The World Could End, And The Internet Has Had A Hilarious Response

It's 2018 and we can authentically say we're not surprised by anything anymore – yes, even the fact that people are excited about the possibility of Earth getting folded into a black hole and zapping us all into oblivion. 

It comes after a recent paper (that has not yet been peer-reviewed, mind you) looked at the possibility that flat gravitational waves could form a black hole if they were to interact in a certain way, sucking our home planet and every Twitter user in with it.  

“These waves move forward like a tidal wave and are created by an object moving at the speed of light,” our very own Dr Alfredo Carpineti eloquently put it.

If two of these flat waves collided at low energies, chances are nothing would happen. However, at high energies, the end of the world could occur before our very eyes. Sort of.

“These particles have a lot of energy and produce curvature in space-time, and when the waves collide, that curvature wraps in on itself,” paper author Frans Pretorius told New Scientist. “Space-time is sort of sucking itself into a black hole.” 

Newsweek published their report of the findings and shared a link to it on Twitter, and the world was surprisingly receptive to the idea of turning into space spaghetti. Whether you consider yourself a news junkie or you live under a rock, there's no avoiding the fact that 2018 has been a particularly interesting year, to say the least, which is exactly what this hilarious (and all-too-real) Twitter feed demonstrates.

To be fair, it wouldn't be the strangest thing to happen all year, and in some sad, twisted way, maybe we can take a little bit of comfort in knowing it could all be over soon.

Don't break our hearts here. 

Then again, there is still hope that the current political powers at-play could sweep in and rescue our sad, tortured souls. 

Getting warmer...

But maybe it's already happened and we're just living in some alternate reality? 

To which we say, bottoms up (if you're of legal drinking age, of course). 

The good news – it’s all theory. As Dr Carpineti wrote: "the creation of such an object would require incredibly powerful waves, nothing compared to what we see. It’s pretty unlikely that it’s ever going to happen… so we’re just stuck with the world as it is."

Yay.

*depressing, controversial, unbelievable, peculiar, disheartening, or any other variation of these such adjectives found here. 

[H/T: Indy100]