When the US president announced that a
giant asteroid was heading towards a collision with planet Earth, he
first tried to make it look like a problem that the government could
solve. People were told that NASA would launch a space mission to
divert the asteroid from its course, using nuclear weapons to blast
the giant space rock off its course.
But insiders knew that the chance of
success was slim. The asteroid had been discovered too recently, and
there wasn't the time needed to properly prepare a space mission with
a high chance of success. NASA workers frantically scrambled to put
together the crucial launch. They loaded as many nuclear weapons as
they could into the payload of a huge rocket. But in the rush, they
crammed too much weight into the overloaded payload.
When the rocket blasted off, a large
fraction of the world watched breathlessly on their TV screens. But
after rising a few hundred meters into the air, the overloaded rocket
veered to the right, and began spinning in the air. It crashed to the
ground in a horrific explosion that spewed lethal plutonium over many
square miles.
Now it was clear to all: there was no
hope of an eleventh hour mission to stop the asteroid. The giant
space rock would hit the planet with all its force. Scientists
calculated that the asteroid would blast out so much matter on its impact
that a large fraction of the planet would be covered with dust. The
dust would stay up in the atmosphere for years, blocking out
sunlight, and throwing the world into a nuclear winter in which it
would be impossible to grow crops. The eventual result would be a
mass starvation in which almost everyone would die. The chance of the
human race surviving was slim.
Scientists announced the exact day and
time when the giant asteroid would strike: on December 6th
at 11:24 AM. When December arrived, the people of the world dealt
with the situation in a variety of ways.
In New York City, Priscilla Carlson
heard that the glamorous shops on Fifth Avenue had been abandoned, as
millions fled the city, seeking higher ground in case of an asteroid
collision in the ocean. Priscilla got a baseball bat and smashed open
the windows of some chic designer boutiques. She grabbed some
status-symbol luxury items such as Gucci handbags and Oscar de la
Renta dresses. Returning home, she took pictures of herself with her
stolen loot. But after posting the pictures on Facebook, she was
heartbroken when her pictures received no “Like” votes at all.
Finally she realized how distracted her group of Facebook friends
must have been.
In Chicago, young Allan Ramsay figured
that the worldwide chaos and approaching doom was a golden
opportunity for him to do what he always wanted to do: to ride his
skateboard on the ledge of a skyscraper. Allan thought that his many
daredevil stunts on the streets of Chicago would prepare him for this
great challenge. Given the nationwide chaos, he was easily able to
get to the 40th floor of a skyscraper. He got the thrill
of a lifetime when skateboarding along a narrow skyscraper ledge. But
then he ran out of ledge while skateboarding too fast. The poor young
lad then plunged to his death.
In Florida, William Anderson thought
how he would spend his last hours with his two young children. He
decided to tell them nothing about the approaching apocalypse. He
took the kids out of school, and disconnected his television set,
telling his kids to speak to no one for the next week. William
decided that on the morning of December 6th, he would
spend his last hours doing what he had loved doing more than anything
else: reading aloud to his young children, and playing baseball with
them in their backyard.
On December 5th, the New
York Times published what it believed would be its last issue. It had
a 6-inch tall headline with a single word: DOOM!
On the night of December 5th,
people around the world could see the giant asteroid as a bright star
in the sky.
“Look, you see that big star in the
sky?” said Ed Baker to his wife. “It's the Angel of Death, and
it's here to take us all.”
Then suddenly the asteroid simply disappeared.
People all over the world witnessed it.
They were looking at a bright star, and then suddenly there was
nothing to see. Television shows at first reported that they were
having trouble getting a fix on the exact location of the asteroid.
But before long it became clear – there simply was no more
asteroid. Inexplicably, it had just plain vanished. The world
had been spared.
Two weeks later, scientist Hubert Keller
was interviewed about the amazing incident by a reporter from CNN.
“What do you think was the reason why
the asteroid mysteriously vanished?” asked the reporter.
“I've heard some of my fellow
scientists advance the idea that the asteroid vanished because of the
random spontaneous appearance of a quantum wormhole,” said
Professor Keller. “But I consider that hypothesis to be
ridiculous.”
“So what is your theory?” asked the
reporter.
“My theory is that what happened was
what I call spontaneous disintegration,” explained Professor
Keller. “It could have been that this asteroid was just a kind of
'house of cards' waiting to collapse. Perhaps it was mainly hollow,
and mainly made of dust. So, purely by chance, it might have
disintegrated at a lucky moment.”
“But wouldn't that have left a huge
cloud of dust?” asked the reporter. “Nothing like that was
reported. The asteroid seems to have suddenly vanished without a
trace.”
“Yes, but I can explain that through
another hypothesis,” said Professor Keller. “I postulate that at
exactly the same moment that the asteroid spontaneously
disintegrated, there occurred – purely by chance, of course – a
gigantic surge in the solar wind which basically blew away all the
dust from the asteroid more or less instantly. So purely by
coincidence you had these two things happening at the same time,
which merely made it look as if the asteroid had suddenly
disappeared.”
“So you don't think the sudden
disappearance of the giant asteroid is anything that should make you
think that perhaps you've overlooked something, that perhaps there's something more at work in the universe than just blind, accidental causes?” asked the reporter.
“Why, of course not,” said the
Professor indignantly.
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