Long View

["Carl L. Distefano" CLDistefano@xxxxxxxx]

We all know (but are prone to forget) that besides Draft View, Page-Line
View and Expanded View, there's something called the Long View. I toggled
into this highly-useful mode this morning, on reading a front-page account
in the NY Times (sorry, Harmon) of what might be described as the Ultimate
Bug (Feature?). I take the liberty of quoting excerpts, the contemplation
of which may lend perspective to the present proceedings:

-> At Other End of the 'Big Bang,' a Possible Big Whimper
-> By JOHN NOBLE WILFORD
->
-> ... The Sun is expected to die in about five billion years,
-> reduced to an extinct remnant known as a white dwarf. Earth
-> might survive the solar death throes, but its oceans would boil
-> away from the heat, and life, if it endured that long, would no
-> longer be possible. The Sun will not be alone.
->
-> Slowly, all the larger solar-mass stars will turn to white
-> dwarfs, and the more slowly evolving small red-dwarf stars will
-> assume more importance. The end of all star formation, the end
-> of the stelliferous era, should come in 100 trillion years.
->
-> In the succeeding "degenerate era," most of the universe's
-> mass will be in the form of brown dwarfs, starlike objects too
-> small to shine from nuclear fusion; red dwarfs; white dwarfs,
-> and black holes. The white dwarfs will capture most of the so-
-> called dark matter.... And the black holes will be gobbling up
-> the white dwarfs....
->
-> The decomposition of protons, basic particles of ordinary
-> matter, will destroy what remains of the stellar relics, thus
-> ringing down the curtain on the degenerate era in 10 trillion
-> trillion trillion years....
->
-> The third period, the black hole era, would be an even
-> longer span of time, during which even these objects with
-> powerful gravitational forces would slowly radiate away their
-> mass and disappear....
->
-> After that, the dark era. ... All that will remain in this
-> bleak, darkened future will be an increasingly diffuse sea of
-> electrons, positrons, neutrinos and radiation.


Now then. We were saying?


--------------
Carl Distefano * * * CLDistefano@xxxxxxxx
--------------