[0] What life would be like a billion years hence? Well, let me describe the Earth (to the best of our knowledge) in the year one billion AD. It will be a hot, dry, inhospitable place. The end of tectonic activity will have meant the loss of its oceans and also most atmospheric carbon dioxide. This means an end to most known forms of life, starting with photosynthesizing plants that need carbon dioxide to survive. The swelling of the aging Sun would only make things worse. Fast forward another couple of billion years and the Earth as a whole will likely be swallowed by the Sun as our host star reaches the end of its lifecycle. How will flesh-and-blood humans survive? Chances are they won’t. They’ll be long extinct, with any memory of their once magnificent civilization irretrievably erased.

Unless…

Unless it is preserved by the machines we built. Machines that can survive and propagate even in environments that remain forever hostile to humans. In deep space. In the hot environment near the Sun or the extreme cold of the outer solar system. On the surface of airless bodies like the Moon or Neptune’s Triton. Even in interstellar space, perhaps remaining dormant for centuries as their vehicles take them to the distant stars.

[0] https://spinor.info/weblog/?p=11906