Subject: RE: BS: The Rapture: Saturday May 21st 2011
From:
Don Firth
Date: 20 May 11 - 06:48 PM
HEY! I just remembered! Central Lutheran Church on Seattle's Capitol Hill is installing their new pastor on Sunday, May 22nd. So hold up on that Rapture cum Armageddon thingy, there, God. You don't want to screw up the investiture, do you!? C'mon, don't be a party poop!!
Being Lutherans, with a large admixture of Scandinavians in the congregation, they don't use a dry wafer and wine for Holy Communion, they use a chocolate chip cookie and a cuppa strong coffee. Now, those folks gotta be on some kinda right track.
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I can't give you an exact date when the world will end, but provided we do get past tomorrow, and THEN, past the winter solstice next year (the infamous 12/21/12, when the earth will undergo a number of bits of abuse), I can give you a rough idea of when the earth really WILL end. But I wouldn't sweat it.
According to the pundits, on December 21, 2012, the poles will be changing places, making the whole earth flip over, which will cause massive earthquakes, horrendous winds, 5,000 foot tsunamis sweeping over the world, and severe outbreaks of teen-age acne;
being struck by a rogue planet moving through the solar system, which, if it doesn't destroy the earth entirely, will at least knock it out of its orbit;
while also being pummeled by dozens of meteoroids, asteroids, and worst of all, hemorrhoids;
then, the earth will be sucked into a black hole, which is also passing through the solar system (now, that really SUCKS!!);
and the polarity of the whole Milky Way galaxy will change places, causing everyone to get the hiccups and making milk come out their noses.
And a whole bunch of other things, all too fierce to mention.
Many historical sources for this: the Mayan calendar runs out on that date, Nostradamus says so (if you read the quatrain dealing with this while standing on your head and squinting one eye), and eleventy-fourteen other occult prognosticators who have no scientific knowledge whatsoever and far too much time on their hands. Not to mention some kind of weird psychological quirk that makes them have serial orgasms over the idea of the world coming to an end so all those mean people out there who thought the prognosticators were a bit peculiar and refused to take them seriously will finally get their come-uppance.
Despite all the hoopla about the ghastly things that are due to happen (provided anybody is still around come Sunday, May 22), I believe I can give you a somewhat more certain scenario of the End of the World.
The sun is a main sequence star (the vast percentage of stars in the universe are main sequence stars, hence the designation "main sequence"). G-spectral class. Dime a dozen. Main sequence stars generally last about ten to fifteen billion years before they burn up all their hydrogen, converting it to helium, and then convert their helium into even heavier elements. When they can no longer sustain a fusion reaction in their cores, they implode, crushing the atoms into the heaviest elements in the periodic table, thereby providing another, final burst of energy. At this point, the star bloats into a red giant and its "atmosphere" will swell out beyond the orbit of Mars, which, of course will mean that the earth will turn into a cinder. Finally, the sun will have blown off all its outer gasses and it will shrink to a white dwarf—about the size that the earth is now, and very massive. It will continue to glow as a white dwarf for an indefinite period of time until it becomes nothing more than a great big cinder drifting through the darkness of space.
The sun is not big and massive enough to go nova or supernova.
When will all this happen? Well, considering the 10 to 15,000,000,000 year life span that astronomers predict for main sequence stars the mass of our sun, and considering that (despite those folks who are convinced that the whole shebang started no more than 6,000 years ago) the solar system, complete with earth, formed some 4,500,000,000 years ago, we should have about five to ten billion years to go.
So I wouldn't sweat it. Go ahead and pay your bills and don't give all your stuff away.
Scene (I was there and heard the whole thing with my big, fat, flapping ears!): The professor in the astronomy class at the University of Washington had just finished describing what I outlined just above. A hand went up in the back row of the classroom.
"Question?" says the Prof.
Nervous voice asks, "How long did you say it would be?"
"Five to ten billion years," answers the Prof,
"Oh! Thank God!" says the voice in the back row. "I thought you said five to ten million!"
Don Firth
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