Why can't our self-replicating message in a bottle stay in Sol?

Suppose we knew of an extinction level event in a few decades, and through a large Manhattan Project-type effort humanity manages to construct a von Neumann probe with a copy of all human knowledge. Like with Voyager's record but more sophisticated. A self-replicating message in a bottle from a dying civilization.

Are there any plausible disasters that would provide the reason why such a probe should be sent to a different star system first instead of starting in our own system on, say, Mars or the asteroid belt or just hibernating on Earth for a few millennia?

Since everyone is (or will be soon) dead, time isn't really a factor, but the energy to get a spacecraft at solar escape velocity certainly is.

Bonus points the further you'd have to send the probe.

posted over 4 years ago

Jay Lemmon‭

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