by ballistic 5 Replies latest jw friends
The quote about the earth "lasting forever"
To quote:
The Sun will run out of fuel in about 5 billion (5,000,000,000) years. When this happens, the Sun will explode into a planetary nebula, a giant shell of gas that will destroy the planets in the Solar System (including Earth).
I find it hard to connect this science with religion.
Maybe it is my new religion.
I find it difficult to align most science with religion.
And since science fits neatly in my logical mind ..................
"The Sun will run out of fuel in about 5 billion (5,000,000,000) years"....And there still will be 1,400 taking the emblems at each Memorial! --VM44
Everything including the Earth will last forever. It may however exist in a billion billion billion fragments spread across much of the universe...
Looking in the night sky, one can readily observe clouds of gas where stars have in the past exploded (such as the Crab Nebulae). In addition, some stars have exploded WHILE observers were watching, and burned very brightly for a few days or weeks, then faded away. So, it is not unreasonable to conclude that this will one day happen to the star we call our Sun. It doesn't take much imagination to know the fate of the nearer planets when that day arrives. By the time that arrives, our descendants will hopefully have learned to travel to other worlds, so it does not necessarily mean the end of life, merely that this particular planet will not be our home any longer.
Here's one possible scenario: In 3 billion years a different event will take place. Andromeda galaxy will collide with our Milky Way galaxy. It is headed our way now at great speed but has a long way to go. When galaxies collide, much of the matter passes thru but gravitational rearangements occur and sometimes they appear to stay merged. Hubble pictures illustrate this. Especially for spiral galaxies like ours and Andromeda's. Perhaps this convenient timing will allow for some kind of reprieve from the apparently inevitable fate of the Sun. Afterall, many coincidences have allowed the solar system to be in the life habitable region of a spiral galaxy and for the earth to be in a life zone around the sun with a single large moon that induces an extremely stable orbit.
