When Will the Sun Die? (Also: Was the Moon Landing a Hoax? When is the Rapture? Is Dubya the Antichrist? What is Yellow? Are Black Midgets Evil?)

I know we're all getting it, this feeling that it's all winding down. That maybe everything is coming to an end. And we all know our time is limited, since the Sun will die some day, and we have little hope of surviving that unless we can leave the solar system, which won't ever happen. I mean, we haven't even managed to land on the Moon yet.

That's why I want to take a moment to inform you all on just how long we have left. Let's first turn to the Holy Bible, one of my two favorite books (the other being the novelization of the Punisher movie starring Thomas Jane):

The Lord Jesus, after answering His disciples questions by laying out the end times events in chronological order, told them "When ye shall see all these things, know that it is near even at the door"(Matt. 24:33) speaking of His Coming to rapture the church. [...] the Lord also tells us of heavenly wonders that will precede His Coming: "Immediately after the tribulation of those days shall the sun be darkened [my emphasis], and the moon shall not give her light, and the stars shall fall from heaven, and the powers of heaven shall be shaken."
[...]
It is these "wonders in heaven", the darkening of the sun and moon, and the stars falling from heaven, that bind together the rapture of the church with the Day of the Lord. These same wonders will also precede the Day of the Lord (Joel 2:30,31;2:14,15; Acts 2:19,20) The timing of these wonders is clear by the context in which they are found. In Matthew 24 the Lord Jesus places them after the "abomination of desolation" which takes place at the middle of Daniel's Seventieth Week.

Yeah, I know. That doesn't really tell us anything unless we can find out when "Daniel's Seventieth Week" is scheduled. I found a chart that gives some dates, but only as an example. The actual dates, frustratingly, seem to be up to God.

However, there are some things to go on:

Daniel's seventieth seven year period begins when the Antichrist makes a firm seven year covenant with Israel. It is evidently a covenant of protection and of religious liberty under which Israel is free to re-establish their ancient system of sacrifices. Sometime either before or during this first three and one-half year segment (Scripture is not dogmatic) the Jewish Temple is rebuilt on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem and sacrifices are resumed.
[...]
During this time period, although the Antichrist is clearly active in world affairs (covenant with Israel), the world still does not fully grasp the depth of his depraved character.

Could the Antichrist be George W Bush? Quite possibly:

You see, one of the chief characteristics of the coming antichrist is that he appears "as an angel of light." Therefore, an obvious reprobate such as Bill Clinton is immediately disqualified. The antichrist, by very definition, is a master deceiver. He must be someone who appears as good and benevolent. The bite is in his tail not in his tongue. In reality, Bush's angelic persona makes him much more dangerous than bad boy Billy.
[...]
President Bush is in the process of copying Clinton's numerous appointments of open homosexuals to high positions of government, but there are no letters, no warnings from pulpits, and no media campaigns opposing it. Just the opposite. Bush is being defended, lauded, and glorified for everything he does, no matter how unconstitutional or unscriptural it might be.
[...]
Bush is in the process of actually trying to create an independent Palestinian state for Israel's enemies (with Jerusalem as its capital, no less), yet continues to receive glowing adulation.
[...]
You remember Ozzie Osbourne, don't you? He is the former front man for the heavy metal band, Black Sabbath. He is famous for stage antics such as biting the heads off birds and bats. His abuse of drugs and alcohol are also well known. Furthermore, Ozzie Osbourne desecrated The Alamo by pissing all over it. George W. Bush is said to be one of Osbourne's biggest fans. As such, Osbourne was recently invited to the White House for dinner.

The Ozzy thing seems to seal the deal. But now I'm thoroughly confused, and we still don't know any exact - or even approximate - date. Screw religion! Let's see what science has to say instead:

The Sun is a yellow, G2 V main sequence dwarf.

Huh? You've lost me already. "Yellow"? What the hell does that mean?

Yellow is the color of light whose wavelength is between 565nm and 590nm, or is a mixture of red and green light that appears to be the same color.
[...]
Yellow is a bright cheerful color, but in the English language, yellow is associated with jaundice and cowardice.
[More]

Okay, got it. Moving on:

Yellow dwarfs live about 10 billion years (from zero-age main sequence to white dwarf formation), and our Sun is already about 5 billion years old.

Oh no! (Of course, this doesn't matter much, since the world as we know it will end in 2012 - as regular Superblog!! visitors are aware.) So what will happen?

Main sequence stars (like our Sun) are those that fuse hydrogen into helium, though the exact reactions vary depending on the mass of the star. The main sequence phase is by far the most stable and long-lived portion of a star's lifetime; the remainder of a star's evolution is almost an afterthought, even though the results of that evolution are what are most visible in the night sky. As the Sun
ages, it will increase steadily in luminosity. In approximately 5 billion years, when the hydrogen in the Sun's core is mostly exhausted, the core will collapse---and, consequently, its temperature will rise---until the Sun begins fusion helium into carbon. [...] When the conversion to the new fuel source is complete, the Sun will be slightly decreased in mass, as well as extending out to the current orbit of Earth or Mars [...]. Since the Sun's fuel source will not have increased in proportion to its size, the blackbody power law indicates that the surface of the Sun will be cooler than it is now, and will become a cool, deep red. The Sun will have become a red giant.
A few tens or hundreds of millions of years after the Sun enters its red giant phase [...] the Sun will begin to exhaust its fuel supply of helium. As before, when the Sun left the (hydrogen) main sequence, the core will contract, which will correspondingly lead to an increase in temperature in the core.

[...] the Sun's core will collapse until degenerate electrons---electrons which are in such a compressed state that their freedom of movement is quantum mechanically restricted---smashed together in the incredible pressures of the gravitational collapse, will halt the core's collapse. Due to the energy radiated away during the process of the formation of this electron-degenerate core, the atmosphere of the Sun will be [b]lown away into space, forming what astronomers call a planetary nebula [...]. The resulting dense, degenerate core is called a white dwarf, with a mass of something like the Sun compressed into a volume about that of the Earth's. [...] Once the white dwarf has cooled sufficiently---a process which will take many billions of years---it is called an exhausted white dwarf, or a black dwarf.

At this point, I wanted to seize the opportunity to link to a site with black midget porn, but I couldn't find one I'd recommend. So instead I'll get closure for this entry by ripping off the following dramatic story from a random blog:

A BLACK MIDGET
has been hanging around my office plaza for the last three days. I see him when I go outside for a smoke. He seems interesting, but when I try to engage him in conversation he's a bit standoffish. When I finish my smoke and go back inside, he's usually on the short phone in the lobby, cursing at someone on the other end of the line. I believe he is insane.

Makes you think.