Death rays, love them, or loathe them? I do. Loathe them that is. Especially the type that are firing 24 hours a day, blasting concentrated death straight into my skull. But what are these death rays? And how can I stop them?

Rest assured, SCIENCE has not allowed man to create death rays yet, at least not very effective ones. However, nature has. And what is this death ray called? The sun. That's right, the sun!

You see, the sun is a mass of incandescent gas, a gigantic nuclear furnace where hydrogen is built into helium at a temperature of millions of degrees. (Giants, 1993) And what happened the last time uncontrolled nuclear reactions happened on Earth? I'll give you two hints, Hiroshima and Nagasaki. (Manhattan Project, nd) You wouldn't want this to happen to you, would you? No you wouldn't. Duh.

Have you ever heard of a little thing I like to call the Ozone Layer? (Ozone Layer, 2001) It surrounds our Earth, and protects us against the sun's harmful rays. But why do we need this? If the sun just stopped bombarding us with radiation, we wouldn't! We're loosing our ozone anyway, and something needs to be done! Like now.

What kind of harm can the sun do? Well, I'm glad I asked. The sun has been known to cause cancer, blindness, and even, horror of unspeakable horrors, PREMATURE AGING. "Whether you are walking to your car, driving to work or simply sitting near a window, you are exposed to harmful UV rays. This type of daily contact...occurs where you least expect it." (Sun Damage, nd)

You may be wondering about this "Cancer" business, how serious can it be? Extremely. Super extremely. Skin cancer is the most common form of cancer in the United States, or as I like to call it, the world. (Skin Cancer Foundation, 2008) According to the Skin Cancer Foundation, " About 90 percent of non-melanoma skin cancers are associated with exposure to...the sun." The sun? Really? Who called it? Me.

Maybe you know a bit about this global warming Al Gore is so worried about. A friend once told me¹ that the sun is extremely hot. You can see this just by standing in the shade, and then standing in the sun for a moment--don't stay too long though! If you can't figure it out yet, the sun literally warms the globe! And what happens with a warmer globe? Hurricanes, melting ice caps, danger of all sorts!

Look at all of these horrible things the sun does. Do you want to leave your kids in a world where this is common place? I'd hope not! But what can we do to stop this? The answer is easy. Destroy the sun. How can we do this? Simple. 5.50x1031 tons of TNT. (Weiss, 2001) Luanching this directly into the sun will probably destroy the sun.

I promise you, this is the right thing to do, so join me, write your congressperson, find that astronaut farmer guy, do whatever you can, and by all means, stay indoors!

_{¹Oddly enough, he had a fraternal twin, which I'm not sure if I should pay attention to what he said, because think about it, there's only one egg, and one sperm cell, right? But two people come out of that? Does that mean they only get half the DNA? Wouldn't he then be only half a person? Sounds fishy to me.}

References


They Might Be Giants, 1993 Why Does the Sun Shine?

The Manhattan Project, [link]

Ozone Layer, [link]

Sun Damage, [link]

Skin Cancer Foundation, [link]

Weiss, John W.[link]