Getting ready for their 2011 Swedish school Christmas party in Costa Mesa. Elin is singing Santa Lucia in Swedish... sorta, and Johanna interrupts her midway.
Sunday, December 11, 2011
Friday, December 9, 2011
The wonders of the universe: All the delightful ways we will get our sh*t pushed in
There is much nastiness that awaits the fate of our planet and universe in the distant future, and much has been written about them in rambling articles. Below, is my attempt to create a coherent future timeline of earth and the universe. Not for the faint of heart.....
Every billion years, the sun becomes 10% hotter. In 1 billion years, the sun will become so hot that it will begin to destroy the earth. The earth's climate and surface will become arid, and life will move underground. In 2-3 billion years, the oceans will evaporate (no more motion in the ocean) and trap heat in the atmosphere. Our neighboring Andromeda galaxy that is moving closer to us at 120 kilometers per second will collide with the Milky Way. Our solar system will either escape the combined galaxies or move close to the chaotic center in a region known as Clusterf*ck. 3 billion years later (6 billion years from now), our star will turn into a red giant, expand and engulf the earth, and the earth will crash into it (added insult to injury). That will spell the end of the earth as we know it. Not all planets in the solar system will be pulverized by the sun. As the sun collapses into a white dwarf, it will not muster enough gravitational force to keep the rest of the solar system planets orbiting around it. So all surviving planets will bid farewell and move on (adios amigos).
And somewhere in the middle of this madness (250 million years from now), the continent of Africa will smash into Europe (the Mediterranean sea will be no more). A little later, the Americas will join the party and connect with Africa (sayonara to the Atlantic ocean), and Australia will merge with Asia.
And there will be supermassive black holes roaming the universe and gobbling up whatever else sh*t that has been spared until then, but even these black holes will wither to nothingness as the force of the dark energy rips everything apart, including atoms. Two supermassive black holes were recently discovered, one of which has 10 billion times the sun's mass and "its gravity can influence objects some 4,000 light-years away."
All of this begs the question, what is the purpose of all of these universe outcomes? It seems as if the more we peer into the future, the more pointless everything becomes. There will be so much death and destruction at ginormous magnitudes that it casts serious doubt upon the possibility of a higher power either designing this haphazard, spectacularly destructive and nonsensical process with gargantuan amounts of energy wasted to get the job done, or intervening to avoid its pitfalls. Any of the episodes of the movie SAW has comparatively more humane ways to end life. Of course, many will argue this is what armegeddon is about, and we will depart earth and the physical universe and park it somewhere safe. But we can't avoid the pointlessness and randomness of this mass of clusterf*ck happening around us.
Why do any of these phenomena have to occur at these cosmic scales?
And if it's really armegeddon, why does it have to happen in a myriad of ways, e.g. some life will disintegrate in supermassive black holes, some will crash into stars, some will lose their source of energy as all stars will burn away and use up their energy, and eventually, matter may not hold together (Big Rip)? In the end, all living organisms are screwed with as many methods as in a book of Kama Sutra, except none are nearly as desirable. Surely there can be more efficient ways to design armeggedon, no?
Naked came I out of my mother's womb, and naked shall I return thither: the LORD gave, and the LORD hath taken away - job 1:21
Every billion years, the sun becomes 10% hotter. In 1 billion years, the sun will become so hot that it will begin to destroy the earth. The earth's climate and surface will become arid, and life will move underground. In 2-3 billion years, the oceans will evaporate (no more motion in the ocean) and trap heat in the atmosphere. Our neighboring Andromeda galaxy that is moving closer to us at 120 kilometers per second will collide with the Milky Way. Our solar system will either escape the combined galaxies or move close to the chaotic center in a region known as Clusterf*ck. 3 billion years later (6 billion years from now), our star will turn into a red giant, expand and engulf the earth, and the earth will crash into it (added insult to injury). That will spell the end of the earth as we know it. Not all planets in the solar system will be pulverized by the sun. As the sun collapses into a white dwarf, it will not muster enough gravitational force to keep the rest of the solar system planets orbiting around it. So all surviving planets will bid farewell and move on (adios amigos).
And somewhere in the middle of this madness (250 million years from now), the continent of Africa will smash into Europe (the Mediterranean sea will be no more). A little later, the Americas will join the party and connect with Africa (sayonara to the Atlantic ocean), and Australia will merge with Asia.
And there will be supermassive black holes roaming the universe and gobbling up whatever else sh*t that has been spared until then, but even these black holes will wither to nothingness as the force of the dark energy rips everything apart, including atoms. Two supermassive black holes were recently discovered, one of which has 10 billion times the sun's mass and "its gravity can influence objects some 4,000 light-years away."
All of this begs the question, what is the purpose of all of these universe outcomes? It seems as if the more we peer into the future, the more pointless everything becomes. There will be so much death and destruction at ginormous magnitudes that it casts serious doubt upon the possibility of a higher power either designing this haphazard, spectacularly destructive and nonsensical process with gargantuan amounts of energy wasted to get the job done, or intervening to avoid its pitfalls. Any of the episodes of the movie SAW has comparatively more humane ways to end life. Of course, many will argue this is what armegeddon is about, and we will depart earth and the physical universe and park it somewhere safe. But we can't avoid the pointlessness and randomness of this mass of clusterf*ck happening around us.
Why do any of these phenomena have to occur at these cosmic scales?
And if it's really armegeddon, why does it have to happen in a myriad of ways, e.g. some life will disintegrate in supermassive black holes, some will crash into stars, some will lose their source of energy as all stars will burn away and use up their energy, and eventually, matter may not hold together (Big Rip)? In the end, all living organisms are screwed with as many methods as in a book of Kama Sutra, except none are nearly as desirable. Surely there can be more efficient ways to design armeggedon, no?
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