The Universe is not stable. Never has been. Never will be.
It is too big, much to big, and also expanding too fast, to be stable enough to become predictable.
In fact, the entropic principle dictates that on a big enough scale, even its smallest building blocks, star systems, are not really stable.
Give it enough time, and the Earth’s orbit, that epitome of enduring aeon-long stability, would not only decay, under Jupiter’s constant tugging, but also degenerate into a vector perpendicular and centrifugal to that of our Sun.
In fact, the massive planetary body Theia that hit our Earth approximately 100 million years after the inception of the Solar System, creating our Moon in the process, kickstarted an eons-long entropic process of our own. This impact happened 4.45 billion years ago.
The moon, our Luna, has been drifting away at a rate of 4 cm per annum ever since. In other words, our Moon has been trying to escape our planet’s pull for a very long time. In fact, at some point into the distant future, our planet will kiss the Moon-induced tidal waves goodbye.
Also, in our solar system, the Sun, our very yellow-frequency star, has been ramping up its fusion to the point whereby 600 million to 1 billion years from now, it will have cooked our planet’s atmosphere off. Good-bye Terra!
Our planet is dying.
We are the lucky witnesses to the ultimate cosmic show. We have a front seat to our planet’s eventual demise. We are lucky in that we can see how things will play out. But since the drama, the inescapable tragedy, will have occurred so far into the Deep Future that chances are there won’t be any of us left not only here but also anywhere else in the Universe, we do not give a fig about it.
And if you say we should, I dare you to give us a more cogent substantiation of your opinions than just because “It’s the tragic aspect of the human condition” or something along those lines.
For if you are to consider matters calmly and collectedly, you will realize the same principle that applies to one’s feelings towards strangers and acquaintances, also applies to our Pale Blue Dot.
Consider this: you care about the people you live with, your kin, your family, your blood, your friends and even your neighbors. But you do not give a fig about those you cannot see or countenance. It is logical you will shed no tears on account of the distant fate of the Earth.
If a person or planet is not immediately in your orbit, you do not give a flying buck, mate.
That is why we do not wax poetic when it comes to extremely big things or remote people suffering outside our sensory range.
For everything else, there’s Melody Sheep.
Götterdämmerung 