This episode of Astronomy Cast is brought to you by Swinburn Astronomy Online, the world's longest running online astronomy degree program.

Visit astronomy.swin.edu.au for more information.

Hi everyone, it's Fraser here, so this is the third episode that we recorded during the not the end of the world cruise in front of our live audience.

So again, apologize for the audio quality, we recorded this on a portable audio device, and you can definitely hear the audience in the background, which was great. Add to the live show.

So this corresponds to episode 286, how to debunk an end of the world myth, and this is for December 24, 2012. Enjoy the show.

Everyone's always predicting the end of the world. Someone's going to tell you that this is the year it's all going to end, the end of planet earth, and they're always wrong, but someone will eventually be right.

Planet Earth is doomed. Let's figure out how. So this is my favorite topic ever. We're going to talk about all of the ways or the universe is just trying to fill planet earth.

And so first, just to put this into context, how long has the earth been around?

Somewhere around 5 billion years, exact numbers are still being argued, so I'm just going to go with 5 billion is a good starting point, 5.5 is out there, 6 is out there somewhere.

Yeah, right. So all of the ways that have, you know, all of the dark forces working against our planet have failed so far.

Yeah, yeah, for almost 5 billion years, it all failed. Here we are still. And yet the end of the world is.

So the end of the world is always not because the universe truly is trying to destroy life as we know it on the planet earth, whether it be a random black hole that comes tumbling into our space and out of nowhere starts sucking in materials.

Or a comet comes colliding towards our planet out of the sun, and we don't see it until well we're about to die. There are so many ways that every day we somehow survive miraculously, except release just probability.

Right, okay. So then let's take a look at some of the kinds of classes of ways that our planet can come to an end.

And I think we should be really clear to distinguish between the ways that we can kill ourselves or the ways that human beings can be killed, right?

Those are almost as numerous. Right, and no, I understand that, but that's easy, right? That's all I'm saying. It's really easy to kill all of humanity, ways to kill all life, which is a lot tougher.

Yes.

And the ways to actually destroy the planet right down to its very essence.

Which at the end of the day is by far the coolest thing to discuss and difficult.

Yes.

Yes. Okay. So let's start with humanity because I think when most people talk about that they are, you know, we're going to need to save Earth, we need to protect Earth.

That's not what we need to do. We actually need to stop killing all of ourselves.

...