End of the World?

[Katalisk]

Many people believe the world will end soon or maybe later. Iv decided to see what many people think whether it be the comet theory, war, or possibly the anti christ.

[Nono]

"Many"? 17? Do you have any figures?

People have always had a tendency to think the time is nigh. That's human nature ---- things are always going to hell. And kids these days, I tell ya ....

Of course, never before have we been able to influence our own collective destiny the way we have in recent times.

Anyway, my guess is infectious disease. That's what will get us as a species eventually.

[ChimneySweep]

I think facts will become stranger than fiction..

Alter our DNA or robots will take over, warns Hawking * Nick Paton Walsh * The Observer, Sunday 2 September 2001 Stephen Hawking, the acclaimed scientist and writer, reignited the debate over genetic engineering yesterday by recommending that humans change their DNA through genetic modification to keep ahead of advances in computer technology and stop intelligent machines from 'taking over the world'. He made the remarks in an interview with the German magazine Focus. Because technology is advancing so quickly, Hawking said, 'computers double their performance every month'. Humans, in contrast, are developing much more slowly, and so must change their DNA make-up or be left behind. 'The danger is real,' he said, 'that this [computer] intelligence will develop and take over the world.'

[Katalisk]

No there are not figures but as I got back on this page I seen a link for 2012 will the world end? No not figures but most people have their own thoughts on it. Me myself I believe our end is going to be more on the solar side than something that will happen on our planet. There are people saying its becouse the mayan calander ends, others are with the comet theory(not fully sure of those details), or a deseise as said before.

[Deadeye]

Quote by: ChimneySweep I think facts will become stranger than fiction..

I can see a reason why Hawking would say this. When machines can make other machines and also make new generations better than earlier issues then, over time, they could indeed take over. Remember "Hal"? Well he lerks and this is not good for we soft skinned carbon based beings.

So let's toss these damn machines and go back to reading the classics.

[DarkStarr]

I think that as the world gets smaller and sooo much FASTER ;communication brings many things to our attention that we were not aware of even 10 or 20 years ago . This is why people (the elusive THEY) often are of the opinion that the world is so much closer to the end. Besides we tend to see the whole world as being within our sphere of influence and while hindsight may be 20/20 it also has a rosy tint to it, so OUR past seems to be a better place (childbirth is an example, if we truly remembered the horror, wouldn't we be extinct by now?) . Thereby creating the illusion that the whole world was better off when we were a kid.

[Angry Citizen]

Quote by: Katalisk No there are not figures but as I got back on this page I seen a link for 2012 will the world end? No not figures but most people have their own thoughts on it. Me myself I believe our end is going to be more on the solar side than something that will happen on our planet. There are people saying its becouse the mayan calander ends, others are with the comet theory(not fully sure of those details), or a deseise as said before.

The world is not going to end. You're gullible.

[Deadeye]

The Earth will eventually end, but no need to pack your bags. We know that the Sun has it's limits and people have a pretty good idea when it's going to swell up and fry everything here.

We will be hit by another astroid someday, and that's going to be pretty rough for life here. Maybe we'll see it in time and push it away so it misses, but there's no assurity of that happening.

We've been hit by many astroids/meteors and some have wiped out most life here. That one that hit in Siberia wiped out something like 95% of all living things. It would have taken us too.

I'm not going to worry about the end of the Earth. I am, however; a bit perturbed about the rise of liberalism. I suffer from that right now, and I don't like it.

[Katalisk]

Everything has a beginning and an end we will to....don't know what the universe fits in tho...

[SoylentGreen]

From a personal perspective the world ends when i die.

[yukonmuffin]

Quote by: SoylentGreen From a personal perspective the world ends when i die.

From my personal perspective the world ends when all strains of brewer's yeast die.

[ChimneySweep]

Deadeye:

So let's toss these damn machines.... Right after this post...no wait... and go back to reading the classics.

Agreed. Tolstoy's got my vote.
Boom!

[ChimneySweep]

Yukonmuffin:

From my personal perspective the world ends when all strains of brewer's yeast die.

Pretty much the definition of dead drunk.

[yukonmuffin]

wat sems to be tah oficer, problem? teres no blood ni my alcohol!

[FriedrichSeneca]

A Brief History of the Apocalypse

Nothing new.

[Deadeye]

Quote by: SoylentGreen From a personal perspective the world ends when i die.

...unless......well, you know.

[Questatement]

The earth's magnetic field, decreasing an alarming 10 % over the past 150 years, is set to "vanish altogether" in 1,500 to 2,000 years. Since there is evidence of past reversals (flipping the planet's poles) scientists assume that it will occur again and soon. The problem with these beliefs is that they are based on reversals from lava flows which, taken in context, point to a sudden and multiple reversal process that took place within weeks/months, not hundreds of thousands or millions of years. It’s the age-old debate with creationists claiming it was the flood of Noah and naturalists ignoring the multiple, short-span reversal sites and looking to single reversals (per site) only to form their theories.

However, what if all past reversals were due to events which will not repeat themselves again such as planetary near-passes or global-flood disturbance models? What if the entire universe was wound up like the spring of a clock and set to more or less 'expire' (interactively) at the same time?

Matthew 24:29
"Immediately after the distress of those days the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light; the stars will fall from the sky, and the heavenly bodies will be shaken."

Revelation 6:13-14
and the stars in the sky fell to earth [from an earthly perspective], as late figs drop from a fig tree when shaken by a strong wind. The sky receded like a scroll, rolling up, and every mountain and island was removed from its place.

[Angry Citizen]

However, what if all past reversals were due to events which will not repeat themselves again such as planetary near-passes or global-flood disturbance models? What if the entire universe was wound up like the spring of a clock and set to more or less 'expire' (interactively) at the same time?

Better question: What if you took an elementary physics class and realized how ignorant your questions are? If there were a global flood, there'd be geological evidence of it. If there were a planetary near-miss, our orbit would've been perturbed, and we would be able to detect the planet in question and trace its path. I think Newton, a God-fearing scientist if ever there was one, would be happy to smack some sense into you.

[Deadeye]

Quote by: Questatement The earth's magnetic field, decreasing an alarming 10 % over the past 150 years, is set to "vanish altogether" in 1,500 to 2,000 years. Since there is evidence of past reversals (flipping the planet's poles) scientists assume that it will occur again and soon. The problem with these beliefs is that they are based on reversals from lava flows which, taken in context, point to a sudden and multiple reversal process that took place within weeks/months, not hundreds of thousands or millions of years. It’s the age-old debate with creationists claiming it was the flood of Noah and naturalists ignoring the multiple, short-span reversal sites and looking to single reversals (per site) only to form their theories. However, what if all past reversals were due to events which will not repeat themselves again such as planetary near-passes or global-flood disturbance models? What if the entire universe was wound up like the spring of a clock and set to more or less 'expire' (interactively) at the same time?

If I understand you correctly, you are looking for a cause for what happens and you probably call that cause, God. Of course you might be right, but I believe that you are putting too much weight upon what is written in the Bible. I believe it was written by men who didn't know.

That does not mean that God doesn't exist. But what He is, I think; is very different from how He is described in the Bible.

Concerning the shift in the poles, apparently it happens very quickly. We have found, for instance; tropical animals frozen in the ice. So for that animal, his last day started bright and shinny and very quickly switched to very, very cold. (I'm alluding to a baby mammoth they found frozen in the ice with tropical food it its stomach.)

[Questatement]

Quote by: Angry Citizen Better question: What if you took an elementary physics class and realized how ignorant your questions are? If there were a global flood, there'd be geological evidence of it. If there were a planetary near-miss, our orbit would've been perturbed, and we would be able to detect the planet in question and trace its path. I think Newton, a God-fearing scientist if ever there was one, would be happy to smack some sense into you.

Interestingly enough, recent history records a huge spike in the magnetic field at the same time as the flood of Noah as well as a good account of the approximate cycle of an increasingly close pass to Mars approaching the time of the flood. (Much of this link must be adjusted for the false assumptions of uniformitarianism.)

Is the Earth's magnetic field about to flip

To really place recent field behaviour in context, we really need a better idea of what was going on geomagnetically prior to the instrumental record. As it turns out, archaeological sites are a very good source of absolute palaeointensity data: - human artefacts like hearths, forges, and kiln-baked pottery are pretty good magnetic recorders, with easy to understand behaviour. In a recent paper, Knudsen et al. use the wealth of palaeointensity measurements from the last 12,000 years or so to produce a best-fit model of dipole strength for the Holocene (the grey shaded region is the estimated error - and note that the time axis here runs the other way to all the other figures...).

This shows that for most of the last 12,000 years, the field strength was actually lower than it is today; it increased between about 4,500 and 2,500 years ago, and after this peak- which is high even when you look over the last 2 million years - it has been decreasing again for most of the last 2,000 years. If you compare the duration and magnitude of the recent decrease (the red box in the figure below) to the field behaviour for past reversals, it doesn't look like we have to worry about the field reversing for a while - it looks like it needs to continue weakening for a few thousand more years, and reach a much lower strength, before a reversal is going to happen.