I watched the sky as we drove toward the town center. It was a clear night and you could see the Milky Way.
Some people think the Milky Way is a long line of stars, but it isn't. Our galaxy is a huge disk of stars millions of light-years across, and the solar system is somewhere near the outside edge of the disk.
When you look in direction A, at 90ยบ to the disk, you don't see many stars. But when you look in direction B, you see lots more stars because you are looking into the main body of the galaxy, and because the galaxy is a disk you see a stripe of stars.
[Insert diagram I attempted to replicate via Adobe Illustrator, then failed to upload and gave up. Blasted technology--you've thwarted me again! *shakes fist*]
And then I thought about how for a long time scientists were puzzled by the fact that the sky is dark at night, even though there are billions of stars in the universe and there must be stars in every direction you look, so that the sky should be full of starlight because there is very little in the way to stop the light from reaching earth.
Then they worked out that the universe was expanding, that the stars were all rushing away from one another after the Big Bang, and the further the stars were away from us the faster they were moving, some of them nearly as fast as the speed of light, which was why their light never reached us.
I like this fact. It is something you can work out in your own mind just by looking at the sky above your head at night and thinking without having to ask anyone.
And when the universe has finished exploding, all the stars will slow down, like a ball that has been thrown into the air, and they will come to a halt and they will all begin to fall toward the center of the universe again. And then there will be nothing to stop us from seeing all the stars in the world because they will all be moving toward us, gradually faster and faster, and we will know that the world is going to end soon because when we look up into the sky at night there will be no darkness, just the blazing light of billions and billions of stars, all falling.
Except that no one will see this because there will be no people left on earth to see it. They will probably have become extinct by then. And even if there are people still in existence, they will not see it because the light will be so bright and hot that everyone will be burned to death, even if they live in tunnels.
That made me think a lot, which I like in a novel. We've all feared the end of the world at some point. I have a shirt that whimsically portrays a myriad of ways we may see the apocalypse, and people who take the time to read each of the little boxes will laugh, but deep down, there's something sinister.
But more likely than not, the world won't end in 2012 because of any Mayan calendar. The world will end the way it began. And you may of course feel free to register your thoughts on the subject, but I see the beginning of the world as a God-spurred Big Bang. Thusly, I see the end of the world as a God-spurred... Big Vortex. And just as there were no humans in the beginning, there will be none in the end. And I suppose if we're determined to be concerned about something, we can worry about why that will transpire, but I say hakuna matata.
