If we're still around, in 5 x 10E9 years we will either have the ability to move somewhere else, or be able to intervene directly in stellar evolution. Most likely, we will be long gone long before we get to that point, for some totally unrelated reason. Humankind will probably disappear from some entirely different problem; like a flint shortage that severely curtails our ability to make stone tools.

I realize articles like this are purely speculative, and are more metaphorical than predictive, but they still betray an almost childish optimism about our future: they simply assume growth and progress will continue uninterrupted but that we will remanin essentially unchanged. Even purely biological organisms evolve enormously over 5 billion years, but over that time technical evolution would be simply inconceivable--assuming it continued at the same rate it has for the last 5 thousand years.

The more we know, the more likely we are to get into trouble. The earth's oldest and most successful organisms are the simplest and the least demanding on their environments.