Outer Space is Really Scary

So, I'm reading this book Death from the Skies by Philip Plait, of the famous Bad Astronomy blog that you may be familiar with if you're a huge nerd like me.

Anyway, the book is all about the various cosmic disasters that could befall our planet in the future. Some of them are familiar to you; we've all seen Armageddon and thought about how much it would totally suck if we get hit by an asteroid. What's different about this book, however, is that the author goes into some of the deep science surrounding these various apocalyptic events and also doesn't hesitate to describe in detail about some of the really, truly terrifying fates lurking out among the stars.

Initially, my reading started to bother me considering the fact that there is no "possibility" of death raining down on our planet from the skies. No, it's quite the certainty, with the only questions up in the air being the particular "how" and "when." Our planet's been hit by asteroids before, and it's entirely possible our beloved blue marble was once virtually sterilized by the gamma rays of a hypernova, and even if none of those events happen again, the sun itself has a finite lifespan and will someday die.

I'm not sure why it stopped bothering me, though, to consider the fact that some of the events are particularly brutal (albeit unlikely)... we could, for instance, have our entire solar system be devoured by a black hole. I just have to wonder, if we did find ourselves in the path of something truly unstoppable, say... a burst of gamm rays that was billions of miles across, something we couldn't escape or defeat, what would I do?

What kind of person would I be in my final days, as we all came to terms with the fact that our entire solar system was doomed? Part of me can imagine the panic, certainly, the sense of terrible anxiety knowing that the clock was ticking down and that every moment was now rare, and valuable. And part of me can imagine the sense of serenity, the ability to let go and accept the whims of fate. That's something that's difficult for me to grasp, given that I am something of a control freak in my personal life.

One thing that's different between the apocalypse event and something like a terminal illness is that, in the later case, I'm pretty much alone with my countdown. My time is running out, but the world will go on without me. I think I'd worry a lot about what my legacy was going to be, how people would remember me, and so on. I think I'd try to finish my book and pass that on, just so that it could be completed.

But if we were all going to die, together? Legacies wouldn't matter, right? There wouldn't be anybody around to appreciate it, after all. And yet, despite that, I think that I'd still want to do the same thing. I'd still try to finish my story, so that I could know how the story ended. So that I could know it was finished, though it will not survive the coming fire.

I'm not feeling particularly fatalistic or depressed or anything. Honestly, all of this has come from the fact that I'm reading about all the ways the Universe could destroy us. It's a great book, by the way, unless you're prone to worrying about things that you have absolutely no ability to control. If that's the case, you probably shouldn't read it.