Not so in "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy," in theaters today. Within the first few minutes, Earth is neatly demolished in a cataclysmic event to make way for, of all things, a hyperspace express route.

Progress can be rough.

Astronomers love space, too. They just prefer that the science be "real."

In a bold move to introduce end-of-the-world reality into the lives of us movie fans, a panel of University of Hawai'i astronomers will present their own show, "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the End of Everything," at 7 p.m. Wednesday in the University of Hawai'i-Manoa's art auditorium.

It's not for the squeamish. On the program are death threats from inside and outside the solar system: killer asteroids, solar storms, exploding stars, the end of the universe, and the unsettling fate of being swallowed by a large black hole.

"It's the most fun a pessimist will have all year," promised one panel member.

To keep up with such big events, we asked UH astronomers what their worst "End of Everything" day might look like, and what the big picture is about.

Here's a sneak preview ... and sorry, we can't give out Bruce Willis' phone number.

How would Earth fare if a nearby star exploded?

Supernovas happen in galaxies like ours about every 100 years. If a very large nearby star (closer than our nearest star, not counting the sun) exploded as a supernova, we'd have almost no warning. The event would fry everything on Earth — both sides, deep, shallow, no escape. Zap, it's all over, setting back the evolutionary clock at least a few billion years, immediately. Then the fireworks would start, with the sky lit as if by a zillion suns. Too bad nobody would be around to see it. ... Fortunately, we have no such stellar neighbors, at present, and we would know well in advance of their approach to our solar system. When such neighbors move in, it is time to vacate the property.

What about killer asteroids?

To cause a serious setback to life on Earth, an asteroid would need to be a mile wide or greater, and we expect an event like this roughly every million years on average. But the chances of being hit by a smaller asteroid, say 1,000 feet wide, is about one in 1,000 over the next 100 years. With an asteroid that size, apart from the huge crater, the dust injected into the atmosphere from the impact (equal to about 50 hydrogen bombs), would cause temperatures to drop, crops to fail and life to be severely compromised.

Here at the Institute for Astronomy, we're building a system of telescopes called Pan-STARRS (Panoramic Survey Telescope and Rapid Response System) which will repeatedly scan the skies looking for objects that may hit the Earth within the next 100 years. Pan-STARRS is actually four smaller telescopes with a very wide field of view that, in some ways, makes it more powerful than any existing imaging telescopes. Cameras, mounted on the telescopes (with more than 1 billion pixels per camera), will take images of the sky every 40 seconds, hopefully providing us with enough warning to do something about an object heading our way.

What happens at the end of the universe?

One of the big discoveries of the last few years is that not only is the universe expanding, but it's expanding faster and faster. Where will it end? Perhaps it doesn't end at all. For anyone who is around, it will be a cold and lonely place.

What happens if we collide with another star or galaxy?

Colliding stars are rare and spectacular events. The nearest star to us, Proximus Centauri, is four light years away, and the chances of that star colliding with our sun is zero. We know the star is moving away from us.

None of the other stars in the galaxy is much of a threat, either; over the expected lifetime of our sun, we estimate a one in a billion chance of being hit. Colliding galaxies are a different event, and we're actually colliding with one right now, called the Sagittarius Dwarf galaxy. To paraphrase the "Hitchhiker's Guide," "Galaxies collide in exactly the way cars don't." Galaxies have so much empty space in them that their stars simply glide past each other. It's not an event we need to worry about.

What happens when the sun dies?

When the sun is in its death throes, about 5 billion years from now, it will swell to many times its present size and emit much more energy, thereby cooking the surface of the Earth. The sun will then shrink into a tiny dim, dead star, and Earth's surface will turn frigid. So our planet will get toasted and then frozen. Hopefully, we'll have left the planet long before this happens.

Could bad weather on the sun affect Earth?

Civilizations have come and gone because of the sun. Will it be the sun that marks the end of ours? It could be from slow climate changes induced by a cooler or hotter sun. It may be a massive solar flare or coronal mass ejection that explodes into space and disrupts the Earth's peaceful space environment.

The simple truth is that in the last 10,000 years, the sun has been unusually quiet, but chances are our future environment and space weather will be nothing like current conditions.

What is the big picture?

The real question for us as humans is how to deal with these threats. Well, the answer is we have to develop real knowledge. We study our world, become enthusiastic about its dimensions and its beauty, but also learn about the threats. Thanks to astronomy, we know that many (threats) are really long-term, and civilization will be long gone when they occur. But some have the potential to become real during our lives or the lives of our children, and we have to figure out what the real risk is. That is what we can do with our new Pan-STARRS project. We hope that with this, we can address one of the real problems of mankind, whether we are safe or have to do something to protect ourselves against killer asteroids ... a real contribution by astronomers to save the lives of humans.