Whether or not you believe that Earth will or will not perish due to self-destruction such as nuclear warfare, internal-destruction such as a super volcano, or external-destruction such as an asteroid, no matter what, humanity's time on Earth is ticking away. It is inevitable that eventually one day, the sun will expand and take out Earth or supernova and take out most of our solar system.
The most popular theories to humanity's end is a large asteroid, such as one that eventually led to the extinction of the dinosaurs, and nuclear warfare that could end in either a quick end for nearly all of humanity or a slow end if a nuclear winter took place.
For any of these reasons, it is imperative that if we want to continue on as a species, we must eventually spread to other planets and/or moons away from our solar system. Scientists must continue their search of finding "Earth-like" planets in other solar systems, but also explore the possibilities of terraforming a planet to fit the needs of humanity.
Using some of the most advanced telescopes available, scientists at JPL and observations based on the Kepler Mission, only 1.4 to 2.7% of sun-like stars are expected to contain Earthlike planets. Even once we find Earthlike planet candidates, we must find ways to determine whether or not they are truly inhabitable for humans. Anything from temperature variances, to deadly plant/animal life, to a lack of a proper atmosphere are all real possibilities humans would face if we were somehow able to figure out how to successfully send humans to one.
Terraforming has also been discussed as a possibility, but something on this scale would take years and we would need to figure out how to provide the planet with the missing ingredients that are essential to human life. Mars, Venus, and Saturn's moon Titan have been suggested as future candidates to possible terraforming if humanity leans that way. One study suggests that to successfully transform Mars to be compatible with humanity, it could take up to fifty thousand years before we could possibly live on it. Even then, we would only be one planet farther from the sun that will eventually destroy most, if not all of the solar system.
In the current status of the space agencies on Earth, we will not be able to escape the Earth before our extinction comes. We could possibly prolong humanity's extinction by formulation some sort of asteroid defense plan, but we cannot stop our own sun from erupting in a supernova or slowly burning off the surface of Earth and leaving our planet in a Mars-like status.
Even if we are able to escape the solar system and find a new home planet, scientists such as Stephen Hawking has theorized that the whole universe is doomed. Trillions and trillions of years from now, our universe will eventually spend all of the available thermo-dynamic energy, leaving the universe black, desolate, and lifeless. From our dead universe, it is even speculated that a new universe could spring up and our existence may never even be known. Sadly, there may have been thousands of species that have existence in a previous universe prior to our big bang, but any evidence of their existence could be wiped out like ours may be one day.
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