It is predicted that in about 4 billion years our sun will become a red giant star, engulfing some of the inner planets of the solar system, including the Earth. If there are any astronomers then, it will undoubtedly be a momentous occasion for them. For about 6 seconds …

Where will we be then? According to popular belief among scientists, 4 billion years ago the Earth was nothing more than a primordial soup populated with only single-celled organisms eating and being eaten. These creatures were much simpler even than the amoeba. But some of these creatures, the blue-green algae, produced oxygen.

Oxygen was a rarity in the early atmosphere, and was probably toxic to many of the creatures of the time. They died but gave life to other organisms. That’s the wonder of evolution. Thanks to them we have tons of oxygen in the atmosphere today. Philosophical dichotomies aside, we are basically the descendants of those algal critters.

Primordial soup to personkind and all our technological wizardry. Dang!

If evolution proceeds at this rate, there is a lot of potential for the evolution of the human race in 4 billion years. Given that the next great threat to the Earth is the nuclear transformation of the sun, and not self-destruction by ecological disaster or war, we have a lot of time to plan for it.

There’s no rush, but I say let’s start colonizing space. Fortuitously, the suggestion of life on Mars has gotten scientists scurrying about for much-needed cashola to send a robotic spacecraft there. It will require a lot of ingenuity on the part of scientists. But that’s what they are good at.

It won’t be long before we land a woman there.

Then, we can spread out to Jupiter, Saturn, and other planets and solar systems, creating an Asimov-esque galactic civilization. Will the people of the future, whatever they have evolved into, even remember the Earth?

Maybe by then we will have figured our how to create “worm holes,” tunnels in space-time through which we could visit different places and times in the universe. Controlling such magnificent creations would be tough. At least, that’s what we think based on the primitive stone-tools we call technology today. In 4 billion years, who knows?

Distant as it is, I worry about the demise of the Earth. I am confident that Mother Nature has provided all the necessary means for humanity to survive, if we are just smart enough to figure them out. We need to cooperate and quit worrying about our petty squabbles. We should use our precious “higher reasoning centers” to overcome our primate instincts of territoriality and selfishness. Otherwise, what good are they?

To the stars!