Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: MONDAY, October 10, 1994                   TAG: 9410140020
SECTION: EXTRA                    PAGE: 1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: BEN BEAGLE
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

BIG CRUNCH IS CLOSER THAN EVER

I guess I feel, well, just used. From now on, I won't trust those astronomers the way I once did.

I always believed them when they said the universe was 20 billion years old. Now, they're saying it may only be 7 billion.

How are normal anxiety-ridden people supposed to make plans with that kind of misinformation going around?

And don't forget the effect this will have on your Aunt Zelda - who has been saying for a long time that if the universe is 20 billion years old, there may be time for you to amount to something.

I suspect she has already sent a small boy down to the drug store for an ammonia Coke. I could use one myself - with a little lemon, maybe. Or maybe something a little stronger.

And have these people thought about the effect of this new theory may have on the common country-boy belief that when the Big Dipper is upside we're going to get a lot of rain?

Does anybody really care about the Big Dipper anymore? And how many of us are going to wake up at 3 a.m. and wonder how old the Big Dipper is? Not to mention the Little Dipper and the Milky Way.

I wish I could take some comfort from the Los Angeles Times, which reported on this betrayal. I can't. The Times said:

"Astronomers believe the key to any scientific answer is Hubble's constant, which is a measure of the ratio of velocity to distance for remote, receding galaxies."

Call the bridge and ask where the Green Orion Slave Girl is now that we need her.

The Times continued:

"The right answer holds the key to whether the universe may one day reach the end of its onward rush, reverse, and slowly collapse on itself in what some astronomers like to call the Big Crunch."

And you thought all the reporters on the Los Angeles Times were handling leaks in the O.J. Simpson case.

There are those of us, incidentally, who believe that this Big Crunch will happen several years before they get to opening arguments in the above proceeding.

A mere trusting, naive Radford boy, I had no idea the universe may be tending toward a Big Crunch. If I had known that, I'd have bought more double indemnity insurance.

I guess the best we can do is to stay as far away as possible from those remote, receding galaxies up there.

At least for the next 2 billion years or so.