Quo vadimus? : $b Some glimpses of the future

Sitting by a modest gas fire on a fog‑laden Thames morning, the narrator imagines hurtling through space at a thousand miles a minute, orbiting a distant, scorching star. He muses that the ancient belief in celestial influence has faded, leaving the heavens as little more than precise clocks in an age of atomic time‑keepers. Yet the persistent fascination with the night sky, he suggests, stems not from a pure thirst for facts but from a lingering desire to read our fate among the stars.

From this reflective start the essay launches into a wide‑ranging look at humanity’s long‑term prospects. It weighs the planet’s geological lifespan against the staggering ages of the cosmos, noting how discoveries like radioactivity have pushed Earth’s doom far beyond earlier estimates. The piece asks whether we can design a future that endures—whether we must brace for inevitable decline or can hinge our descendants’ happiness on an ever‑expanding march of progress.