Humans naturally have a short term view of things. We look forward to the weekend or our next vacation or maybe even retirement. But these events that may span our lifetime are just a blink of an eye in cosmic terms.
UniverseToday.com embarks on a journey to the end of time. Predictions include an end to humanity in about 10,000 years, end of life on Earth in about a half-million years, and destruction of our solar system (at left) in a few billion years. Eventually in about 10^100 years, the last black hole will evaporate, and all that will remain in the Universe are photons of radiation.
See the end at UniverseToday
Could a Welshman be responsible for bringing an early end to the universe? As impossible as it sounds, that is what a U.S. federal court will have to decide in June. Two Americans have filed a lawsuit to stop the £2 billion giant particle accelerator, which will begin smashing protons together this summer at Cern (The European Center for Nuclear Research) near Geneva, Switzerland.
Former nuclear safety officer Walter Wagner and botanist Luis Sancho claim the giant accelerator could spit out a strangelet, which could shrink our planet to a dense lump of “strange matter” or produce a black hole that would immediately consume the Earth and continue until the entire universe is destroyed.
But Dr. Lyn Evans, in charge of designing and building Cern’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC), said yesterday the doomsday scenarios cannot happen. He said the colliding protons at Cern will recreate energies and conditions last seen a trillionth of a second after the Big Bang. But since the Earth has been bombarded with similar cosmic rays for millions of years and is still here, Evans says we all have nothing to worry about. Isn’t that what the CEO of Bear-Stearns said just 24 hours before the largest investment bank implosion in history?
Read More at icWales
NASA took the unusual step of issuing a press release to discount the prediction by a student astronomer of a catastrophic asteroid collision with Earth.
The Near-Earth Object Program Office at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, maintains its current estimates for the very low probability (1 in 45,000) of an Earth impact by the asteroid Apophis in 2036. Apophis is estimated to be about 1,000 feet (320 meters) in diameter. If it were to strike Earth, Apophis would not be a planet-killer, but it could certainly generate significant regional damage and depending on where it struck, it has the potential to kill millions of people, experts say.
A young German student claims the Apophis impact probability is far higher because of the possibility of a collision with an artificial satellite during the asteroid’s close approach in April 2029. However, NASA believes the asteroid will not pass near the main belt of geosynchronous satellites in 2029, and the chance of a collision with a satellite is exceedingly remote.
NASA Press Release
Scientists predict there is a 99.7% chance that California will be struck by a magnitude 6.7 quake or larger in the next 30 years. The last time a quake this size rattled California was the 1994 Northridge disaster, which measured 6.7 on the Richter scale, killed 72 people, injured more than 9,000 and caused $25 billion in damage.
“It basically guarantees it’s going to happen,” said Ned Field, a seismologist with the U.S. Geological Survey in Pasadena and lead author of the report.
California sits in one of the most seismically active regions in the world. More than 300 faults crisscross the state, and about 10,000 quakes each year rattle Southern California alone, although most of them are too small to be felt.
More at FoxNews
Forecasters predict a “very active” Atlantic hurricane season in 2008. Colorado State University’s Tropical Meteorology Project, led by hurricane expert William Gray, predicts 15 named storms and 8 hurricanes, 4 of which will be “major.”
A typical season has 10 named storms, 6 hurricanes and 2 major hurricanes. The Atlantic hurricane season starts June 1 and lasts until Nov. 30. The most active time is typically in late August and early September.
The forecasters believe above-normal sea surface temperatures in the eastern subtropical Atlantic during February and March will significantly increase hurricane activity. The team devised a new computer statistical model after overestimating the last two hurricane seasons.
The 2005 Atlantic hurricane season was the most active in recorded history with 28 storms, 7 major hurricanes including the infamous Hurricane Katrina, at least 2,280 deaths and $128 billion in damages.
More at USAToday
In spite of all our differences, the one thing that binds all living creatures is that we each have an expiration date. This finality to our existence is what makes life special, something to be cherished and protected. But occasionally things can go terribly wrong…
