Our Expanding Universe, ♥ and the Zombie Pandemic...

Apologies for the delay in missives, the author was overwhelmed by illness at a time when antibiotics are becoming redundant - that global zombie pandemic begins to look almost plausible - even moreso if we look at political trends.
Ahem
However, we shall rise above such concerns which lead to fisticuffs at the watercooler - apparently a new reason for not 'getting things done' in the workplace is the recent discovery that the universe is expanding faster than we thought, by some 5 - 9 %.
As a percentage, that may sound insignificant, but of course the universe is expanding at the speed of light, so a conservative estimate is approximately 34 million miles an hour - which is one of those frightening, unwieldy numbers that keeps me awake at night.
The sheer thought of the emptiness...*

There's more space than we thought...

...to counteract the coldness of deep space, I think of the intense warmth generated by fusion, which may eventually provide an almost limitless supply of energy .
Although it seems like an eternal carrot being dangled just out of reach , the immense technical challenges (how do you generate millions of degrees of heat, and how do you keep it safe ?) are being addressed by facilties such as PPPL, in the USA.

 

Fusion Image courtesy PPPL

Meanwhile, on the event horizon ...

It has also recently been deduced that black holes were mostly created in the first seconds of the existence of the universe, and may be used to explain the absence of ' dark matter' .
As we hurtle through an increasingly large space on our little rocky world, we are also adapting to our new technologies, the smartphones and screens which alter the way our brains work - with shorthand language that replaces expressions with emojis ♥ and acronyms instead of words.
An extreme extrapolation of this is that we are preparing for the next level of communication - a language of symbols  which would be quite universal (certainly for carbon - based lifeforms)...

Meanwhile, on Mars...

There is evidence of an ice age in the records of the Martian polar ice cap, and also records of two huge tsunamis exist in the shorelines around Mars.
All that remains is to establish whether Marsquakes were triggered, and there is the proof of a mass extinction event.
Of course, this leads to the question - what became extinct ?
Again, it has been put forward that a fossil record would be preserved in rock near the tsunami shorelines.
If you ask me, the pieces of jigsaw are falling into place for the evidence of a mass migration.
Wouldn't it be funny if we, in our shiny new spaceships, boldly conquered the barren Mars, only to find that our ancestors had abandoned it millenia ago ?
Especially if our collective reason for the Conquest of Mars was our own poor environmental management here on Earth , triggering extreme weather cycles and natural disasters...♥


* ...okay, so how can anything exceed the speed of light ?
Theoretical particles for one, and - oh, yes - the Theory Of Relativity may be wrong.
Or at least, incomplete...hey, I'm only the messenger, put those virtual pitchforks down !