Since everything else is cyclical, I’m going to take a guess that “mars” was either a sun or a star or was once “earth like,” hopefully not too “earth like” as in , “filled with miserable and selfish censor happy asshats who can’t take a fucking joke “.
And that it was done in by a CME or simply losing its fuel and or its will to live.
At the end of the chain, black holes probably swallow long discarded planets or stars and return them to the sun. Things go into the sipuapu and go wherever they belong. Rinse, lather, repeat.
The sun then begins to spin up a new planet. energy and life and things begin to transfer there , and start the whole process all over again.
I don’t really care what it is, feed it to the sun.
What I DO KNOW is that they are working on transmitting photons great distances through space. It works, it fucking works. I think you could also open a black hole (cackle) , devour a spent planet, and have it returned to the sun. If you do it right, it should start spindling into a thread and just go away. I think it comes back out in the sun. But you don’t know what is on the other side of a black hole if it’s your first time here.
The other thing they’re probably looking at is transmitting fuel over great distances the way they are having some success with photons. I think they’re exploring their lowest cost and lowest risk options before “fuck it, ship it.”