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HAVE I HELPED? |
IF YOU CAN'T LAUGH, YOU ARE IN DEEP DOODOO
Let's try to keep everything in perspective here on the Earth, OK. We, as individuals, are only on this planet for the blink of an eyelash. The human species for only maybe 100,000 years. We need to make the best of the absolutely wacky situation in which we find ourselves on this planet on the edge of the Milky Way galaxy. God knows where we spend the rest of eternity, I sure don't.
Here are the ways (that I could think of) in which we, as human beings [not to mention most of the other life here on earth....], could all (or almost all - depending on the event) die pretty easily, which could happen tomorrow or hundreds of millions of years from now. All these events will happen pretty much independently of whatever humans do to prevent them from happening. I do not list the events which we as humans can pretty much "control," like Saddam Hussein, or smallpox, or nuclear annihilation.
There are even specialists who publish in this area. He has thought of a few I didn't think of, like scientists creating a mini black hole and sucking us all. Believe it or not! Check this out. Also, if you are an arch conservative, you are supposed to be somewhat pessimistic - though I am sure they would rather call it "realistic." In this vein, you are supposed to be capable of "keeping everything in perspective." This little essay points out how pretty awful the general state of affairs is, but that we do "live in a golden age!"
But here is my top ten list:
- A supervolcano eruption. Never heard of such a thing? How about the whole Yellowstone basin exploding to a volcano sometime ....pretty soon.... It is OVERDUE! It exploded about 640,000 years ago, and the cycle is around 600,000 years. When we say SUPER volcano, that is just what we mean. A volcano the size of Yellowstone Park! The last supervolcano, Toba, occurred in Indonesia about 75,000 years ago, and almost wiped out what there was of the human race. This would be a slow death as the humans of earth slowly fought and killed each other off to see who would last through the nightmare of the next centuries. Another recent article from Scientific American.
- A supernova could erupt nearby in our galaxy, basically turning the earth to toast. The scientists figure there is about 1 supernova per galaxy per 100 of our earth years. There are varying degrees of this, but what is amazing is that it could burst tomorrow, and we would have absolutely no way of knowing that it was coming. This would have some redeeming features in that we would pretty much all be gone in a "flash" of gamma rays. Unless you were on the other side of the earth of course, then it would be a little slower death. There is actually a supernova which burst about 8000 light years away, called eta carinae. Astronomers are busy trying to ID all stars with our section of the galaxy. Let us see, how many hundred million stars are there out here in our neighborhood??? Check out this recent explosion - a "magnetar." Now there is a research article on how this may have actually happened 450 million years ago. There is a supernova early warning system! One may go off pretty soon! Here is an actual calculation on the risks with these....
- A "mini" black hole could collide with Earth, or come very close. There are apparently all kinds of these things around. Kinda like shooting watermelons with shotguns? The earth is the watermelon in case you didn't get the analogy. Now they are even talking about creating them in the laboratory!
- Our nearest neighbor galaxy Andromeda is speeding toward our galaxy at a few hundred thousand miles per hour [or maybe we're actually speeding toward them? Relativity is such a neat thing....]. About a billion years from now our galaxies will be hopelessly intertwined. Hopefully the massive black holes at the centers of each won't directly collide. Should be an interesting show.
- A mega-tsunami. There is an island in the eastern Atlantic which is in immanent danger of collapsing. If it does, tidal waves will roll across the Atlantic, and wash inland for a hundred miles on the eastern US coast. And that is only the first! wave. Of course we would have a few minutes after learning of this to "say our prayers" - lot of good that will do us. Tsunamis are why I don't live near any coast. Another good site. This was recently in the news - Aug 2004. Who can ignore what happened in East Asia on Christmas 2004. This would probably qualify as a mega-tsunami.
- A large comet or an asteroid could collide with the earth, much like the one about 66 million years ago which pretty much heralded the end of the dinosaurs. Of course if this event hadn't happened, we humans may never have evolved [sorry all you fundamentalists....]. So maybe we should be grateful?? The only redeeming feature of this event is that we would see it coming... joy! I hope Bruce Willis is still alive when we see the comet coming! There was another comet collision a few hundred million years before this one. Geologic eras seem to have their boundaries on these cataclysmic events. It is only a matter of time before the comet Swift-Tuttle will impact with the earth. It is 24km wide and will destroy absolutely everything on the earth. Time to contribute to spaceguard! Australia's web site has some terrific info on this whole topic. Here is the latest one discovered... late 2005.
- The sun will basically turn into a red giant, and envelop the Earth. Of course we can all plan for this well in advance. Probably a few billion years yet. I hope we make it, but I doubt it. Looks like we will get killed off by other events before this one comes into play, doesn't it?
- An Extraterrestrial civilization could land on our planet tomorrow and basically kill us all off. You think that is funny???? Well, I know, I know, it is ...kinda... funny. And I am definitely NOT a UFO fanatic! [Maybe I should be. Consider this recent discussion...]You really think they would have any use for us? We would be like insects to them. We can HOPE for an enlightened civilization to land here, but I am afraid there are just as many unenlightened ones as there are enlightened ones. Actually they would probably just fry us from outer space and wouldn't even bother landing and letting us know they were here. Nature just doesn't really care... The summer 2005 movie "The War of the Worlds" is a good object lesson this.... I don't think aliens this advanced would be so stupid about our germs however! This UFO stuff is getting downright serious, and about time! Again! Maybe they have already landed? No doubt!
- A new virus or bacteria could arise, which could take out most of the human population, much as the plague in the middle ages. See this recent article.
- This is a new one, in 2004. Dark energy is projected to cause a "big Rip" at sometime in the distant future. Check this NY Times article if you are a member. The cosmos keeps accelerating its expansion until eventually the sky becomes dark, and eventually the atoms blow apart.
- A black hole could form in space from a collapsing star, spewing the nearby space with death dealing gamma rays. If this were to happen within a few thousand light years of earth, we would all be toast. These are the source of the intense gamma ray burst astronomers see. A recent article. Wikipedia has a good summary.
- How about this one...... "Gray Goo" Mentioned in Michael Crichton's novel "Prey." Basically nanorobots run amuck....
- Or how about this one...."strangelets" Subatomic particles which eat matter. Laugh on.... But these are distinct conceivable possibilities in some scientist's imagination. Neat article mentioning these two.
- How about a "megaflood." Vast portions of eastern Washington state were inundated when glacier "dams" broke repeatedly during previous ice ages.
- How about rogue waves at sea! Not exactly an extinction event, but not an easy way to die!
- How about our own sun throwing off huge flares. I gotta believe this has toasted a few life forms in the past. Here was a recent one... Here is the NASA site describing this. In fact, they suspect this did happen in the 1859! If a storm of this magnitude were to happen today, it would probably trash our cyber infrastructure. A cyber nuclear winter!
There is an interesting story about the development of the A-bomb during WWII by the team of scientists at Las Alamos. Robert Oppenheimer and his team of scientists made an initial calculation that the initial flash of an A-bomb would ignite the atmosphere on the earth, basically wiping us all out. Now there is a scary thought. But they recalculated and found that wasn't going to happen. Whew...
So after considering all these possible scenarios, you still think space exploration and travel is just for fun and games? Sounds like it is just basically insurance for the human race to me. Or you can continue to believe that man [sorry ladies ... humankind] is basically just at God's mercy and that he deserves whatever nature dishes out to him? Face it, nature just doesn't care about us. So we really need to just keep everything in perspective, OK?
Check out these extraordinary astronomy photos...
Wonder what happened BEFORE the Big Bang?
Photons going back in time!?
Kirk Mellish of Atlanta WSB 750 radio Climate Change paper