What could cause the Earth to be so endangered that mankind needs to relocate to another system?
I am looking at realistic options that could damage the Earth so severely that it would be impossible for mankind to survive there and that would also not allow us to just colonize other planets or moons in the system.
For information: The Tech Level I am looking at for Humanity is near future - Mankind has developed fusion and has started to colonize the solar system, Mars, selected Moons around the other planets, and has built artificial satellites/stations in our own solar system - BUT no FTL or Warp drive technology. It still takes long periods of time to travel within our own system and a ship leaving to a new world around a new star would take around 100 years - requiring either a generation vessel or crew/passengers in cryogenic suspension.
I would like the event to be something that could be identified as approaching with something like 50+ years notice in order to galvanise humanity into a gargantuan step into stellar colonisation.
I need something that isn't too far fetched (rogue black hole running through the solar system), but that will also affect any other colonisation efforts mankind had within the inner planets.
Thanks and hope that isn't too wide a brief...
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When the sun started to behave strangely, astronomers were confused: The accepted solar model didn't at all predict this behaviour. Indeed, based on the new data it could quickly be shown that their model of the sun was wrong due to some previously unknown factor (maybe the sun contained a considerable amount of dark matter or something). Immediately they started to work on a new model, this time using also the newly collected data. After years of work, they found the truth: The sun will not shine for billions of years to come, but will go nova in about 50 years. It will do in a way that nobody in the solar system will survive the radiation burst. The only way to save humanity is to get to a safe distance before it happens. As afterwards, the sun will no longer shine and earth will be sterile, returning is pointless.
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