Posted on 06/17/2007 7:26:12 PM PDT by voletti
JERUSALEM: Renowned British scientist Sir Isaac Newton, the father of modern physics and astronomy, predicted the world would end in 2060. He made the prediction in a 1704 letter that went on show in Jerusalem on Sunday.
A famed rationalist, who secured a royal exemption from the ordination in the Church of England that was normally expected of academics of his day so he would not have to follow its teachings, Newton nonetheless based his prediction on a Biblical text.
Working from verses in the Book of Daniel, the elaborator of the classical laws of gravity, motion and optics argued that the world would end 1,260 years after the foundation of the Holy Roman empire in western Europe in 800 AD.
The letter, on show at Jerusalems Hebrew University as part of an exhibition called Newtons Secrets, is part of an array of papers of the British scientist bequeathed to the institution by a wealthy collector of scientific manuscripts.
The university said it was the first time the letter had been put on public show since 1969. Newtons late 17th century work at Cambridge University was the foundation stone of modern science until the discovery of relativity and quantum mechanics in the last century.
But it has long been known that the ground-breaking physicist from Grantham, England, also took a keen interest in superstitions of his day that have long since fallen foul of modern science. Newton spent four years in the 1670s preparing a work on alchemy, the notion that base metals can be turned into gold.
I’m marking my calendar. Probably be dead by then though.
Why are you growing corn in the toilet? ;^)
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Yea but... the Mayans have it ending in 2012, much sooner. Gore has it ending in about 2017. Which prediction is right? I need to prepare.
ping
Thank you (and other posters) for the correction.
In one manuscript from the early 1700s, Newton used the cryptic Book of Daniel to calculate the date for the apocalypse, reaching the conclusion that the world would end no earlier than 2060.
"It may end later, but I see no reason for its ending sooner," Newton wrote. However, he added, "This I mention not to assert when the time of the end shall be, but to put a stop to the rash conjectures of fanciful men who are frequently predicting the time of the end, and by doing so bring the sacred prophesies into discredit as often as their predictions fail."
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Actually, Newton's formulation of calculus had everything to do with his theory of gravity. Newton had this great theory of gravity that worked perfectly if one assumed that all the mass of a body was contained in a point at the center. He spent the next twenty or so years developing integral calculus to prove that if you add the effects of every tiny bit of stuff in a planet, you come up with a point mass at the center. Brilliant guy.
Isaac Newton. Was this the same scientist who did cocaine and invented calculus?
LOL!!!!Funny that you put those two in the same sentence. I took calculus.
Newton set 2060 for end of world
The Daily Telegraph | February 22, 2003 | Jonathan Petre
Posted on 02/21/2003 8:35:31 PM EST by MadIvan
Shttp://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/849067/posts
That's only because Moby Dick hadn't been written yet. :=)
No, it’s because he was smarter than all the ignorant naysayers who are speaking off the top of their biases instead of really researching the issue fairly.
Sir Isaac Newton was a great man - and a first-class eccentric and occultist. His erratic behavior and mental decline near the end of his life is thought to be due to mercury poisoning (mercury being an important alchemical element he used in attempts to create the “Philosopher’s Stone”). Significant concentrations of mercury were found in samples of his hair subjected to analysis.
The so called codes you refer to are way behind the learning curve on the state of the science and art of authentic codes.
They aren’t remotely long enough to be valid—i.e. short enough such could be found by chance in a sufficiently lengthy text.
They aren’t centered in a complex cluster of codes including at least a very long one==one or more of which cross significant keywords in the surface text.
They don’t have obvious and clear references to the surface text like the authentic codes do.
etc.
etc.
etc.
I’d wager that even with a compromised brain, he was still smarter than a lot of the naysayers I’ve read.
The most famous mathemeticians of which have been proven to be fraudlent in their most publicized assertions about such.
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