Posted on 02/21/2003 5:35:31 PM PST by MadIvan
Sir Isaac Newton, Britain's greatest scientist, predicted the date of the end of the world - and it is only 57 years away.
His theories about Armageddon have been unearthed by academics from little-known handwritten manuscripts in a library in Jerusalem.
The thousands of pages show Newton's attempts to decode the Bible, which he believed contained God's secret laws for the universe.
Newton, who was also a theologian and alchemist, predicted that the Second Coming of Christ would follow plagues and war and would precede a 1,000-year reign by the saints on earth - of which he would be one.
The most definitive date he set for the apocalypse, which he scribbled on a scrap of paper, was 2060.
Newton's fascination with the end of the world, which has been researched by a Canadian academic, Stephen Snobelen, is to be explored in a documentary, Newton: The Dark Heretic, on BBC2 next Saturday.
"What has been coming out over the past 10 years is what an apocalyptic thinker Newton was," Malcolm Neaum, the producer, said.
"He spent something like 50 years and wrote 4,500 pages trying to predict when the end of the world was coming. But until now it was not known that he ever wrote down a final figure. He was very reluctant to do so."
Thousands of Newton's papers, which had lain in a trunk in the house of the Earl of Portsmouth for 250 years, were sold by Sotheby's in the late 1930s.
John Maynard Keynes, the economist, bought many of the texts on alchemy and theology. But much of the material went to an eccentric collector, Abraham Yahuda, and was stored in the Hebrew National Library. It was among these documents that the date was found.
Who told!?
Asteroid 2002 NT7: Potential Earth Impact In 2019 Ruled Out
Don Yeomans
July 28, 2002
With the processing of a few more observations of asteroid 2002 NT7 through July 28, we can now rule out any Earth impact possibilities for February 1, 2019. While we cannot yet completely rule out an impact possibility on February 1, 2060, it seems very likely that this possibility will be soon ruled out as well as additional positional observations are processed. Because the SENTRY system tracks a multitude of test particles in an effort to map the uncertainties of the asteroid's future positions, some of these test particles can take slightly different dynamical paths. Hence there are currently two entries for 2060 in our IMPACT RISK table. The entry with the higher risk (larger Palermo Technical Scale) would be the value that would then take precedence.
I'll have to make do with being 88. Oh well.
Sayonara Suckers!! ;-)
Me to! I will be a spring chicken at 88 years old if I am still around : )
Where is that?
Eat, drink and be merry...for tomorrow we die.
That's a naturally occuring phenomenon and happens every 100,000 - 300,000 years. The Earth's magnetic poles have been reversing themselves for billions of years previous to now. They haven't flipped in about 250,000 years. So we're due. Some tout that magnetic pole reversal will bring about the end of the world.
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