There is a lot of hysteria on the Internet these days that the ancient Mayan calendar, which ends in 2012, portends the end of the world through a variety of possible astronomical events: rogue comets, supernovae, or even supposed "energy" from the galactic center. The reality is that the Mayans simply tracked astronomical cycles. They were not psychic.
This preoccupation with doomsday has inspired science fiction tales depicting the end of Earth, including a recent TV miniseries Impact, and the upcoming motion picture 2012 that is described as "an epic adventure about a global cataclysm that brings an end to the world and tells of the heroic struggle of the survivors."
Today's astronomers don't need the Mayan calendar, or Nostradamus, or Hollywood's imagination to explore the solar system's far future fate. Observations of planets around other stars, combined with stellar evolution theory and supercomputer simulations give us a reasonable prediction of what's in store for the solar system.
As their parent stars inevitability age and burn out, every inhabited planet across our galaxy faces the ultimate apocalypse due to fundamental changes in a star's energy output and its physical diameter.
Yet the emerging view of what happens to planets at the end of a star's life is more complex than scientists once thought. What's more, the ever-shifting fortunes of survivability in the universe suggest one planet's apocalypse may be another world's genesis.
Pretty light weight, but interesting. Link in the title as always.
3 comments:
Brought Moses 1:35 to mind there for me. I had to spend a minute or two looking it up, though.
I think that if the sun were exploding in three years, some major astrological changes would be starting.
I don't think anyone really believes in the whole Mayan apocalypse thingy. Well, very few at least. But the general idea of world and universe lifecycles is still interesting, I think.
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