A Doomsday Blog

We know that all good things must come to an end. What we don’t always know is how, when, and certainly why. This is definitely the case with the survival of mankind. It seems that everybody is always telling us what the threat of humanity is. We’ve got microwavable meals, cutting down rainforests, the zombie apocalypse, nuclear war, politics, infectious disease, super villains, global warming; basically, we’re done for.

The one daunting power far greater than Lex Luther and Mayan calendars is the cosmos. Asteroids penetrate atmospheres and comets collide with planets. Planets are ejected from orbit and orbital paths can change. Stars die, engulf planets, and even explode. Radiation bursts destroy planets as well as solar systems. Galaxies collide! The more we study the universe the more we realize its immense power and potential. We also recognize how filled with chaos the universe is and how much, but at the same time how little, of this chaos we actually understand. So much happens in the universe and so much of it is still unpredictable to us. The great power of the universe coupled with its chaos and our lack of understanding force a salience of mortality. The universe is beautiful but also kind of scary. The cosmos has the potential to produce awesome forces that threaten the very survival of mankind and our home, Earth.

While the death force of a gamma ray burst may render that of microwavable mac and cheese laughable, in all likeliness humanity will generate its own doom long before the cosmos does. As astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson has said, “ Our planet will remain in orbit around the Sun, along with its planetary brethren, long after Homo sapiens has become extinct by whatever cause.” The Earth will be here for a while, regardless of what we do. It’s a 5,973,600,000,000,000,000,000-ton iron ball that’s been orbiting the Sun for 4,550,000,000 years. It’s collided with another planet (how the moon was made), been blasted by radiation, and hit by more asteroids than you’ve had hot showers, and yet it’s still here in snug orbit around the Sun.

This blog is focussed on the forces of the cosmos that could bring catastrophic events to humanity all the while assuming that we are still on Earth when they happen. We will be looking at the death force things like asteroids, comets, solar storms, Planet X, The Big Rip theory, cosmic collisions, black holes, and the things that scare me most - electromagnetic pulses and gamma ray bursts.

Thursday, February 13, 2014

A look at Earth - BEFORE THE UNIVERSE DESTROYS IT!

Before we try to blow it all up with cosmic forces, here's a cool video to give us a look at Earth as it is now:
http://vimeo.com/32430473

This takes us on seven minutes of time lapses of Earth as viewed by the International Space Station 250 miles above Earth while orbiting at 17,500 miles per hour. You get a pretty good view of California at about 5:22. This definitely forces perspective on how incredible our home planet is. You can see some really sweet shots of lightning the auroras from space. You can also see all of the light pollution generated by night lights in cities and towns and begin to understand the impact that humans have on our planet.


This next video really helps visualize Earth's place in the universe:
Where We At?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mswhI90zNF4

This really makes you think about how tiny the Earth is relative to other things in the universe. Its hard for us to conceptualize the biggest buildings that humans have built, much less the Earth itself, and even less so Jupiter, the solar system and so on. We consider the force of the ocean's waves incredibly strong, but when compared to the forces of the cosmos, they are nothing but feeble little tickles.


Here is a link to a youtube video of 5 experiments that had the potential to destroy Earth.
Death to Earth
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A9S9gwhS6Yk

Its pretty wild to think that some experiments that we don't even know are going on could change life on Earth. Knowledge gained from these experiments is very valuable, but nonetheless they were risky. While we may have figured out how to easily destroy life on Earth, it will be a lot harder to destroy the Earth itself.


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1 comment:

  1. BrianFebruary 27, 2014 at 4:20 PM

    So that link to the 5 experiments that could have destroyed the Earth is a little ridiculous - "fears of ... demons from hell proved unfounded." well, that is true. but we knew that. Also, when the bomb was tested at trinity, they knew it wouldn't "ignite the atmosphere".

    3 points.

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