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Say your cousin spots a speed trap up ahead and slams on the brakes, and let's assume the brakes are on the front wheels for the sake of simplicity. In real time, the whole truck slows down at a uniform speed. But at the precise moment of braking, the front of the truck decelerates faster than the back of the truck. And in that moment, roadside objects are moving away from your cousin's treasured bright red F-150 slower than incoming objects approach it.This is kind of where we are, except we are experiencing all of these phenomena at once. Looking forward, we see one speed. Looking back, we see another. The best way to explain this paradox is that the force gravity is rapidly decreasing as we travel forward. It's the opposite of what happens when you cross the event horizon into a black hole and approach infinite gravity: The difference between the pull on your feet and your head turns you into a long string of atoms. (Scientists call it "spaghettification").We, however, are facing the opposite fate: infinite compression. As long as we keep making any new shit at all, we'll avoid being (metaphorically) squashed into an infinitely dense and stagnant pop culture landscape. But those who trawl the past for content are not just cynically avoiding the challenging work of artistic innovation. They are actively altering the fabric of the universe, and it's going to cause us to all die. Or something.Follow Skinny on Twitter.On Motherboard: The Underfunded, Disorganized Plan to Save Earth from the Next Giant Asteroid