Better...Stronger...Faster.

I think that whatever happens to knock us off our high horses will hopefully make us a peaceful, green and economically stunning people. Sorta like the Eloi? Y'no, minus the Morlocks.

Scrabtrapman is the last person I would have expected to make a H.G. Wells reference.

he probably wiki'd it.

Excuse me, I read almost every single one of his works. Just because I'm retarded doesn't make me an illiterate moron.

I am completely rejecting the concept of Nibiri in its entirety. Guy just made it up out of his own madness and excrement.

Remember: the middle between two opinions is neither the more intelligent choice, more open-minded nor more likely to be true.

Apophis had the unique honour of having held the highest value of any astronomical body on the Torino Impact Hazard Scale, at 4. Though it's been at zero for a while now, odds of an impact on April 13, 2036 are given at 1 in 250,000. Get to the bookies now.

Am I correct in saying that we are over due an extinction in some form though? The last of the great extinctions as it were. Perhaps I watch too many Nat Geo speculative series.

You say that as though humans aren't slowly driving everything else on Earth to extinction.

We may be due for an ice age, supervolcano or extra-terrestrial catastrophy.

Also, a pandemic could easily wipe out a lot of people after seeing how stupidly Swine Flu was handled.

Pandemics are an issue, but at least take a full sample when judging WHO's response. SARS would have been horrific, but it was stopped by human intervention, not by any major problem with its virulence.

It can be said that we're always due for some extinction event. In the past they have even coincided, which may be why they were so devastating. But in probability, independent events do not affect those that follow: the occurrence of an extremely rare event does not exclude the possibility of it occurring again soon after. Likewise, an unusually long gap between such events does not increase the likelihood of it happening. Why the human mind struggles to grok this most basic of mathematical facts continues to astound me.

That's not to say that one won't happen soon, but it doesn't say it will either. The chances remain the same. I'm trying to remember it now, but you can calculate how long a period you need for the odds of some event (with its own odds of occurring in any given instance) to occur with that time frame to rise to 50%.

Though some events are not independent. The odds of a climactic upheaval as a result of the continents reforming into a single supercontinent (as happened at the end of the Permian) are zero right now, but will rise sharply by the time the Pacific has closed.

By that logic, you can never return home because by then it will have become the past.

That is true of life without time travel as well.

I think we're due for another switch in the Earth's magnetic polarity in the next 100 years. How apocalyptic is that? I'm assuming everyone will start holding their compasses the other way round.

It doesn't occur on time frames as short or predictable as that.

Really? Well I watched this movie called The Core and...

We are dedicating the rest of this thread to the memory of Wings of Fire, who tragically died of unknown causes this afternoon after years of mental illness and poor taste in films. He will be missed. By some.

I like that movie. Especially when they break into the giant geode.

I'd just like to point out that my post is in irony, as hers probably isn't.

I'd like to point out that my post was in no way presented as definite fact, with the disclaimer 'I think...' being shorthand for 'As best as I can recall, I was told by somebody who was themselves quoting some secondary research collected from some speculation by scientists that...'

Hey, fuck you, when the earth stops turning and the drilltrain is the only thing standing between us and being roasted by deadly solar rays, you'll not be so quick to scoff!

Drilltrain sounds like a name for a male pornography star, complete with an iconic one liner.

"Your station has just been pulled into. UNDERGROUND."

When I relay that in my head, it's Bruce Campbell saying it.

how do they know the speed of our galaxy, and other galaxies for that matter? I know they use red shift but if I understand that concept correctly then it would give either the difference or the sum of the speed of our galaxy and the galaxy in question

Since time is relative, I believe most scientists relate the galaxies speed in how far or close it is moving to or from our own Milky Way. Probably a BM question.

I don't even understand what you just said.

Speed must be measured relative to something else, as must time. The rest of the universe is measured in relation to us. There isn't actually an alternative.

Doesn't the sun and every other star orbit the galactic core? I heard that somewhere.

Evidently, we can tell from the relative speed of the spin of the galaxy. I personally hold a dim view of the concept of time. I recently have taken the stance that in fact time is practically non-existant, there's just one constant. An indescribably small fraction that we are always in. Certainly the future can't exist simply because we have to make it.

It's very interesting to hear someone dismiss the concept of time, while taking a measurable piece of it to do so.

Time doesn't exist? Well yeah, time doesn't exist... if you're a chair. Without time there would be no past, present or future and I'm pretty sure you know that these to exist?