
This is hardly the sort of moon dripping blood into seas awash with poison Final Day that humanity has been looking forward to eagerly for millennia. Fortunately, scientists have now given us an alternative.
The good news is that these are real scientists, with their own Hadron colliders and PhD's in particle physics, not some addled old preacher in California adding up the ages of the prophets, or some smirking, practical joking primitive carving a big rock in the jungle or a couple of German grad students watching The Matrix while completely baked on hashish. The better news is that end of everything definitely involves God, or at least God particles. Having scoped out the nature of these Supreme Being bits, these physicists have announced that, over time, they will bring an end to the universe.
The bad news? It's sixteen billion years from now.
This is a long-winded decline, to say the least. I can already hear you saying "Isn't sixteen billion years a long time to wait for eternity?"
I feel your pain. "Wait a minute," you say. "Don't those exact same scientists say that in just 4.5 billion years, the Sun is going to swell up like Kirstie Alley on a cruller binge and engulf the Earth in its flames? Wouldn't that be a nice Apocalypse?"
Yes, it would be. And it could still end that way. But a lot could happen in 4.5 billion years. By then, the President of the United States will probably be a very, very smart phone. And we might have invented flying saucers ourselves. We'll be the ET's, streaking through alien skies, kidnapping and probing the cavemen of other worlds. It'll be fun.
But it also means when the earth goes kablooey, we'll be watching it from the orbit of Neptune, sipping anti-gravity flutes of champagne. And life will go on. For another twelve billion years.
So if you feel yourself being yanked heavenward by your underwear, relax. It's not the Rapture. It's that idiot neighbor of yours, sneaking up behind you and giving you a wedgie because he spotted you crouched over in your garden. While he's hanging around, make him give you back your leaf-blower. There's going to be another autumn. Put some money in your IRA.
And buy season tickets to anything you like.