundred miles an hour
That's orbiting at nineteen miles a second
So it's reckoned
The sun that is the source of all our power
The sun and you and me and all the stars that we can see
Are moving at a million miles a day
In an outer spiral arm, at four hundred thousand miles an hour
In the galaxy we call the Milky Way
Our galaxy itself contains a hundred billion stars
It's a hundred thousand light years side to side
It bulges in the middle, six thousand light years thick
But out by us, it's just a thousand light years wide
We're thirty thousand light years from galactic central point
We go 'round every two hundred million years
And our galaxy is only one of millions of billions
In this amazing and expanding universe
The universe itself keeps on expanding and expanding
In all of the directions it can whizz
As fast as it can go, of the speed of light, you know
Twelve million miles a minute and that's the fastest speed there is
So remember, when you're feeling very small and insecure
How amazingly unlikely is your birth
And pray that there's intelligent life somewhere out in space
'Cause it's bugger all down here on Earth

Some very cultured and civilized nations (after flying to the moon) easily threw bombs on a daily basis. That would end us sooner than the Sun's explosion.

Already done upthread.

Missed it, sorry!

The mathematical chances of us being the ONLY intelligent life in the universe, or just our own galaxy for that matter, is so close to 0 as to make no difference. Besides, that's 5 BILLION years from now. Our planet, at the rate we are going, will be a dead rock long before then. I'd worry more about whether we'll have made this planet uninhabitable for us and most other species by the end of the next century.

Our little solar system is not "the universe"! We are in a corner of the Milky Way galaxy and if/when our sun dies the universe will carry on regardless. For all we know, there are probably millions of other planets out there with intelligent life.

That's so far into the future that I think it's a bit U to worry about it. I'm much more worried about how life on earth will be affected in the more immediate future by wars and/or climate change. In any case, how do we know that there isn't intelligent life anywhere else in the universe?

Not necessarily. We do not know how mathematically likely it is; the key bit we're missing is the likelihood of life arising on any planet that has the potential to support it.

That said, if the odds of life arising on a planet that could support life is better that one in 10 billion trillion (which they might not be, we really don't know) then yes, we probably have company somewhere...

And then, to add to the confusion of it all, we're talking about "life as we know it." And our understanding of that is very imperfect. Scientists talk about carbon as the "building blocks of life," and the necessity of water, and of oxygen, but...I think that there is every likelihood of life based on something OTHER than carbon, and that life may not require water OR oxygen, but some OTHER readily available substance. My goodness, we have any number of living things on THIS planet that do not require oxygen.

All very true.

So true and very amusing

You're not wrong.

Is this one of those weird posts where the original poster never comes back and the chatter goes on until the page is full ?

Yes it’s sad, but that’s not happening now. Go out and live, enjoy yourself.

We are in a corner of the Milky Way galaxy

And at the deeply unfashionable end of the western spiral arm at that

But the estate agent said it was "up and coming" so not to worry ...

Even with us here, there's no intelligent life in the universe. If we were smart, we'd stop destroying our only home, wouldn't we.

Quite

Oh yeah, I was thinking of some other kind of apocalypse! Doh 🤦‍♀️

Quite!!