The bad news is that the universe is going to expand to a point where matter and energy are so thinly spread that everything fizzles out in the “heat death”, or the expansion will reverse with the universe falling back into an information destroying singularity. The good news is that this is more than 10 billion years away, so we still have time to plan.
The bad news is that long before the universe dies, the sun will explode and wipe out the inner planets, including Earth. The good news is that this is still at least 5 billion years from now, and humanity should be able to find new digs before then.
The bad news is that long before the sun blows up, the moon will escape from Earth’s gravity and fly off into space. This will mean that the stabilizing influence of the moon will be gone, and Earth will wobble on its axis and experience hellacious shifts in climate such that complex life forms will not be able to survive. The good news is that this is still over a billion years away.
The bad news is that an asteroid is probably going to smash into Earth and cause another mass extinction at some point in the next few hundred million years. The living, if any, will envy the dead. The good news is that this is not likely to happen within the next century, except for that thing in 2036, so we have time to work out an asteroid deflection system.
The bad news is that humans have developed weapons capable of killing everyone on Earth but have not evolved moral capacities beyond those of their hominid precursors. The good news is that these will not become widely available for another thirty or forty years, and then nutcases will only be able to afford a few such devices. Accordingly, there will be substantial numbers of survivors.
The bad news is that environmental degradation due to global warming, the detonation of numerous nuclear devices, and other causes will result in widespread famine, disease, and pestilence. Weakened humanity will fall prey to new strains of microbes and viruses. The good news is that a remnant will survive, albeit with primitive technology.
The bad news is that the remnant will not be able to deflect asteroids and will be wiped out in the mass extinction event described above. The good news is that some life forms will survive, and Earth will become replenished. The Age of the Slime Mold will begin.
The good news is that there are alternate universes in which this fate is avoided.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment