The End of the World as We Know It, continued

Rapture or Cosmic Rupture?
By Will Collette
Though I usually focus on local politics, I also keep my eye on the Big Picture. There’s lots more to worry about than the antics of our local political characters, whether it’s Jim Mageau, Deputy Dan Slattery, Lisa DiBello or whoever. Like whether we are once again coming close to the end of the world.


Two very different stories caught my eye – one involves good old Harold Camping, the televangelist who predicted the beginning of the Rapture that starts the end of the world as we know it. The other is a string of recent stories about gamma radiation bursts, such as unexpectedly large surges coming from the supernova remnants in the Crab Nebula and a big “what if?” 

But first, Harold Camping. The 90-year old reverend had predicted Doomsday would happen last May 21^st. In fact, the Charlestown Democratic Town Committee did very well by holding its first-ever “It’s the End of the World” tag sale raising a record breaking sum from donated goods from potential rapturees.


Mr. Camping says that Judgment Day did indeed happen, but that it was up in Heaven. Now, says Camping, the real deal will happen on October 21. That doesn’t leave much time – less than two weeks – but blame the media for the short notice. Unlike his May 21^st prediction, Camping has gotten almost no coverage this time. But unlike the mainstream media, we at Progressive Charlestown feel you have the need to know.

Crab Nebula

More disturbing is a piece in Science Daily, “News about Planet-Threatening Events.” Just the title alone makes me need to change my underwear. 


While other science media are pondering new reading of high energy gamma ray pulses from the supernova remnant, a neutron star, at the heart of the nebula, Science Daily ponders the dangers of massive gamma radiation events that would result from the collision of two black holes or the absorption of a neutron star by a black hole.


If either event occurs in our home galaxy, “they’d give off colossal blasts of lethal gamma-rays, e-rays and cosmic rays and it’s perfectly reasonable to expect Earth to be bathed in them.”

From NASA: depiction of black hole eating a neutron star

Washburn University astrophysicist Brian Thomas notes that such events have been observed in other galaxies and, at some point in geological time, can be expected to occur in the Milky Way. Based on these observations, Thomas says such events seem to occur, on average, every 100 million years, so our own galaxy has almost certainly experienced them and will do so again.


A short burst of such radiation would almost certainly damage, if not destroy, the Earth’s protective ozone layer, exposing surface and some marine life to potential extinction-causing radiation. Dr. Thomas did not comment on the chances of this happening on October 21.