Future Life...

You worry too much about what happens in 1 billion years.... really.
We could be glad if the human race survives the next year. There are more than enough idiots which could press the wrong button and in the next moment the most intelligent life on this planet is a cockroach.

Have in count that human kind evolved to the species we are now, the last changes within the past 20k years and they were significative, the brains we have now, this "hardware" is about 20k years old. That's why people plan to upgrade that hardware forcedly with cip implants, same as they do to the ones that get a mechanical arm, controlled by a cip implanted in the brain. Not everyone has the money for that though, but there are many enough cases.

Within 1 Billion years we could even be part of the cosmic energy by evolving so much that we don't need bodies to keep our conscience in.

Anyways for sure we won't be as weak as we are now, counting survival. We live in the most perfect biosphere, athmosphere with balanced ammount of toxic gases, from -30 (excepting the poles) to -50/60 temperatures, etc. We don't need anything else for now When there's something that affects our survival, it'll be time to adapt and evolve, in some direction.

oh technology for sure improves at a very fast rate
however, mankind generally is too stupid to make use of it in the correct way.

we clearly have the technology to travel to mars... i mean today... at this moment
we have that technology... we are just too stupid to make use of it

as race we are not able to concentrate on such projects... politics, money and tons of other problems
Hell we are not even able to solve the problems here on earth.
problems that actually are not that hard to solve... but thats again a matter of politics

people are dying because of war and hunger... but at the same time we produce weapons and ship food to these people while instead we could help and motivate them to grow their own food. It takes not much to deliver the technology to solve such problems. Hell, we could grow plants in the desert if we want to. The poorest countries of the world could be the richest ones if they would want to and if they would get the technology for such a step forward. They have an unlimited resource that all the other countries need -> cheap energy. Large solar plants (of the newest technology) in these countries could solve the energy problem of the entire world.
Sure, much of the energy gets lost over long distances (you cant cheat physics) but it is still enough... and its still cheaper than anything that is produced by the industry nations.
That with the positive side effect that the poor countries get alot of money that can be invested...

but ok... i go off topic... ... a bit... it just shows what is actually possible... what should be possible before we go to other worlds
problem is like i mentioned... wars, politics, money... not technology
So why should anybody spent hundreds of billions $ for a trip to mars? We can not even afford to solve the problems on our own world.
Sorry I have a very negative opinion about mankind including their ability to achieve something big.
Especially since we as race keep doing the same things over and over again with the sick expectation that something will get better someday.
That does not work.
You have to do something different in order to get different results.
Mankind is stupid... we have not realized this fact yet.... therefore i expect that we wont fly to other planets or even solar systems. We are too stupid for such a step.

I dont think that humans evolved much in 20k years. We gathered knowledge... probably even raised in size... but thats it.
Yes... we are getting more clever (proven fact) but in my eyes thats result of better food support which is good for the brain capacity, health standards and the resulting long live span aswell as requirement to think (training).
But thats actually not evolution.
Raise today a child like 20k years ago and you will get just a caveman... and probably not even a clever one.
Really, we are not talking about evolution in the past 20k years... and for sure it is no evolution to have implants.
The more trash you put into your body the more you make yourself dependent on it... which means that the natural functions of the body will degenerate.

Hell, today I see people which need to use a calculator to do simple multiplications. I mean... what evolution can that be? A race that can not think anymore.

Will we end as cosmic energy someday?
Sure we will... but not in a form of life. No form of energy can be kept in a complex system. Its against physical laws.... a matter of entropy.

The technology for an interplanetary, selfsupporting - and repaying - civilization is already there. It has been already 20 years ago. With todays technology it would even be possible
to reach other systems - if we as mankind or some member(s) of would have the wits, wish and will to carry on a task on a decades timescale. It would be a slo-mo operation, but technologically
absolutly possible and feasable.

It's a question of motivation, if - or IMO when it will be done.

And in that respect humanity and almost every member of it still acts as 20k years ago. The timescale an average - 08/15 - human can ordoes think about rarly surpasses the next 3 days.
Their interests are focused on the same basic needs 'n deeds as 20k years ago : FOOD, FUN, FU-- female company, the more, the better and the best (means simplest, cheapest and with
lowest effort and strain) way to achieve this before the damn ape next door get something better than you.

Therefor I agree with OP : in terms of biological, "thinking-hardware" evolution we are still cavemen. No change on that for at least the next 250k years. Most likely even more, since we,
mankind with its invention of civilization have very effectivly killed most of the "usual" evolutionary driving forces.

But even with its "caveman"-motivation I think mankind has achieved quite a lot. Let's stay with what connects us here - SPACEFARING.

First thought by "wellminded" dreamers like Verne, Lasswitz, Ziolkowski, Oberth, Goddard, A.C.Clark and hell of a lot of others. They didn't achieve much with their intellectual arguments
for spacefaring.
Then some others found a way to interest the "Big APEs" for rocketry and space, main examples here maybe v.Braun, Koroljow, Esnault-Pelterie, Itokawa Hideo. They showed them, that with
the new technology they could be bigger apes than the others (=> more FOOD, FUN, FU-- female company). And the by most rendered the biggest achievement - moon landing -was a boyish game
between the at that time biggests apes, who can piss further than the other.
(When these big boys were gone, their "playground" was abandoned => all spaceprogramms were cut down to the grounds. NASA continuing on space shuttle was mainly driven by innerpolitical and economical reasons -
keeping certain industries in certain places alive for the voters sake and the industrialists electionary "support)

To push things again it would need someone who convince the big apes of our time - less military, more the moneymakers and holders.
(Think about: Bill Gates puts all his money into a space hotel enterprise. He could afford it easily)

On your general "disbelieve" in a future of mankind:
I think humanity IS already kind of a cockroach. Even the next dino-killer-asteroid, that is - statistically - already overdue for about 150k years won't kill mankind. A damn awfull lot of people
would die, but not the whole lot. Like War Of the Worlds : It will start all over AGAIN !
I think/ believe that mother nature made us too good on surviving, that she can get rid of us anymore. And there also seems to be a weired kind oh failsafe :
since 1945 we have the ability for atomaric overkill (despite START I and II and whatever treaty since then - stiull overkill) and have been on the brink of it for more than a dozens of time. ......
but for unknown reasons, there was always the "right guy" at the"right time" on the "right place". And the same can be said about chemicals, biologicals, etc..

Quote from (IOC)Rex Nebular

The Carrington Event of 1859

If a solar storm of this size hits [maybe a matter of when, not if], we lose ALL our precious technology. All computer chips fried. All electronics fried. All communications fried. All power grids down. All satellites fried. All data on unshielded hard drives gone.

Sorry but today not only hard drives are shielded, but satellites, plane parts and quite a lot more of electronic stuff are shielded, especially in the US.

At least Google would still exist if such thing happens, just that we might not have a PC to connect to it, but not for long as selling PCs/other electronic stuff as TVs/etc would be the profit of the century, so for sure there will be PCs for sale, for the sake of the money

I mentioned 20k years ago, as that was the last biological upgrade we got, 21k+ years ago is when we were caveman (actually, not really, longer), you are taking the biological evolution as negative as our economy evolution.

We won't evolve biologically unless we need it for survival, so while technology does that for us, we don't need anything new to survive. But sure we'd be upgradable forcedly, with our tech, the implants that already exist.

I really would like to see how you google something or use your harddrive without electricity

Burning wood to heat the house while above at the ventilation it'd have a simple turbine, as in a wheel with blades made of light materials like double paper, like a ventilator, that moves a little motor. Most likely several of them...

But electricity itself can't be stopped or destroyed, as the water turbines in their central will still spin and produce electricity, the solar panels will still send energy through the cables, same as the wind turbines, it just have to be directioned and controlled, without PCs.

If such solar cataclism would actually kill electricity for a while, our biggest problem would be the cooling system at the nuclear reactors. I'm pretty sure they have a safety system that uses their own energy for that, or a generator, in case the light goes out, but yeah... those won't stop no matter what happens. If they are forced to stop, they'd first explode, or in the best case scenario, launch radioactive material that will contaminate more area than the explosion. Actually this isn't a good case scenario

question should be if its worth to settle on barren worlds
sure we could terraform mars... an issue which gets easier when the sun heats... but we can not bring all the life from earth to mars and we dont really understand how much is needed to create a new living world
its simply a balance that is so much complex that the slightest mistake leads to failure
its also a question if we want to live in a world behind of steel walls and no blue sky above us. Is that still life?

I can only speak for myself.
I can tough decisions if necessary.... but i could not live with an illusion.

Quote from Huor

What i also could imagine that we make use of cooling technologies (kryo??) to freeze mankind until we reach habitable areas... Could be a possible way...

They have an idea for that, as normal kryo is not possible for humans as our blood and everything would crystalize... (which is pretty bad for our constitution xD, if we are made pieces), the idea was to add a certain substance in the blood to make a similar effect the salt has on ice, that lowers the total freezing point of water to -60, so you could have liquid water at -40... same with us.

Quote from (IOC)Rex Nebular

Yep, the EMP of 1859 was *that* powerful. Tell me again how this much current won't fry everything. It certainly will.

It certainly won't.

or

The guy with a trololo face Many ways to avoid stuff getting fried, not only that chainmail cage that will conduct all that energy arround the object, but also hardware with a case made out of other materials which are not conductive/non conductors (like the "protected hard disks" mentioned in some article above, as in the US they use that since they seen EMPs as a threat). Copper and such are very good conductors, so of course they will melt if they take in all the heat from the pass of that much energy.

Also since we use more and more energy, these new centrals have exits and resistors for quite a huge ammount of energy, know what's the safe energy limit for a nuclear power plant ? We are not in the 1800s anymore.

I seen copper bobines (those 2 cylinders you mentioned in that image) melting at plain 220V energy as they had no resistor. Also, I doubt that by that time they had the cover of the copper wires we use now to avoid the bobines from touching eachother or melting.

This doesn't mean, of course, that an EMP won't leave a country in dark for a while, not long tho.

michael
we are actually not talking about a lightning bolt hitting a cage

we are talking about heavy electro-magnetic effects which destroy almost everything that controls out modern civilization

no hdd has any protection from it... they are most covered by plastic components and the little bit metal has just one purpose: leading electricity just like any other computer component
voltate spikes are the most common reason why hardware gets "grilled"

The world wide power grids are even more in danger.
Not that long ago half of canada and parts of the USA got a major blackout because of just one incident.
World wide the power plants deliver the energy to the end users... but before this happens there are hundreds of transformers (practically in every city on the globe) which "convert" the energy to a usable level.
They are like the the copper wires of the telegraph machine above... and they have no protection at all.
They will melt... and it is not required that they all melt because of such an incident... even in a high-tech country like germany it would be enough if just a few of them burn through.... the sudden overproduction and energy spikes would lead to a chain reaction that overloads the entire power grid of the country... no... even worse... germanys power grid is directly linked with all surrounding countries.
-> blackout in europe just because of a few damages ones
it would take weeks to isolate the error source and fix it

even worse if not just a few burn through but most of them...
the entire power grid will fail without the chance to get it back online anytime soon.
It would be necessary to rebuild this energy grid... but how to do it without energy? To produce the necessary amount of components takes years.

Don't really know, if this is still on topic.

You discuss todays technical problems with an mayor EMP/Solar flare event.
I may take a couple or even a dozen of years to set everything back to tadays standard,
even if I doubt that it would take so long.

I got the impression Hour asked on a scope of possibilities counted in centuries and millenia, (But I might also be wrong on that.)
If we think/believe that mankind can/will/might develop into a truly cosmic society.

Sure, such an event would be quite catastrophic fur US, TODAY and perhaps for the couple of years mentioned.
But in the development of the human civilization it would be only a small footnote, if any.