Death from the Skies!

Kevin Coolidge



Comets, gamma ray bursts, ginormous* space spiders--the universe is trying to kill me. Don’t look so smug. I’m not paranoid. It’s trying to kill you too. It’s trying to kill us all. It’s not a matter of if, but only when and how. Stars explode. Galaxies collide. Black holes swallow whole solar systems. It’s nothing personal. The universe is a dangerous place.

A single asteroid impact could easily take out most of humanity. One ended the reign of the dinosaurs. A solar flare could fry our satellite systems, strip away the layers of the atmosphere, crash the DOW, boil the oceans, and totally wreck the Christmas shopping season. Aliens could land on the White House lawn, demand homage, and make me wish that the only country to actually work on a Gauss rifle actually had a defense budget. Even our sun is on a damn timer.

You’ve heard this before. Every time an asteroid is predicted to pass Earth, the media plays up the danger and ignores the actual likelihood of such an event. The odds of the Earth getting hit are less than the chance of winning the Powerball and you are much more likely to win an Oscar than win the lottery. When is the last time you even had a paying role? Face it, at your age, you are unlikely to land that breakthrough role.

If you really want to know what to expect when a burst of cosmic radiation sterilizes all life down to the base of the crust, then read Death from the Skies! by Philip Plait Ph.D. He will go over, in loving detail, how there could be no warning: the wave moving at the velocity of light, the surge of death its own declaration. Gamma ray bursts happen every day somewhere in the universe, but it’s a pretty big universe.

Phil reminds us that there is no star nearby capable of creating such a burst, and even if there were, the odds of it going off soon are miniscule, and the odds of it being aimed our way…astronomical. Still it’s fun to think about “What if…?”

Black holes, supernovae, cosmic blowtorches, sunburn—there are dangers out there, and we can’t ignore them, but if you read this book, you’ll learn just what the dangers are and more importantly, what they aren’t. The universe may be a dangerous place, but if you are reading this, we’ve made it past December 21st, 2012. We may just make it a little longer…

*Yes, it’s officially a word now. It means very fracking big. It’s in the dictionary. No, fracking as used here isn’t in the dictionary. It’s used as an expletive in the original TV series Battlestar Galactica which is fitting, because if we don’t leave this planet, we are all going to fracking die…

Death from above? Or “What, me worry?” Email me at from_my_shelf@yahoo.com and let me know (if we aren’t all fried crispy) Miss a past column? Well, if we aren’t living underground sucking fungi off rocks, you can read past columns at http://frommyshelf.blogspot.com Looking for a book with a happy ending? You should take your mind off the Earth’s imminent destruction. Read “Hobo Finds a Home” a children’s book that’s happy and innocent and totally innocuous to our ELE (that extermination level event, not everybody love everybody…)