Choice of disasters

Hello, the most reading nation on the planet.

You laugh at the Large Hadron Collider, but what percentage of those who write the word “BAK” really understand what is being said? What does “antimatter”, the theory of black holes, the collision of the Earth with other celestial bodies mean? What is the possible outcome of humanity? Every third reader? Very unlikely. For this, one would have to have a degree in astronomy, physics, geology, and many other scientific disciplines. But, the glory of evolution, there are people who know this for us.

Surely, many have heard of Isaac (originally Isaac) Azimov , an American of Russian origin who was born in a family of millers, a popularizer of science, a biochemist, and, finally, a science fiction writer. For 72 years of his life, he wrote more than 500 books of various genres, ranging from scientific and journalistic materials to detectives - the whole life of this person was only for one purpose: to convey the knowledge that is difficult and not always clear to the ordinary man in the street. The words positron, psychohistory, robotics; Three laws of robotics and the collection of stories "I, the robot"; Bible guides and science guides — one person brought all this into modern society.
')


And he also wrote a wonderful book, which I would like to give into the hands of habraludey, its title: " The choice of disasters ." This is one of the popular science works of Isaac Asimov, written in 1979, almost 30 years ago, but this does not lose its relevance today. When trying to somehow describe the contents of the book, I was faced with a very obvious problem. How to describe the universe? Is it possible to characterize a combination of astronomical and terrestrial factors? Unlikely. And it is just as difficult to write what this book is about — it is about everything in the world. Although the main vector of development of thought is already clear from the title - Azimov brings together almost all theories about the end of the Earth and humanity, explains all this with understandable language, seasoning with scientific justification and, already in finished form, provides the reader.

There is absolutely no point in retelling the content - it needs to be read. Isaac Asimov, like no other writer, could perfectly, without the doom inherent in some authors, describe all possible scenarios of the actual end of life in the universe, the galaxy and on Earth. He differentiated theories about which we should seriously think about and those that we should not worry about, because of their extremely remoteness (billions of years) or the inability to correct (the movement of the universe). Having read a book, I discovered so many new facts for myself that in any other case I would have to at least get a doctorate in “theoretical physics”.

It seems to me that there are no catastrophes of the second kind, there is no catastrophe, of which
impossible to avoid, there is nothing that would threaten us inevitable
destruction to such an extent that nothing could be done about it. If a
act rationally and humanly, if you calmly approach the problems facing
in the face of the whole human race, and do not go into emotions about such issues
nineteenth century as national security and local patriotism if we
understand that our enemies are not neighbors, but poverty, ignorance and cold
indifference to the laws of nature, all the problems we face can be solved. Can
deliberately make a choice and eventually avoid catastrophes.
And if we make this choice in the twenty-first century, we can spread to
space and lose their vulnerability. We will no longer depend on one planet or
one star. And then humanity or its rational descendants and their allies will be able
exist after the cessation of the existence of the Earth, after the cessation of existence
Sun, after (who knows?) The cessation of the existence of our universe.
This is our goal. So we are victorious.

To summarize: musthave, mustread, mustknow.

Read or download this document on Scribd: Isaac Asimov: Choosing Disasters