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Tuesday 15 October 2024

Jupiter – why bother? (515)

 Jupiter is about 11x larger than earth. This big gaseous monster lies between Mars and Saturn. It's the 5th planet from the sun in our solar system. It’s out ‘big daddy’ planet with a gravitational pull that sucks in massive asteroids and space debris that would otherwise obliterate us. And yes – that is not to say it’s always successful. It missed, obviously, the one that got the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. But on the whole we cannot complain.

Our very existence – and by that I mean – the inhabitability of planet Earth, is so much of a miracle even considering it could make your brain explode. Like a super-nova.

But, if I were Jupiter – I’d be seriously thinking (with my gassy, stripy brain) – why bother.

From endless warring to the horrors that humans can mete out to each other, the Spanish inquisition (lowest estimate for deaths 30,000) to the witch trials (scholars reckon that those murdered for witchcraft is between 40 – 60,000). And remember this at a time when the earth was not made up of 7bn souls, so those numbers represent a huge percentage of what was then the world's population.

World wars – x2; estimates range from 55m – 80m dead.

In short, humans are pretty good at killing other humans.

But in the 21st century we are excelling.

Netanyahu has racked up 43,000 deaths in Gaza in just one year with his “most moral army in the world”.

But this is dwarfed by what we now manage from pollution alone.

In 2021, UNICEF estimated 8.1 million annual deaths globally from air pollution.

One of my very early posts on this blog (I link it here) was called Armageddon will not be televised.

What I said then is true today x 1000

So – for this week, instead of the usual general invitation to check out my other stuff I shall simply link you to Zero One Zero Two - we are all dead...