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For a short moment in time our planet Earth passes through the Leonides - dust from a collapsing chunk of stone and ice. Small particles are burning in a harmless show from the universe. The universal show is not always harmless. The more astronomers understand the dangers of the universe, the more the great projects of the superpowers to reach for the Moon and Mars make sense. More and more one understand the details of the genetically coding and its sensibility to radiation from outer space. As the knowledge of dangers grow, attempts to predict and minimize astrophysical impacts are discussed in a few academic circles. A Darwinian astronomer of our times must feel the urge to stay alive - even if a terrible impact of a meteorite and/or the eruption of a super volcano hits Earth. How to stay alive in an climate similar to
that of 60 million years ago, when the dinosaurs disappeared? Months of
absolute darkness and dramatic fall in temperature, poison in the sea and
in the air...? In a distant future - when our own Sun becomes unstable - our Galaxy of The Milky Way is going to collide with the Galaxy of Andromeda - creating the biggest catastrophe possible to conceive of - the black matter, the dust, of the colliding galaxies begin to gravitate - creating supernovas and hypernovas - eventually turning the colliding galaxies into a quasar - beaming super cosmic energies into the darkness of the curved universe. Will there be survival of human life? Not for the fittest bur for the lucky? For a short moment in space-time the harmless show of the Leonides tell us a story of cosmic transportation and transformation. Tomas Brusell |