Eschatology

Contemplating the end of days, which may come a billion years from now or perhaps sometime next week, I'm incredulous.  It's not that I can't believe life on earth will cease, but that all our proudest accomplishments will disappear.  Our great works of art, some of which I've written about here, Shakespeare and the King James Bible, the Updike novel I'm going to finish later today, the sound of Mozart, Marilyn's white dress, Judy's ruby slippers, in fact all of our icons will be gone.  I don't expect our architecture to last to the end.  Allowing ruins to stand on precious real estate, like the Forum in Rome, is an anomalous indulgence.  But the memory of our designs and the evolution of our thinking will not abide.  Even if we were to launch Earth's essential data and photo files into space, their context would be gone.  Comprehensible or not, our ideas  would lack all vitality and be gibberish to minds that had never watched a sunset.

Photo of the Upper Geyser Basin region in Yellowstone National Park.  Scientists believe the earth will come to look like this as the aging sun grows hotter and the earth's carbon dioxide is depleted, ironic as both those conditions may sound.  Click on the picture for a closer look or on the link for a brief article.: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2352717/The-end-world-nigh-Scientists-predict-life-wiped-planet-billion-years.html#ixzz2Y0FoMnCA