Sorry, but I don’t buy it.

In my work with compression theory, I learned a lot about probability. If any of these doomsday scenarios were possible, they would have happened somewhere in the universe already — probably a lot of somewheres — and science would have seen some evidence of them.

Like most good scientists, I hesitate to categorically deny that anything is possible, but the extremely remote possibility that any of these scenarios has a grain of truth should not stop people from experimenting.

Before automobiles, I understand that there was a firm and widespread belief that going more than fifty miles an hour would cause your head to spontaneously explode — but we all routinely travel at speeds above that now without a single cranium doing an unprovoked firecracker impersonation. Fear of the unknown is both natural and prudent, but you have to learn to identify and handle unjustified fears if you want to make any progress.