>But there's a decent chance that the cyanobacteria and friends would survive and, after hundreds of millions of years, restart the evolutionary process. I thi

>But there's a decent chance that the cyanobacteria and friends would survive and, after hundreds of millions of years, restart the evolutionary process. I think it's worth noting that on this timescale, we don't have forever: "In about one billion years, the solar luminosity will be 10% higher than at present. This will cause the atmosphere to become a "moist greenhouse", resulting in a runaway evaporation of the oceans. As a likely consequence, plate tectonics will come to an end, and with them the entire carbon cycle... Four billion years from now, the increase in the Earth's surface temperature will cause a runaway greenhouse effect, heating the surface enough to melt it. By that point, all life on the Earth will be extinct." - from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Future_of_Earth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Future_of_Earth I submit that this is probably Earth's only chance at a spacefaring civilization, and therefore Earth life's only chance at escaping the planet (and thus surviving the death of the planet). If we flub it and cause a mass extinction without anything to show for it, it is the beginning of the end of Earth's story.