The End of the Year and the End of the World

The Last Judgment by painter Hans Memling. In Christian belief, the Last Judgement is an apocalyptic event where God makes a final judgement of all people on Earth.

I wrote elsewhere about Isaac Newton's 1704 prediction of the end of the world. sometime around (or after, "but not before") the year 2060.

He used some bizarre mathematical calculations to come up with the year. Where did he get his inspiration? From the "prophecies" of the Bible's Book of Revelation.

Don't you find it odd that Sir Isaac Newton, an English mathematician, physicist, astronomer, theologian, and author who is widely recognised as one of the most influential scientists of all time, and a key figure in the scientific revolution was looking for clues to calculate the end of the world in the Bible? Well, he believed that his work on universal gravitation (gravity), developing the three laws of motion which form the basic principles of modern physics, and his discovery of calculus which led the way to more powerful methods of solving mathematical problems would not be his most important work.

He thought that by deciphering ancient scriptures and uncovering the nature of the Christian religion he would be able to calculate (not just predict) the end of the world.

We still have some decades until his 2060+ but the odds are against Newton for being correct. Plenty of religious doomsayers have predicted the end of the world with Bible codes. And the years have passed with no end.

But Newton was a scientist. Shouldn't that change the equation? He has been joined by modern day scientists who make predictions about the end by interpreting data from climate research, sustainability estimates, population growth stats and by looking at dwindling resources. In their calculations, there are no codes from ancient texts or theology. They don't predict battles between good and evil.

I would just dismiss Isaac's 2060 if it wasn't that I also found online that some scientists using their cold, hard facts and numbers came years pretty close to his number. These are not predictions of an apocalypse, but a man made collapse of industrialized societies and agricultural production, unsustainable population growth and pollution levels, unstable climates, and dissolving nation states.

The "religious" but quite unscientific Ron Weinland had predicted the world would end in 2011, 2012, and then 2013. No, no, no. This year he predicted that Jesus will return on June 9, 2019.  What? No summer vacation in 2019?

And Jeane Dixon predicted that Armageddon would take place in 2020. Of course, she had previously predicted the world would end on February 4, 1962.

If you stick with the scientists, the dates are a lot further away. David Powell calculates that the Earth and the Moon will be most likely destroyed by falling into the Sun, just before the Sun reaches the largest of its red giant phase when it will be 256 times larger than it is now. That will happen in 7.59 billion years. Plenty of summer vacations yet to come.