This is the way the world ends

Review by John C. Snider © 2009

We’ve all read the nightmare scenarios: a massive asteroid is going to slam into the earth unless a team of hastily-gathered astronauts can land on it and blow it to smithereens; the sun belches out a particularly energetic tongue of solar material that threatens to boil us in our own juices; or a rogue black hole comes sauntering through the solar system and sucks up the earth like it was the last slurp of milkshake in the bottom of the glass.  Sure, it’s scary fun, but how realistic are these imaginings?  For that matter, how likely are they?  How will the world end, anyway?

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