Vita Venturi Saeculi

As you can see from the previous post, I'm making an effort at getting back to blogging, in response to thousands...well, hundreds...well, dozens...okay, two very earnest appeals that I do so. And then, just when I'm all set to make a new start, wouldn't you know it -- I find out that the end of the world is at hand.

I don't know whether to start writing as fast as my rudimentary typing skills and low-end laptop keyboard will permit -- something along the lines of "Lord, Lord," I guess -- or just wait until Sunday (si veniat) to find out whether there's any point in going on at all.

The End of Time

All of a sudden, cosmology seems to be the sexy topic in the mainstream media's coverage of science. (Could Stephen Hawking have anything to do with that?)

Here is what seems to me a rather scatterbrained bit of speculation on the way in which the laws of physics and probability dictate that time will have to come to an end sometime within the next, oh, 3.7 billion years. (Nothing lends scientific credibility to a number like a decimal point, does it?)

I'd be more inclined to dismiss this bit of speculation as quickly as I do most cosmological ruminations if it weren't for a single line in the story that seems to ring true for some reason. The scientists involved "don't know what kind of catastrophe will cause the end of time, but they do say that we won't see it coming."


Hmmm. Do they mean it will be sort of like "a thief in the night"?