Asteroid Impact
For 9 hours on January 13, 2004, astronomers observed an asteroid that they calculated could hit the earth within two days' time. Further calculations on January 14 were revised, and of course there was no disaster as had been first believed. But there is now little doubt that a comet or asteroid, or a fragment of them, will hit the Earth in the future. In 1908, a 200-foot-wide comet fragment exploded over a region of Siberia with nearly 1,000 times the energy of the Hiroshima atomic bomb. More recently, comets and asteroids have passed close by the Earth, watched with trepidation by astronomers and governments alike. And if a large asteroid, say the tiny size of a Florida Key, does hit us, it will not matter where. The force of the impact will cause firestorms, global cooling, and probable major extinctions. 65 million years ago, a ten-mile wide asteroid struck the earth with the force of 300 million hydrogen bombs. This horror ended the reign of the dinosaurs. A few years thereafter, no dinosaurs survived. The Bible Code predicts a comparable disaster occurring in 2006. Astronomers, in fact, predict several "near-misses" over the next several years. One of the largest is predicted for 2006. The words, "asteroid" and "dinosaur" are words found in the Bible Code, Genesis, Chapter 1. The first chapter of Genesis says that God created the great Tanin (the word means "dragons" or "monsters.") God, it is said, slayed "the dragon" before Creation. Perhaps the dinosaurs' extinction was the slaying of the dragon. In the Bible Code, the word "dragons" is encoded along with the word "dinosaur." Scientists now say that humans could never have evolved unless the dinosaurs had ceased to exist. The great asteroid disaster may be said to be responsible for man's arrival on earth. Without taking the problem seriously, the human race could be next.
Gamma-ray burst
Gamma-ray bursts, which are thought to be caused by the merging of two collapsed stars, could conceivably completely destroy the ozone layer of the Earth, and civilization with it. With each burst being as much as ten quadrillion (10,000,000,000,000,000) times as energetic as the sun, a burst bombarding Earth would cook the atmosphere and allow ultraviolet rays to reach the surface at full force. This would not just mean an increase in skin cancer, but the extermination of photosynthetic plankton which provide oxygen to the atmosphere. The chance of a burst near us may be rare, but scientists believe that such a burst might ebb completely undetectable until it starts.
Giant solar flares
Bradley Schaefer of Yale University recently discovered that solar flares which bombard the Earth, and which the Earth's atmosphere effectively defends against, may have cousin super-flares which are potentially destructive. Such a super-flare, or giant solar flare, emitted by the sun could fry the Earth, resulting in the complete destruction of the ozone layer. And if Mr. Schaefer is wrong, Sallie Baliunas of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics suggests an equally worrying scenario. She has found that solar-type stars go through quiescent periods, in which they become one per cent dimmer. If the sun went through a similar period, another ice age could be upon us.
Ecosystem Collapse
Evolution over the years has resulted in the fate of organisms on this planet becoming intertwined with one another. The overall loss of biodiversity could therefore be disastrous for Earth if it continues unabated, especially when one considers that humans are directly responsible for 30,000 species becoming extinct every year. As an example, a study of a park near Lake Superior discovered that colder snowy winters result in wolves hunting in larger packs. This leads to the wolves killing more moose. The reduction of the moose population leads, in turn, to more balsam fir trees surviving. The increase in the number of trees then results in more carbon dioxide being pulled out of the atmosphere which influences the climate. This subtle interlinking of co-existent organisms will be something that the human race continues to overlook at its own peril.
Biotech disaster
The hazardous effects of biotechnology range from the possible impact of genetically modified food on our natural ecosystems to deliberate misuse of its power. GM crops, it is thought, could engender insecticide resistance in other species, resulting in super-weeds and super-pests affecting our ecosystems. More frightening, perhaps, is the thought that a terrorist group or hostile nation might unleash disease upon the world. Anthrax might be controllable, but what about an airborne version of Aids or the Ebola virus?
Particle accelerator mishap
Some scientists have posited the theory that a particle accelerator experiment could set of a world-destroying chain reaction. It was recently reported in the Sunday Times that the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) in New York could create a subatomic black hole that would gradually eat away at our planet. Or, with equally serious results, it might create 'strangelets' (bits of altered matter) that would destroy any ordinary matter they encountered. The RHIC's directors rejected these suggestions not by dismissing the fundamental possibility of such disasters, but by insisting that their machine was not big enough to cause them. Which begs the question: what if somebody builds a bigger particle accelerator?
Nanotechnology disaster
Nanotechnology is a burgeoning new field in which engineers are creating atomic-scale machines with miniaturized circuits and silicon chips. The technology could one day see robots which are capable of assembling and replicating themselves. While this could lead to robots performing surgery from inside a patient or exploring new worlds, it could also lead to a more frightening future. Eric Drexler of the Foresight Institute has suggested that if an industrial accident were to occur, then bacteria-sized machines could spread across the planet like pollen blowing in the wind. This would, says Drexler, simply "reduce the biosphere to dust in a matter of days."
Global war
Although the US and Russia are on relatively good terms today, the threat of war remains very real. There are now eight nuclear nations in the world, with over 20,000 active nuclear weapons, and politics change notoriously quickly. Added to that is the possibility of an accidental nuclear exchange, with current interception technology unable to prevent a significant number of missiles. Bio-weapons could be an even more realistic threat, because they are cheaper, easier to produce, and simpler to conceal. This could prove attractive to hostile, no-nuclear nations wishing to wreak havoc. And as genetic engineering technology continues to progress, genetic warfare, in which particular ethnic groups are targeted, might not be far behind.
Robots taking over
This may sound more like something out of a film, but serious scientists give credence to this possibility. Hans Moravec, a co-founder of the robotics department at Carnegie Mellon University, believes that by 2040 robots will match human intelligence and even human consciousness. He then foresees a 'post-biological' person evolving symbiotically, who will be a merging of human and machine. Some might say this is the next stage in evolution, but others will view it as the end of humanity itself.
Mass Insanity
By 2020, it is thought that depression will be the second leading cause of death after cardiovascular disease. 500 million people around the world suffer from some sort of psychological disorder at the moment, and the number is increasing rapidly year on year. It is thought that ever-lengthening life spans could also see the number increase, as the brain is overloaded with 150 or even 200 years of problems, stresses and sensations. If that proves to be correct, depression and suicide among the elderly could well continue to increase.
Alien Invasion
The great danger from extra-terrestrial visitors might not be conflict, but a wish for our resources or for Earth as part of some grand inter-stellar project. Just making contact with aliens could be disastrous as well: as the late physicist Gerald O'Neill pointed out, "Advanced western civilization has had a destructive effect on all primitive civilizations it has come into contact with. I don't see any reason why the same thing would not happen to us."
Divine Intervention
Judaism, Islam, and Christianity all have books containing predictions of divine intervention in which God brings history to an end and ushers in a new, more moral, order. Apocalyptic thinking seems far-fetched for non-believers, but non-believers were also common during the times of Isaiah and Noah, who got it right.
Someone wakes up and realizes it was all a dream.
Remember "The Matrix?" The possibility that we are living a shadow existence that fools us into thinking it is real has been dealt with countless times in books and films. This could also be compared to the possibility of vacuum collapse. In the same way that our empty space might not be the most stable form of the vacuum, so what we call reality might not be the truest, most stable form of the vacuum. To frame the question more poetically, one can refer to the Taoist philosopher Chuang Tzu who had a dream in which he was a butterfly with no awareness of his existence as a person. When he awoke, he said, "Was I before Chuang Tzu who dreamt about being a butterfly, or am I now a butterfly who dreams about being Chuang Tzu?"
For 9 hours on January 13, 2004, astronomers observed an asteroid that they calculated could hit the earth within two days' time. Further calculations on January 14 were revised, and of course there was no disaster as had been first believed. But there is now little doubt that a comet or asteroid, or a fragment of them, will hit the Earth in the future. In 1908, a 200-foot-wide comet fragment exploded over a region of Siberia with nearly 1,000 times the energy of the Hiroshima atomic bomb. More recently, comets and asteroids have passed close by the Earth, watched with trepidation by astronomers and governments alike. And if a large asteroid, say the tiny size of a Florida Key, does hit us, it will not matter where. The force of the impact will cause firestorms, global cooling, and probable major extinctions. 65 million years ago, a ten-mile wide asteroid struck the earth with the force of 300 million hydrogen bombs. This horror ended the reign of the dinosaurs. A few years thereafter, no dinosaurs survived. The Bible Code predicts a comparable disaster occurring in 2006. Astronomers, in fact, predict several "near-misses" over the next several years. One of the largest is predicted for 2006. The words, "asteroid" and "dinosaur" are words found in the Bible Code, Genesis, Chapter 1. The first chapter of Genesis says that God created the great Tanin (the word means "dragons" or "monsters.") God, it is said, slayed "the dragon" before Creation. Perhaps the dinosaurs' extinction was the slaying of the dragon. In the Bible Code, the word "dragons" is encoded along with the word "dinosaur." Scientists now say that humans could never have evolved unless the dinosaurs had ceased to exist. The great asteroid disaster may be said to be responsible for man's arrival on earth. Without taking the problem seriously, the human race could be next.
Gamma-ray burst
Gamma-ray bursts, which are thought to be caused by the merging of two collapsed stars, could conceivably completely destroy the ozone layer of the Earth, and civilization with it. With each burst being as much as ten quadrillion (10,000,000,000,000,000) times as energetic as the sun, a burst bombarding Earth would cook the atmosphere and allow ultraviolet rays to reach the surface at full force. This would not just mean an increase in skin cancer, but the extermination of photosynthetic plankton which provide oxygen to the atmosphere. The chance of a burst near us may be rare, but scientists believe that such a burst might ebb completely undetectable until it starts.
Giant solar flares
Bradley Schaefer of Yale University recently discovered that solar flares which bombard the Earth, and which the Earth's atmosphere effectively defends against, may have cousin super-flares which are potentially destructive. Such a super-flare, or giant solar flare, emitted by the sun could fry the Earth, resulting in the complete destruction of the ozone layer. And if Mr. Schaefer is wrong, Sallie Baliunas of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics suggests an equally worrying scenario. She has found that solar-type stars go through quiescent periods, in which they become one per cent dimmer. If the sun went through a similar period, another ice age could be upon us.
Ecosystem Collapse
Evolution over the years has resulted in the fate of organisms on this planet becoming intertwined with one another. The overall loss of biodiversity could therefore be disastrous for Earth if it continues unabated, especially when one considers that humans are directly responsible for 30,000 species becoming extinct every year. As an example, a study of a park near Lake Superior discovered that colder snowy winters result in wolves hunting in larger packs. This leads to the wolves killing more moose. The reduction of the moose population leads, in turn, to more balsam fir trees surviving. The increase in the number of trees then results in more carbon dioxide being pulled out of the atmosphere which influences the climate. This subtle interlinking of co-existent organisms will be something that the human race continues to overlook at its own peril.
Biotech disaster
The hazardous effects of biotechnology range from the possible impact of genetically modified food on our natural ecosystems to deliberate misuse of its power. GM crops, it is thought, could engender insecticide resistance in other species, resulting in super-weeds and super-pests affecting our ecosystems. More frightening, perhaps, is the thought that a terrorist group or hostile nation might unleash disease upon the world. Anthrax might be controllable, but what about an airborne version of Aids or the Ebola virus?
Particle accelerator mishap
Some scientists have posited the theory that a particle accelerator experiment could set of a world-destroying chain reaction. It was recently reported in the Sunday Times that the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) in New York could create a subatomic black hole that would gradually eat away at our planet. Or, with equally serious results, it might create 'strangelets' (bits of altered matter) that would destroy any ordinary matter they encountered. The RHIC's directors rejected these suggestions not by dismissing the fundamental possibility of such disasters, but by insisting that their machine was not big enough to cause them. Which begs the question: what if somebody builds a bigger particle accelerator?
Nanotechnology disaster
Nanotechnology is a burgeoning new field in which engineers are creating atomic-scale machines with miniaturized circuits and silicon chips. The technology could one day see robots which are capable of assembling and replicating themselves. While this could lead to robots performing surgery from inside a patient or exploring new worlds, it could also lead to a more frightening future. Eric Drexler of the Foresight Institute has suggested that if an industrial accident were to occur, then bacteria-sized machines could spread across the planet like pollen blowing in the wind. This would, says Drexler, simply "reduce the biosphere to dust in a matter of days."
Global war
Although the US and Russia are on relatively good terms today, the threat of war remains very real. There are now eight nuclear nations in the world, with over 20,000 active nuclear weapons, and politics change notoriously quickly. Added to that is the possibility of an accidental nuclear exchange, with current interception technology unable to prevent a significant number of missiles. Bio-weapons could be an even more realistic threat, because they are cheaper, easier to produce, and simpler to conceal. This could prove attractive to hostile, no-nuclear nations wishing to wreak havoc. And as genetic engineering technology continues to progress, genetic warfare, in which particular ethnic groups are targeted, might not be far behind.
Robots taking over
This may sound more like something out of a film, but serious scientists give credence to this possibility. Hans Moravec, a co-founder of the robotics department at Carnegie Mellon University, believes that by 2040 robots will match human intelligence and even human consciousness. He then foresees a 'post-biological' person evolving symbiotically, who will be a merging of human and machine. Some might say this is the next stage in evolution, but others will view it as the end of humanity itself.
Mass Insanity
By 2020, it is thought that depression will be the second leading cause of death after cardiovascular disease. 500 million people around the world suffer from some sort of psychological disorder at the moment, and the number is increasing rapidly year on year. It is thought that ever-lengthening life spans could also see the number increase, as the brain is overloaded with 150 or even 200 years of problems, stresses and sensations. If that proves to be correct, depression and suicide among the elderly could well continue to increase.
Alien Invasion
The great danger from extra-terrestrial visitors might not be conflict, but a wish for our resources or for Earth as part of some grand inter-stellar project. Just making contact with aliens could be disastrous as well: as the late physicist Gerald O'Neill pointed out, "Advanced western civilization has had a destructive effect on all primitive civilizations it has come into contact with. I don't see any reason why the same thing would not happen to us."
Divine Intervention
Judaism, Islam, and Christianity all have books containing predictions of divine intervention in which God brings history to an end and ushers in a new, more moral, order. Apocalyptic thinking seems far-fetched for non-believers, but non-believers were also common during the times of Isaiah and Noah, who got it right.
Someone wakes up and realizes it was all a dream.
Remember "The Matrix?" The possibility that we are living a shadow existence that fools us into thinking it is real has been dealt with countless times in books and films. This could also be compared to the possibility of vacuum collapse. In the same way that our empty space might not be the most stable form of the vacuum, so what we call reality might not be the truest, most stable form of the vacuum. To frame the question more poetically, one can refer to the Taoist philosopher Chuang Tzu who had a dream in which he was a butterfly with no awareness of his existence as a person. When he awoke, he said, "Was I before Chuang Tzu who dreamt about being a butterfly, or am I now a butterfly who dreams about being Chuang Tzu?"
Last edited by Fancy_Pollux (2006-08-04 20:27:51)
