You must be thinking I am crazy. May be that's a good thing. May be you are curious. I am not writing this because I am scared of my own demise nor I have the intention to scare anybody. I genuinely think that 'doomsday' is possible; only predicting the date is the problem. I am not supporting any particular faith or community, I am just looking at it from my scientific knowledge and just by rational thinking, it seems apparent.
I am intrigued by the fact that all the major religions talk about the 'final destruction' call it doomsday or any other thing, the central idea is that the earth will be destroyed to the elements it is formed of. We laugh about it, so many doomsday predictions have gone wrong in recent times. However, it would be important to note that mere the presence of black holes and supernovas in the universe point to the fact that stars (the main source of energy in a planetary system) die. Considering the life on earth is just a happenstance owing to earths position relative to sun and all the other life supporting factors are due to that (think about water, air, the atmosphere etc.), we are in a very vulnerable situation. Any cosmic event that leads to a minor change in this situation will wipe out life from earth and that can happen anytime, any day. Scientists know, the true nature of the Universe is randomness.
Human curiosity is as old as the humans themselves. I don't know about the pre-historic man, but from the time humans started to note down their history, they also recorded events and endeavors to understand the nature. That quest seems to have been there long before modern scientific rationality was born. Considering the birth of science a gradual process from earlier methods of inquiry and if you agree that religions were just the old fashioned way to understand human existence on earth and relative to all other natural forces, then we are on the same wavelength.
Now let's look at what different religions thought about doomsday.
In Hindu philosophy, the world always means the universe. According to Hindu philosophy, Brahma is the creator of the universe and the entire life of universe is depicted as one day of Brahma. This 'day of Brahma' spans 4.32 billion years and at the end of it, the universe or the 'Brahmanda' is destroyed. However, Hindus believe that there is creation after every destruction and the new universe will be back up again from the ruins of the old one after it is destroyed. Scientists somehow agree to this concept as it goes with the 'big bang theory'. It is agreed upon that the universe is expanding after the big bang and there will come a time when it will start to contract and that is the beginning of the end. It will shrink and shrink and shrink and become a very high energy dimensionless point. Scientists like Frank Tipler named it as 'omega point'. Don't get worried, we have only passed about 1.86 billion years in a day of Brahma. We are nowhere near the end according to it. However, I want to pint to the fact that the concept of doomsday exists in Hindu philosophy.
The Abrahamic faiths talk more about 'human' component of this destruction.
In Christianity, it is presumed that the world will end preceding the time of second coming of the Christ who will face the emergence of anti-Christ and usher in the 'kingdom of God'.
In Zoroastrianism, the end of the world is predicted when wickedness overtakes nobleness in people and that comes to a gigantic overture when the 'battle of Manichaean' is fought. At the end of the battle, all wickedness will be annihilated and the entire humanity will become like one spirit and merge with 'Ahura Mazda' for divine exaltation.
Judaism mainly talks about the 'end of the current age' and beginning of the Messianic age which will be the age of universal peace and brotherhood, prosperity and no war. The Hebrew scholars did talk about 'end of days' before this Messianic age begins.
Islamic prophecy asks to look for twelve signs ushering the end of the world. One of them being the appearence of 'Mahdi' the twelfth Imam atop a white horse. It also talks about Jesus returning and together they fight out Dajjal the false messiah and at the end, when the sun rises from the west, and a pleasant breeze blows from Yemen, trumpets will sound and the dead will be resurrected. They talk about smoke and fire too.
This concept of Mahdi is similar to Hindu Kalki avatar (reincarnation of Vishnu) who also appears with a white horse during the final moment. Hinduism talks about eight suns shining in the sky which is again similar to Buddhism that talks about the seven suns and appearence of Maitreya like Kalki or Mahdi.
According to Nordic mythology, the whole world gets submerged in ocean and destroyed. Thus, there exist this idea of cataclysm that finally brings upon a destruction and end to the world as it is known and establish a new world. I guess none of them talks about a final 'THE END'.
Taking it from here, at one point of time, considering myself a student of science, my understanding of thermodynamic equilibrium told me that this is completely feasible. The tendency of this world to go towards the lowest possible energy state to achieve more stability is always working against us. In other words, we are always working against it. In fact, life itself is a big struggle against entropy. I would prefer to call biological evolution a tendency to build higher order structures from simple structures. The more complicated, higher order structures we build, the more thermodynamically unstable they are and the tendency to come back to the minimum energy thermodynamically stable configuration increases as we climb up the energy ladder. Up to this point it makes perfect sense, but then, to transcend this idea to the global context and a synchronized destruction happening all at the same time is hard to comprehend. I mean all the high energy structures cannot explode at the same time unless, there is a threshold and every possible energy reserve on this earth crosses that threshold. Alternately, we can consider earth as a single entity comprised of several entities and it is the sub-entities that evolve into higher order structures. But in that case, the total energy of the earth goes up which is not possible since the sub-entities have initially borrowed energy from the earth in order to evolve into higher order entities. Thus the total energy of the earth must be constant and that goes with the laws of thermodynamics that states energy can neither be created nor destroyed. The total energy should remain constant. Now if we shift the reference frame from the earth to the Universe, this becomes feasible. It is possible that the earth uses simple, low energy, stable entities to create higher order structures which are thermodynamically unstable and when all the energy of the whole earth is converted to thermodynamically unstable entities and crosses a certain threshold, it can collapse. While the energy liberated from this collapse can be dissipated in the form of heat, light, sound, radiation so on and so forth leading to the death of one planet, there could be another planet born somewhere else in perfect agreement with the laws of thermodynamics.
This is the only explanation where human beings are making positive contribution to the inevitable collapse by building thermodynamically unstable high energy structures. Since this is inevitable, this contribution is only hastening the speed of reaching the threshold. Now, how much is the contribution? Is it enough to cause any major change in the overall arithmetic? Who knows?
The other feasible ways of earth's destruction has nothing to do with human contribution. Those would be more sudden and overwhelming. For example, a giant comet hitting and displacing it from the orbit. The evolution of a super bug that is resistant to all antibiotics could wipe off life on earth or a minor tilt in the axis of earth may change the weather pattern in a sudden and unpredictable way to make earth uninhabitable in every way. But those are accidents and one cannot predict them. So eat, drink and be merry and don't even think of it. It won't be bad if we die together...millions of us. What's the big deal? The dinosaurs suffered the same fate.
Finally, I will give the method of calculation used in Hindu philosophy to calculate the doomsday. It was posted by Miyuki and Kyojin on yahoo answers 6 years ago. It goes like this,"When Brahma created the universe, he put 3 diamond needles each a cubit long in a brass plate in a temple in Benares. On one needle are 64 golden discs with the largest one on the bottom and each one above it successively smaller until the samllest is on top. This is the Tower of Brahma. Priests take turns transferring discs from one needle to another day & night ceaselessly. One disc at a time must be moved, and a smaller disc can never be under a larger one. When all of the discs are moved from the original needle to another one, the world will end. If they can make one move each second, how long will that take? Try it and you'll see each transfer takes twice as many moves as before. Give the answer in years, please!"
Best of luck! Start calculating. I know he answer. In case if you want to know.
Yes you are right. Miyuki and Kyojin writes, 584,554,530,872 years, 6 months, 14 days, 14 hours, 37 minutes, 0.04 seconds. 2 to the 64th power seconds divided by 31,556,926 sec./yr gives the answer. They calculated it by hand.
Another person used Mandelbrots theorem to arrive at a different number. That is 4,320,000,000 years.
All the best!
I am intrigued by the fact that all the major religions talk about the 'final destruction' call it doomsday or any other thing, the central idea is that the earth will be destroyed to the elements it is formed of. We laugh about it, so many doomsday predictions have gone wrong in recent times. However, it would be important to note that mere the presence of black holes and supernovas in the universe point to the fact that stars (the main source of energy in a planetary system) die. Considering the life on earth is just a happenstance owing to earths position relative to sun and all the other life supporting factors are due to that (think about water, air, the atmosphere etc.), we are in a very vulnerable situation. Any cosmic event that leads to a minor change in this situation will wipe out life from earth and that can happen anytime, any day. Scientists know, the true nature of the Universe is randomness.
Human curiosity is as old as the humans themselves. I don't know about the pre-historic man, but from the time humans started to note down their history, they also recorded events and endeavors to understand the nature. That quest seems to have been there long before modern scientific rationality was born. Considering the birth of science a gradual process from earlier methods of inquiry and if you agree that religions were just the old fashioned way to understand human existence on earth and relative to all other natural forces, then we are on the same wavelength.
Now let's look at what different religions thought about doomsday.
In Hindu philosophy, the world always means the universe. According to Hindu philosophy, Brahma is the creator of the universe and the entire life of universe is depicted as one day of Brahma. This 'day of Brahma' spans 4.32 billion years and at the end of it, the universe or the 'Brahmanda' is destroyed. However, Hindus believe that there is creation after every destruction and the new universe will be back up again from the ruins of the old one after it is destroyed. Scientists somehow agree to this concept as it goes with the 'big bang theory'. It is agreed upon that the universe is expanding after the big bang and there will come a time when it will start to contract and that is the beginning of the end. It will shrink and shrink and shrink and become a very high energy dimensionless point. Scientists like Frank Tipler named it as 'omega point'. Don't get worried, we have only passed about 1.86 billion years in a day of Brahma. We are nowhere near the end according to it. However, I want to pint to the fact that the concept of doomsday exists in Hindu philosophy.
The Abrahamic faiths talk more about 'human' component of this destruction.
In Christianity, it is presumed that the world will end preceding the time of second coming of the Christ who will face the emergence of anti-Christ and usher in the 'kingdom of God'.
In Zoroastrianism, the end of the world is predicted when wickedness overtakes nobleness in people and that comes to a gigantic overture when the 'battle of Manichaean' is fought. At the end of the battle, all wickedness will be annihilated and the entire humanity will become like one spirit and merge with 'Ahura Mazda' for divine exaltation.
Judaism mainly talks about the 'end of the current age' and beginning of the Messianic age which will be the age of universal peace and brotherhood, prosperity and no war. The Hebrew scholars did talk about 'end of days' before this Messianic age begins.
Islamic prophecy asks to look for twelve signs ushering the end of the world. One of them being the appearence of 'Mahdi' the twelfth Imam atop a white horse. It also talks about Jesus returning and together they fight out Dajjal the false messiah and at the end, when the sun rises from the west, and a pleasant breeze blows from Yemen, trumpets will sound and the dead will be resurrected. They talk about smoke and fire too.
This concept of Mahdi is similar to Hindu Kalki avatar (reincarnation of Vishnu) who also appears with a white horse during the final moment. Hinduism talks about eight suns shining in the sky which is again similar to Buddhism that talks about the seven suns and appearence of Maitreya like Kalki or Mahdi.
According to Nordic mythology, the whole world gets submerged in ocean and destroyed. Thus, there exist this idea of cataclysm that finally brings upon a destruction and end to the world as it is known and establish a new world. I guess none of them talks about a final 'THE END'.
Taking it from here, at one point of time, considering myself a student of science, my understanding of thermodynamic equilibrium told me that this is completely feasible. The tendency of this world to go towards the lowest possible energy state to achieve more stability is always working against us. In other words, we are always working against it. In fact, life itself is a big struggle against entropy. I would prefer to call biological evolution a tendency to build higher order structures from simple structures. The more complicated, higher order structures we build, the more thermodynamically unstable they are and the tendency to come back to the minimum energy thermodynamically stable configuration increases as we climb up the energy ladder. Up to this point it makes perfect sense, but then, to transcend this idea to the global context and a synchronized destruction happening all at the same time is hard to comprehend. I mean all the high energy structures cannot explode at the same time unless, there is a threshold and every possible energy reserve on this earth crosses that threshold. Alternately, we can consider earth as a single entity comprised of several entities and it is the sub-entities that evolve into higher order structures. But in that case, the total energy of the earth goes up which is not possible since the sub-entities have initially borrowed energy from the earth in order to evolve into higher order entities. Thus the total energy of the earth must be constant and that goes with the laws of thermodynamics that states energy can neither be created nor destroyed. The total energy should remain constant. Now if we shift the reference frame from the earth to the Universe, this becomes feasible. It is possible that the earth uses simple, low energy, stable entities to create higher order structures which are thermodynamically unstable and when all the energy of the whole earth is converted to thermodynamically unstable entities and crosses a certain threshold, it can collapse. While the energy liberated from this collapse can be dissipated in the form of heat, light, sound, radiation so on and so forth leading to the death of one planet, there could be another planet born somewhere else in perfect agreement with the laws of thermodynamics.
This is the only explanation where human beings are making positive contribution to the inevitable collapse by building thermodynamically unstable high energy structures. Since this is inevitable, this contribution is only hastening the speed of reaching the threshold. Now, how much is the contribution? Is it enough to cause any major change in the overall arithmetic? Who knows?
The other feasible ways of earth's destruction has nothing to do with human contribution. Those would be more sudden and overwhelming. For example, a giant comet hitting and displacing it from the orbit. The evolution of a super bug that is resistant to all antibiotics could wipe off life on earth or a minor tilt in the axis of earth may change the weather pattern in a sudden and unpredictable way to make earth uninhabitable in every way. But those are accidents and one cannot predict them. So eat, drink and be merry and don't even think of it. It won't be bad if we die together...millions of us. What's the big deal? The dinosaurs suffered the same fate.
Finally, I will give the method of calculation used in Hindu philosophy to calculate the doomsday. It was posted by Miyuki and Kyojin on yahoo answers 6 years ago. It goes like this,"When Brahma created the universe, he put 3 diamond needles each a cubit long in a brass plate in a temple in Benares. On one needle are 64 golden discs with the largest one on the bottom and each one above it successively smaller until the samllest is on top. This is the Tower of Brahma. Priests take turns transferring discs from one needle to another day & night ceaselessly. One disc at a time must be moved, and a smaller disc can never be under a larger one. When all of the discs are moved from the original needle to another one, the world will end. If they can make one move each second, how long will that take? Try it and you'll see each transfer takes twice as many moves as before. Give the answer in years, please!"
Best of luck! Start calculating. I know he answer. In case if you want to know.
Yes you are right. Miyuki and Kyojin writes, 584,554,530,872 years, 6 months, 14 days, 14 hours, 37 minutes, 0.04 seconds. 2 to the 64th power seconds divided by 31,556,926 sec./yr gives the answer. They calculated it by hand.
Another person used Mandelbrots theorem to arrive at a different number. That is 4,320,000,000 years.
All the best!
