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POPS Many, Perhaps Most, Nearby Sun-Like Stars May Form Rocky Planets One intriguing thing about meeting people from another planet would be to find the role of religion in their culture (if they bother with religion). If they don't, many would see the need to convert them, if they did, would it be the same as ours, or would some see the need to convert them. Sorry, just an aside.
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POPS'Dark energy' may mean the end of the Universe And, they believe, a strange, yet-to-be-detected form of energy called dark energy pervades the Universe, which would explain why the sum of all the visible sources of energy fall way short of what should be out there. Dark energy, goes the thinking, is a result of the Big Bang and is accelerating the Universe's expansion. If so, the Universe is not in a nice, stable zero-vacuum state but simply another "false vacuum" state that may abruptly decay again - and with cataclysmic consequences. The energy shift from the decay would destroy everything in the Universe, "wiping the slate clean," says Lawrence Krauss of Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio.