[dysfunction]

That may be true, but it's worth noting that the length of a "generation" of stars varies wildly depending on the type of star. Stars like our Sun might only live 10 billion years or so, but red dwarfs live 100 billion years or more so we could presumably live around them long after all the Sun-like stars have burned out.

[matthewdgreen]

Can't we dump matter into black holes to draw things out for a while even after that?

[deadbeeves]

From where are you getting the energy to do that?

[matthewdgreen]

If you have a bunch of matter (dead stars, planets, interstellar dust) is there some fundamental reason this can't be dumped into accretion disks, etc. in an energy-positive way?