The moon will crash into Termina the planet.

Edited June 30, 200916 yr by I want teh kotor 3

Unlikely, considering that the moon is actually escaping towards a higher orbit...

It'll be pretty disappointing to die before some sort of awesome world ending event occurs. Knowing my luck the apocalypse will come the day after I die.

 

I'm hoping it will be the day I die so I can see how it all ends.

"Wow! Who would have thought that would happen?" *dies*

How will it end? I'll tell you how it will end... a disaster of biblical proportions. Old Testament, real wrath of god stuff. Fire and brimstone coming down from the skies! Rivers and seas boiling! Forty years of darkness! Earthqakes, volcanoes, the dead rising from the grave, human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together, MASS HYSTERIA!

just got done watching that quote on tv. gbII is on now. took a break since the wifey-pooh fell asleep.

 

taks

It's fascinating how people fixate so on "the end of the world". The History Channel has more programming on the end of the world scenarios of all sorts than anything else. It's always struck me as kind of bizarre, but it must bring in the ratings or they wouldn't keep running the stuff.

I actually started this thread as a joke. I mean, mutant cats? *rawr* oops.

We can aalmost cope with the thought of us dying. But the End of the World is particularly threatening because it means everyone we know dying. I did community serice helping old people and I think it was the loss of friends that made them saddest.

Planet killing asteroid thanks.

admittedly this'll probably take about 65 million years to actually get to earth, and we probably wouldn't notice it until we were pretty much gonna die anyway. (meaning we would have only a few weeks to try and get it to avoid us. which we probably couldn't pull off)

Global warming seems the only candidate to end the world within our lifetime.

Global warming seems the only candidate to end the world within our lifetime.

 

Global warming would be disruptive, but in no sense would it end the world.

Literally ending the world? Our world could end tomorrow for some reason unforseen by us today. We simply lack enough of an understanding of the universe to make a reasonable prediction. Like Calax says, the means of our demise could be a few years off. It could have been set in motion millions of years ago, but we won't know it until it slams the earth.

 

However, destroying humanity? While we can't know everything, we do know that it would take less to destroy humanity than destroy the earth. It's simple, if the earth goes, we go. The erath can get along without us, though.

I think the moon will just say "**** this" some day and just start rolling all over our planet.

I think the moon will just say "**** this" some day and just start rolling all over our planet.

The opposite seems to be the case. The distance between Earth and Moon is constantly increasing. Some day it will just pack up and leave. Besides the oddity of no more tides, Earth might lose some of its stability and be more likely to wobble than it is now

The world could be literally destroyed at any moment if it'd be hit by one of Hawking's micro-black holes and the thing kept venturing to the Earth's core. Or if the CERN would create one.

 

Other than that, there's not much that can destroy the Earth beyond a journey into the sun or a Death Star.

There isn't much that we can envision destroying the earth. Literally destroying the planet is beyond our abilities, sure. By and large, the ways in which the earth could be destroyed, by which I'll mean reduced to chunks less than a third of it's current size, are currently beyond our imagination. However, while we are confined to our imaginations and observations, both of which are imperfect, we should not make universal statements based on either one. I'll admit I'm being a bit picky, Virumor, but I'm not trying to insult you in the process. I'm just saying I'd be happier with the statemtn "...there's not much that we know of that can destroy the Earth beyond a journey into the sun or a Death Star." Even so, the means of our demise could be imminent but we might be oblivious. If this were strictly a logical thread in which we were making cold hard predictions about the demise of the planet, we would simply acknowledge the imperfections in our understanding and then put them aside in order to have a reasonable conversation. However, that doesn't change the fact that those imperfections exist. It just means that those imperfections are irrelevant to a more rigorous discussion and largely a waste of time otherwise.

 

EDIT for clarity.

Edited July 2, 200916 yr by Aristes

To rephrase, what we know is that the amount of energy involved with destruction of the Earth would be the one of large galactic events like (super)novas & black holes what I meant to say is that from observations, those events are highly unlikely in our part of the galaxy - therefore I did not mention them.

 

Of course, I acknowledge that I don't know nearly enough about astronomy or cosmology to make a fair assessment.

I was lying in the garden last night with my eyes closed, and I heard a loud ripping tearing noise in the sky. I knew it was a plane, but thought for one second "what if that is a meteorite?"

I wasn't really complaining at you Virumor. It's pointless to discuss things in terms of what we don't understand. It's just kind of like extra terrestrial life. On the other hand, while we have absolutely no evidence of other sentient species, it just boggles the mind to think all life in the universe is on the Earth. Good chance it exists but we'll never see it. Does that make sense or am I just going gonzo?

I wasn't really complaining at you Virumor. It's pointless to discuss things in terms of what we don't understand. It's just kind of like extra terrestrial life. On the other hand, while we have absolutely no evidence of other sentient species, it just boggles the mind to think all life in the universe is on the Earth. Good chance it exists but we'll never see it. Does that make sense or am I just going gonzo?

 

I tell you one thing: if sentient life does exist it had better have more important things to do than fly a bajillion miles here and stick objects up people's behinds. If not then frankly I don't WANT to make contact.

That made me laugh out loud. You're nuts. ...But, yeah, I don't figure we've been visited and, if we have, then clearly they're so advance it doesn't make any difference. I mean, that's what I was saying about literally destroying the earth. There might be infinite ways, but since we can't imagine them, we can't really discuss them.

Curse you, Nightshade! All I see is a little red X. Wait, is that the point?

I wasn't really complaining at you Virumor. It's pointless to discuss things in terms of what we don't understand. It's just kind of like extra terrestrial life. On the other hand, while we have absolutely no evidence of other sentient species, it just boggles the mind to think all life in the universe is on the Earth. Good chance it exists but we'll never see it. Does that make sense or am I just going gonzo?

 

I tell you one thing: if sentient life does exist it had better have more important things to do than fly a bajillion miles here and stick objects up people's behinds. If not then frankly I don't WANT to make contact.

I don't know. Aside from the goofy UFO stories, maybe 'flying a bajillion miles' for them is as trivial as taking the car on a trip to the supermarket. And maybe they're observing us as we would observe a colony of ants.

Curse you, Nightshade! All I see is a little red X. Wait, is that the point?

 

Opps, my bad I guess.