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Is armageddon real


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I think it is based on a very common myth which exists in all thinking animals subconsciously, and is tied to our knowledge that life ends. I do not, however, think that the world is going to end any time soon and have some bearded guy in robes ascend to the skies with people who chose not to masturbate or eat meat on Fridays with him.

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Armageddon is not the event itself, but the location where one of the final battles takes place during the end times:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armageddon

 

People misinterpret "The Battle of Armageddon" to mean the last battle during Armageddon, as opposed to the conventional locational reading (like "The Battle of Britain".)

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No, technically Armageddon is part of Christian ideology, and is a gigantic final battle at the end of the world. While it does seem likely that we are going to have a very impressive world war sometime, it won't end the world. Might end most of civilization, but not a proper end.

 

Earth will eventually die; like everything else it will eventually fall victim to the laws of thermodynamics. The sun as it burns its fuel will eventually turn into a red giant that will reach all the way to earth's current orbit (though I hear Earth will move barely out of reach of actually being inside the sun). If you think global warming is bad, try living really close to a red giant. Next, after torching everything on earth, the sun also will die, and then it will be very cold on earth. And not just the sun: all sources of energy are going to eventually run out. There will be no energy to do stuff with and we all die, even if we managed to run away from the red giant sun, evacuate to a new solar system as the sun dies, etc. Eventually there will be no place to go.

 

And then there are things that could happen before that. A good sized meteor might do us in. Global war might destroy most civilization. We probably are going to destroy the majority of earth's ecosystem via expansion, exploitation, and pollution.

 

I'm sure there's other things that could go wrong.

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Won't the Earth just be completely vaporized once the sun goes into its red giant stage?

 

Yeah. I read about the possibility of Earth escaping, but apparently tidal interactions between the sun and Earth will cause it to fall back in anyways.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_giant#The_Sun_as_a_red_giant

 

Still, we can avoid this fate by using the slingshot effect to accelerate Earth. All we got to do is nudge asteroids so that they come close to Earth and transfer energy to it (just be sure not to miss!).

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Why do Red Giants output more energy than a main sequence star when the reason they have become red giants in the first place is because their nuclear fuel is running low?

 

main sequence stars burn pretty much purely hydrogen. When they start to run low, then the radiation pressure in the star decreses. Gravity of course still remains (roughly) the same, and so the star collapses some more and the core becomes hotter. Now the core is hotter, fusion of heavier elements can occur releasing more energy and increased radiation pressure, which pushed out more on the outer regions of the star. This fusion is also much faster*. So it is only the hydrogen fuel that has run low, there are still more fuels in there. This goes right up to iron for the largest stars.

 

*it's an interesting fact, but fusion in stars is actually a very weak and slow process. Per kilo, the sun radiates less heat than you do.

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What I don't understand; the fusion of higher elements, up to iron, is exothermic, or gives off a lot of energy since this heads matter to lowest energy. This means it is energetically favored by nature, to make higher atoms. Why isn't the burning of hydrogen and helium, which give the most exothermic output of all the atom building steps, not enough energy to induce all the exothermic elements to fuse?

 

The modern theory, "this not be favorable in the sun", seems inconsistent with laboratory observation. For example, a modern fission reactor is able to make higher atoms. Uranium is atomic number 92 and we have synthetically made atoms up to atomic number 103, without having to collapse a star. Is the modern theory saying, these scientists have exceeded the sun in the lab and have even rivaled the best supernova?

 

All these synthetic atoms, higher than uranium, are endothermic during formation or need energy to form. It turns out the hardest atoms to make in the universe, are not all that hard to make. We didn't even need the extreme continuous pressures within the solar fusion core. We did it at earth atmospheric pressure. Pressure almost always helps reactions by keeping things closer.

 

Good thing the old timers who made all these higher atoms didn't fall for, "this is impossible we need a supernova", or else they would have had to cover up the ease of higher atom formation, so they don't hurt anyone feelings or be censored.

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The problem with that, i'm assuming is the fact that current fusion technology can at best make breakeven and so either takes just as much energy to create those elements or more energy than we get out.

 

It is not sustainable for anything more than a minute or so.

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I understand how the new tradition of needing supernova to make all the higher elements, works. I also understand the old tradition where the sun could make all the atoms.

 

Comparing the two, why is it possible to make the largest most endothermic elements above atomic number 100, in the lab, with relatively mild conditions? The old tradition of the sun making all the atoms was consistent with this, so science did it, easily. The new traditions can't even get fusion to work well with the new theories. What should be highly exothermic barely breaks even. That could explain why they assume a more powerful effect is needed; lack of theory efficiency.

 

The new tradition is analogous to saying to smash an apple, we would need a train hitting a mountain. At the same time, we make this claim, a child picks up an apple and bites it. Even with that observation, we still want to believe we need a train hitting the mountain.

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I have no doubt that supernovas create some very high atomic number elements. The higher elements created either in a supernova or in the lab still have very short half lives. As such, we can detect these atoms in the lab because they were just made. However the supernova(s) which created the elements used in the earth was many billions of years ago.

 

Therefore, all the elements with an atomic number higher than uranium (or plutonium)have decayed away during this time. Or at least enough of them have so that they cannot be detected in the earths crust.

 

To the original poster: Please define what exactly you mean by armaggedon. That will help us to state our opinion on whether or not we believe it is real.

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What I don't understand; the fusion of higher elements, up to iron, is exothermic, or gives off a lot of energy since this heads matter to lowest energy. This means it is energetically favored by nature, to make higher atoms. Why isn't the burning of hydrogen and helium, which give the most exothermic output of all the atom building steps, not enough energy to induce all the exothermic elements to fuse?

 

The modern theory, "this not be favorable in the sun", seems inconsistent with laboratory observation. For example, a modern fission reactor is able to make higher atoms. Uranium is atomic number 92 and we have synthetically made atoms up to atomic number 103, without having to collapse a star. Is the modern theory saying, these scientists have exceeded the sun in the lab and have even rivaled the best supernova?

 

All these synthetic atoms, higher than uranium, are endothermic during formation or need energy to form. It turns out the hardest atoms to make in the universe, are not all that hard to make. We didn't even need the extreme continuous pressures within the solar fusion core. We did it at earth atmospheric pressure. Pressure almost always helps reactions by keeping things closer.

 

Good thing the old timers who made all these higher atoms didn't fall for, "this is impossible we need a supernova", or else they would have had to cover up the ease of higher atom formation, so they don't hurt anyone feelings or be censored.

 

There are a few issues here.

Yes we can make elements heavier than uranium using accelerators and such, however we only tend to make the very short lived elements, since the options for combinations that we have at hand are very small. Indeed most of the heavier elements are very unstable anyway, as you can work out using the semi-empirical mass formula.

 

Additionally, To say we did it at atmospheric pressure however is really wrong; we have to use particle accelerators which generate extremely high energies, just like those experienced in the sun.

 

take Copernicium for example (atomic number 112), it was manufactured by ramming zinc70 into a lead208 target using an ion accelerator. That is not atmospheric pressure.

 

Finally we can only make these things in very small quantities.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Armageddon has happened many, many times in human history. The fall of Rome and the collapse of the Mayan civilization are but a few examples. When ever Armageddon comes, there are always survivors. Even in a full scale nuclear war between the United States and the Soviet Union; it would be a nuclear Armageddon for both countries; but there would be survivors that would start over.

 

 

Yeah. I read about the possibility of Earth escaping, but apparently tidal interactions between the sun and Earth will cause it to fall back in anyways.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_giant#The_Sun_as_a_red_giant

 

Still, we can avoid this fate by using the slingshot effect to accelerate Earth. All we got to do is nudge asteroids so that they come close to Earth and transfer energy to it (just be sure not to miss!).

 

Besides the fact that in about 500MY to 1000MY, due to solar evolution, Earth will be a green house world like Venus and the fact that the human species has only been around for 150,000 years and it unlikely to be around 5 billion years from now when the your sun goes red giant.

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Armageddon has happened many, many times in human history. The fall of Rome and the collapse of the Mayan civilization are but a few examples. When ever Armageddon comes, there are always survivors. Even in a full scale nuclear war between the United States and the Soviet Union; it would be a nuclear Armageddon for both countries; but there would be survivors that would start over.

Armageddon is the location of a battle; it is not the name of an event. Perhaps you mean 'apocalypse'. This would be a noun relating to a catastrophic and terminal event. The adjective is "apocalyptic" (as opposed to 'Armageddony'). The implication is that of a swift, violent, and complete ending, usually due to some outside force. I would take issue with the statement that either Rome or the Mayan civilisation experienced an apocalypse.

 

Rome's fall was in no small way hastened by an economical and political decline, which took over 300 years to do enough damage that a couple of well-timed depositions could wreak havoc with the empire's defensive organisational skills. When the empire formally ended, the vastest majority of the infrastructure, population, and culture was still there.

 

Maya civilisation is less clear cut. If you are talking about the collapse in the 8th-9th century, then there's no really dominant theory as to why the nucleus of the civilisation gradually abandoned its main centres over a few generations. If you're talking about colonisation by the conquistadores, their efforts just to get a controlling presence amongst the politically decentralised Maya states took well over 150 years.

 

It is not in the least bit helpful to anyone to randomly list ended civilisations and then declare that they were wiped out by 'Armageddon'.

 

Besides the fact that in about 500MY to 1000MY, due to solar evolution, Earth will be a green house world like Venus and the fact that the human species has only been around for 150,000 years and it unlikely to be around 5 billion years from now when the your sun goes red giant.

If we haven't spread beyond this solar system by that time then we probably deserve to roast.

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I have my own theory of apocalypse: :mad::mad:

Big planets (Jupiter and Saturn) are presents in the middle of other planets in our solar system. (Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, JUPITER, SATURN, Uranus, Neptune and Pluto). The time will come when Jupiter and Saturn will align and disturb their surrounding.. the combination of their gravitational forces will push nearby planet out of their orbit and crash with other planet... This is so so scary.. any other gruesome thoughts??:eek:

Edited by Newbies_Kid
Consecutive posts merged.
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I have my own theory of apocalyse:

Big planets (Jupiter and Saturn) are presents in the middle of other planets in our solar system. (Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, JUPITER, SATURN, Uranus, Neptune and Pluto). The time will come when Jupiter and Saturn will align and disturb their surrounding.. the combination of their gravitational forces will push nearby planet out of their orbit and crash with other planet... This is so so scary.. any other gruesome theory?


Merged post follows:

Consecutive posts merged

I have my own theory of apocalypse: :mad::mad:

Big planets (Jupiter and Saturn) are presents in the middle of other planets in our solar system. (Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, JUPITER, SATURN, Uranus, Neptune and Pluto). The time will come when Jupiter and Saturn will align and disturb their surrounding.. the combination of their gravitational forces will push nearby planet out of their orbit and crash with other planet... This is so so scary.. any other gruesome thoughts??:eek:

 

There is no scientific evidence to support that Jupiter and Saturn being aligned with the sun would disrupt the orbits of the planets enough to cause such an event or that the alignment would cause their gravitational forces to be increased in such a way.

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I have my own theory of apocalypse: :mad::mad:

Big planets (Jupiter and Saturn) are presents in the middle of other planets in our solar system. (Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, JUPITER, SATURN, Uranus, Neptune and Pluto). The time will come when Jupiter and Saturn will align and disturb their surrounding.. the combination of their gravitational forces will push nearby planet out of their orbit and crash with other planet... This is so so scary.. any other gruesome thoughts??:eek:

Well, on March 10, in 1982 the planets Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn and Pluto was on the same side of the Sun, within a 95 degree wide interval, and yet we are still here...

 

Nr.8 in the Link: Ten Notable Apocalypses That (Obviously) Didn't Happen

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  • 1 month later...

In a way the Bible had it right. The Earth may end in fire. If you really want to know you have to ask where our position in space relative to the sun and the galactic core will be at the peak of the solar maximum.

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In a way the Bible had it right. The Earth may end in fire. If you really want to know you have to ask where our position in space relative to the sun and the galactic core will be at the peak of the solar maximum.

You mean the solar maximum as in the solar magnetic field event which happens approximately every 11 years? During which we'll not be significantly closer than average to either the sun or the galactic core?

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