End of days?

Last night, The Universe on History International kicked off a new season with an interesting episode -- Sun's evil twin, Nemesis. There is a school of thought that proposes a star called Nemesis is orbiting our Sun and every 26 million years comes close to it which causes worldwide destruction and annihilation of species. Geologists have looked at all mass extinctions caused up to today and surprisingly realized they occur exactly every 26 million years. So far this has happened about 5 maybe 6 times, the last one wiping out the gigantic dinosaurs.

The program then went on to suggest how these extinctions were a boon to mankind since they destroyed the dominant species of the time and paved the way for mammals to evolve, ultimately resulting in the human species taking over Earth. I was, however, more interested in learning about the extinctions so I went hunting.

About 73,000 years ago we had a close call with an extinction, although it didn't wipe out everyone. A massive volcano erupted on the island of Sumatra, blocking the sun's rays and reducing the Earth's temperature by 9 degrees F. Humans were reduced to only a few pockets and only about 10,000 of us survived this major catastrophe.

The event before that occurred 65 million years ago and wiped out almost everyone, along with the dinosaurs, when a giant rock was hurled from space. Now that got me thinking -- if these geeks are proposing an extinction event every 26 million years then how did we get so lucky and are still surviving? Nemesis has got to orbit close to 3 times more now but it didn't cause any events. Is the star losing its power or is some one else watching to make sure we cause our own extinction without any outside help?

I didn't finish the program; maybe they had some answers for this conflict but it definitely highlighted how fragile life is in this vastness of ever expanding and fastly accelerating universe. There is so much out there we don't know and don't understand; our solar system is but the size of a pin head in our own galaxy and perhaps doesn't even count in the unimaginable depth of space. To deny the possibility of life elsewhere is stupid but to dicount how valuable and precious life is, despite the universe's size, is naive. 10,000 to 7 billion; we've come a long way but we are never far from a lurking asteroid or comet threatening to destroy every single evidence of us ever have existed. It is not a question of if but of when. We are waiting, solemnly, for everything to be destroyed and for the cycle of life to renew. It would just be a whole lot nicer if we waited without causing so much destruction of our own.