5 billion years to extinction.. but don't worry

I was reading just the other day how the sun is just this massive ball of gas, made up of hydrogen and helium among other things. It seems that the sun pretty much just operates a perpetual process of nuclear fission, converting hydrogen into helium and pretty much destroying itself for the long term.


The book said that the sun had used up half of its supplies of hydrogen over the past 5 billion years and that it has just 5 billion more years of hydrogen left before it fizzles out and ceases to exist as we know it.

That got me thinking about putting too much store into things like long-range planning, and saving money. I was thinking about my kids and their future kids and so on.

Then I thought about just how far away 5 billion years is, and I thought about how man has evolved so incredibly in far less time than that. At this stage I'm feeling more relaxed about the whole thing knowing that we will surely have evolved into something unreconisable from today, or ceased to exist.

So either way there's not much to worry about.