Welcome to Science Saturday, where the Overnight News Digest crew informs and entertains you with this week's news about science, space, and the environment. In keeping with the theme of the past three months, Overnight News Digest: Science Saturday is featuring science and other news from the major public research universities in the midwestern states where Republican governors and legislatures are threatening the collective bargaining rights of public employees.
This week's featured story comes from Examiner.com.
'Doomsday' has arrived
Dennis Bodzash
Space News Examiner
May 21st, 2011 11:43 am ET
Today is May 21, 2011, which means that, at least according to preacher Harold Camping, today will bring Judgment Day, the rapture, and this the beginning of the end of the world. So, with all of the excitement being stirred up by Camping's 'prediction' of the apocalypse, online queries into potential Doomsday scenarios have skyrocketed over the past week.I posted my personal take on the Rapture that didn't materialize at Crazy Eddie's Motie News. I obviously didn't take it very seriously.Now, while Camping's predictions are certainly in error (he originally predicted Judgment Day for 1994), there are some very real end of the world scenarios, some close to home and others from far off space. However, we need not die in all of them as, with our current technology, we are on the verge of being able to escape Earth should something go horribly wrong on our planet.
The key to our survival: the exploration of space.
More stories after the jump.