Disclaimer: This is a very narrow-minded take on the subject of cosmology (a science which according to me deals with knowing a lot of things which we do not have any business knowing). Please do forgive me if you feel offended. I must admit that my dislike for the subject of cosmology is entirely due to the fact that I do not have brains enough to understand all the maths involved.
I have been thinking of updating this blog for quite a few days now. What better time than now, when exams are going on and you have a couple of days to cool your heels. (It’s quite another thing that I’m not always heating them up all the time!)
Now, I have always had this problem of finding a thing about which I could write. I mean, I’m really amazed at how all my friends get all those interesting things to write about. Also damn determined I am not to “makhao” the way I have on previous occasions. This time it’s going to be a totally new way hitherto unexplored in the entire blogging history! So I’ve decided that I will write about an article that I read today in TOI.
It wasn’t one hell of an interesting subject. In fact it is a subject in which I have no interest at all.Nevertheless, I spent some time thinking over it. It was mentioned very seriously that the earth would be evaporated by the expanding sun. In 7.6 billion years! This piece of information left me completely shattered. Seriously, whenever I think of the future, I think of the earth of 8.21 billion years from now. I mean how does it affect any person whether it dies out in 7.6 billion years or 5.4 billion years or a petty 4 million years? They go on to explain all the unfortunate things that might occur during this withering of our dear mother earth. I suspect they have been bought by some life insurance company. I mean this piece of valuable information could be used by someone living in earth of (7.6 million – 30) years to have an insurance to cover the losses in case the earth is all burnt up. And finally when nothing happens whole world will know by 7.6 billion years + 1 day that all of this was a hoax.
The article does not stop here. It goes on about several ways through which we could avoid this great imminent disaster. It talks about some small correction in the orbit of earth every couple of hundred of years finally taking it beyond the reach of the infinite heat of the enlarging, albeit dying sun.
I sincerely hope that our dear cosmologists and astrophysicists do save the earth. However, I have just one small doubt. What would happen after the sun dies? Can we afford to leave our future generations without a sun? Can’t we have some method of replacing the batteries, or may be make a new sun altogether. In that case we could also design it so that it stays at its place and does not keep growing! Better still, we could design some small pocket suns which each individual could carry and use whenever one wants to. ;)
PS: After quite a lot of fighting and exchanging curses with my dearest dep-mate Rahul Vasudev Nair K., I admit that what I have mentioned as cosmology in the disclaimer, actually belongs to the domain of astrophysics. This is to highlight how good a Physics student I am!
