I am frightened

I am back. I have just frightened myself on an existential level. I am shaking, okay, I lie I am not shaking. I do, however, have the lights on. It is as if I see light or the electricity working (then again, typing this post is proof of electricity) all is well, or at least, it brings me back to the here and now. I am now thankful for the present (hope that it is real, but even if it is all an illusion, delusion?, it is just as enjoyable, the feelings, or not). Here is the reason why, interspersed with a whole bunch of asides. You are getting the full roadmap of this sensation as I take you to a story I just read.

Here is the headline: Object Survives Being Swallowed by a Star

Long before the Bible's tale of Jonah being swallowed by a whale, a small wannabe star has emerged intact after being engulfed by a neighboring giant star, scientists say.
The victim was a brown dwarf, a failed star too small to sustain the nuclear reactions that ignites regular stars. The purpetrator was a red giant, an ancient star that once resembled our Sun but which puffed up to enormous size after its hydrogen fuel was depleted. The red giant has since expelled most of its gas into space and transformed into a dense, Earth-sized star called a white dwarfs.

Here we have one star eating another star (it is a star eat star world out there will be the new saying instead of dog eat dog). That is pretty cool and even cooler that in star terms (cosmological) we have a star eating another star and it being crapped out in tact (or like finding an undigested dog or human limb in the stomach contents of a gutted great white shark). It also gives new meaning to the term "Brown Dwarf" when you view it that way. The red giant is "expelling most of its gas into space", which is the analogy to belching and farting, Just imagine the whole scene. It is kind of funny. Damn, I am either really immature or so beyond the earthly plane, I am just really unsure which one it is, or if they are mutually exclusive options.

Although too small to become a star, the brown dwarf was still big enough to avoid vaporization when it was engulfed.

Well, good for the brown dwarf. I swear, I think I am writing about people in the most politcally incorrect of ways, which I really do enjoy. I hope it is provoking somebody out there. I am channeling Lenny Bruce.

But there's another reason the brown dwarf survived. Scientists think the failed star sped up its companion's red giant phase, the way enzymes speed up biological reactions while remaining unharmed. When it was engulfed, the brown dwarf amassed matter from the red giant's gas envelope, which it then radiated off into space. By doing so, it shortened its companion's red giant phase dramatically.
The brown dwarf's reprieve from destruction is only temporary, however. Its orbit is slowly shrinking, and in about 1.4 billion years, it will be close enough for the white dwarf to siphon gas from surface. When this happens, the brown dwarf will slowly shrink in mass, while the accumulating matter on the white dwarf will trigger massive thermonuclear explosions called novas every few years.

Cool, celestial fireworks! Now here is the part that has me troubled, er scared.

In about 5 or 6 billion years, what happened in WD 0137-349 will repeat in our solar system. Our sun will run out of hydrogen and become a red giant, expanding until its diameter is about the size of Earth's orbit. Unlike the brown dwarf, however, our planet is not expected to survive-at least not in its present form.
"It's an ongoing debate whether the Earth will be swallowed up or not," Burleigh said. "But what's for certain to happen is that the Earth's atmosphere and seas will be boiled off. Even if it doesn't quite get engulfed, Earth will be pretty much lifeless."
Several million years after the red giant phase, our Sun will shrink and become a white dwarf. At this point, the orbits of Jupiter and Saturn will double or even triple since the new white dwarf anchoring our solar system will be much less massive than our Sun is now.
Planets farther out might not be so lucky; they could become untethered and float off into interstellar space, Burleigh said.

We are fucking doomed in 5 or 6 billion years! Figure that boling off the Earth's atmosphere and seas occurs in 3 or 4 billion years, that does give me much time to complete my mission here. I go from the thought that the Earth will be gone in 5 billion years and realize that it is so far off that I will be dead (not a pleasant thought at the best of times). I then look to the present and wonder if we will last that long. That is the depressing thought, but then again the real fear I had was me not existing and world being gone. It is my own life that concerns me and why I was shaken. I mean even the life of the whole planet is too abstract a concept for me to grasp, like 5 billion years away.

Anyway, I am better now that I have shared that journey with y'all. Ciao!