I have noticed that, as of late, the news has been particularly uplifting. "US troop deaths hit 7-month high in Iraq." "National labor growth slows." "Gas prices rise; no decline in sight."
Now these are all things that should trouble me. By my calculations I will reach bankruptcy within two and half months. Possibly only one if I continue to run my car on gas. However, I will not go bankrupt should I find a better job. Unfortunately labor growth is (apparently) slow and well-paying jobs are scarce -- or so I imagine. The war(s) in Iraq, Afghanistan (and however other many countries we are fighting these days) continue to sandbag our economy and each troop surge brings talk of reinstating the draft.
This is all very bad news for me, and possibly for you as well. I am however, quite unperturbed by all this. Why, you might ask? The simple answer is because I suspect none of this will matter in the next ten years. You see, we are in a far worse predicament than endless wars, failing economies, soaring gas prices and every other gut-wrenching piece of news you hear about each day. No my friends, we do not have to worry about those things. GOOD GOD! WHY NOT??? Well...because of RUNAWAY HYPERVELOCITY EXPLODING(1) STARS!
It has come to my attention recently, that we are in extreme danger of being hit by a gigantic star traveling at speeds upward of 1000 km/s. Which is something like 3 million mph(2) for those of you not living in Canada(3).
Hypervelocity stars (HVSs), by definition, are stars traveling at velocities so great they are able to escape the gravitational pull of a galaxy and shoot off on their own. Theorized as far back as 1988, the first hypervelocity star was discovered in 2005 by scientists working out of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. Seven more were discovered between 2006 and 2007 and astronomers now project that up to 1000 exist in our galaxy alone.
HVSs are believed to originate when a binary star system -- two stars orbiting each other -- comes into contact with a supermassive black hole (such as the one at the center of the Milky Way). While one of the stars in the binary system gets sucked into the black hole(4) the other shoots out with an enormous increase in velocity. You can see this phenomenon detailed in my expertly constructed diagram below:
Now if astronomers are correct and there are in fact 1000 HVSs in our own galaxy, I'd have to suspect that one of these speeding, unbridled helions is in danger of flying in our immediate direction. Imagine if our own Sun suddenly broke free and began hurtling toward us at 3 million mph. It'd get hot, we'd start to sweat, it'd get very hot, we'd begin suffering from heat exhaustion in a matter of seconds and then BAM! WE'RE ALL DEAD!Now from what I read in the Time Magazine article I got all this from, the chances of the Earth being hit by one of these stars is something like 1 in 500 gazillion. But keep in mind there are supposedly 1000 of these things out there, and we've only discovered 9 or so. In other words I see no reason to believe that there aren't 991 HVSs hurtling toward us as we speak.
So yes, worry about wars and gas prices and the economy. You suckers. You poor, sad suckers. Go ahead, worry about all of those petty little things. Soon none of it will matter. Our lakes and oceans and rivers will run dry. Our fertile soil will turn to desert sand. Antarctica will melt. Ice Cream will cease to exist. And we will all boil. We will all fry. We will all burn. And then we will all be splattered by a giant, fiery ball of death(5).
-drew tschappat
1. I may have thrown in "exploding" for extra emphasis, but I think all stars are technically exploding. Or at least they will someday -- although I am completely unqualified to be making such inferences.
2. Give or take a few mph...
3. Which, I suspect, you are not.
4. Let me re-emphasize that I am completely unqualified to be explaining concepts of astrophysics.
5. Although some people might just say I'm a worrier...
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