When the sun dies, could life survive on the Jupiter ocean moon Europa?

Europa and post-solar life

• Many commenters accept the premise that subsurface oceans like Europa’s are natural refuges once the Sun enters its red giant phase.
• Radiation at Europa’s surface is lethal to humans, but that’s seen as irrelevant: the article is about life (microbial or otherwise), not human colonization.
• Some note we already look for Europa-like exomoons; future intelligences might similarly search for icy moons around red giants.

Timescales and solar evolution

• Strong disagreement on timing: references range from ~250 million years (climate/metabolic collapse) to ~500 million to ~1 billion years before Earth becomes uninhabitable from solar brightening and greenhouse feedbacks.
• Debate over whether “oceans boil away” vs. more nuanced runaway-greenhouse, de‑oxygenation, and water-vapor scenarios.
• Several point out that speculating about “us” over billions of years is almost meaningless compared to all of life’s history.

Engineering the Solar System

• One camp insists Earth’s incineration is not inevitable: with enough time and solar energy, we could:
  • Move Earth outward (thrusters, asteroid gravity assists, orbits around Jupiter).
  • Build sun shades at L1 or partial-orbit shades, or giant solar arrays that double as shields.
  • On very long timescales, pursue Dyson swarms or even stellar engineering (star lifting).
• Others argue these are wildly beyond realistic coordination capacity and irrelevant to a sober astrophysical article.

Human and post-human survival prospects

• Views split sharply:
  • Pessimists put substantial near-term extinction odds on climate, nukes, pollution, and political dysfunction, and dismiss billion‑year planning.
  • Optimists see near-total extinction in the next 100 years as extremely unlikely and emphasize humanity’s resilience; if anything survives that long, it likely won’t be Homo sapiens but descendants or AIs.

Meaning of Earth and cultural memory

• Speculation that, over millions to billions of years, “I’m from Earth” would carry no special prestige—Earth becomes like Athens or Olduvai Gorge: historically important but peripheral.
• Some think strong records and ubiquitous digital history may preserve Earth’s significance far longer than past origin sites like the Caspian steppe.

Energy without the Sun & deep-time life

• Even after solar death or surface sterilization, energy sources remain: tidal heating, geothermal heat, radioactive decay, and gravitational potential changes.
• Discussion of deep biosphere ecosystems suggests microbes could survive deep within Earth’s crust for tens of billions of years, long after surface habitability ends.
• Thread repeatedly contrasts the fate of humans with the much greater tenacity and timescale of life itself.