So you wanna know how the world will end? Fire? Ice? Fire and ice? I won't reveal any secrets, but I do have permission from the publisher to post an excerpt from the introduction to Death from the Skies! Enjoy.
Death from the Skies! Philip Plait, PhD Viking Press, 2008 Introduction (excerpt) The Universe is trying to kill you. It’s nothing personal. It’s trying to kill me too. It’s trying to kill everybody. And it doesn’t even have to try very hard. The Universe is an incredibly hostile place for life. Virtually all of it is a vacuum, so that’s bad right from the start. Of the extremely few places that aren’t hard vacuum, most are too hot for chemical reactions to do very well – molecules get blasted apart before they can even properly form. Of the places that aren’t too hot, most are too cold – reactions happen ...