Armageddon

©1997-2006 Morgana's Observatory.

Sumerian : In the eleventh tablet of the Semitic Babylonian epic of Gilagamesh is a flood story that is the source for the Noah story. The Gods resolved to cleanse the earth of an overpopulated humanity, but Utnapishtim was warned by the God Ea in a dream. He and some craftsmen built a huge (seven decks encompassing one acre in area) ark. Utnapishtim then loaded it with his family, the craftsmen, and "the seed of all living creatures." The waters rose up, and a storm continued for six days and six nights. The Gods repented and wept upon seeing the global destruction of living beings and stilled the flood on the seventh day. The waters covered everything but the top of the mountain Nisur, where the boat landed. A dove was loosed, but it returned, having found no place to rest. A swallow was sent, but it too returned. Seven days later, after having loosed a raven that did not return to the ark, the people began to emerge. Utnapishtim made a sacrifice to the Gods. He and his wife were given immortality and lived at the end of the earth.

Greco-Roman : Zeus decided to punish humanity for its evil ways. Other Gods grieved at the destruction because there would be no beings to worship them. Zeus promised a new stock, a race of miraculous origin. He was going to use thunderbolts when he remembered one of Fate's decrees: that a time would come when sea and earth and dome of the sky would blaze up, and the massive structure of the universe would collapse in ruins. With Poseidon's help, he caused storm and earthquake to flood every part of the land except the summit of Mount Parnassus. When Zeus crushed the hanging clouds in his hand, there was a loud crash, and sheets of rain fell from heaven. The rivers began rushing to the sea. When Neptune struck the earth with his trident, the rivers raced across the plains. Sea and earth could no longer be distinguished; all was sea without any shores, covering every living being except for one fortunate couple, Deucalion and Pyrrha. Earlier, Deucalion and Pyrrha had consulted Themis at her oracular shrine...

By Herbert C. Fyfe

From Pearson's Magazine, July 1900. Illustrated by Warwick Goble

Many of us are apt, not without some reason, to regard the world we live in as the centre of the universe, and to look upon the sun, the moon, and the stars as objects placed in the heavens for the special benefit of the human race. That the earth is but a minute object in the Cosmos; that it forms one of a number of bodies, many of them larger than itself, revolving around their central luminary, the sun; that there exist in the realms of space myriads of similar suns, centres themselves of other solar systems; that millions of planets, which we cannot see, are inhabited with races of intelligent beings -- these are facts of which almost everybody must cognizant, but on which few bestow much time or thought.

Astronomy teaches that, just as our solar system had a beginning, so it must have an end, and that, as at one time life was impossible upon the earth, so there will come a time when man will no longer be able to exist. Science, cold and calculating, has foretold the physical end of the world -- has prophesied the destruction of the globe and all its contents. Birth, life, death -- it has been well been said --appear to be the rule of the universe at large, as well as in our own little corner of it. Suns and planets are evolved, they flourish, and at length decay; and new suns and systems will arise to take their places. The "End of the World" may be taken in two different senses, as meaning either the annihilation of our planet by sudden catastrophe, or by gradual decay, or else the disappearance of human life from the face of the globe, owing to some state of circumstances, possible, at any rate, if not probable. It is our purpose in this article briefly to consider some of the opinions held by men of learning and repute regarding the end of the world, and to emphasize the lesson taught by Nature that the individual counts for nothing in the history of the race, the race for nothing in the life of the planet, and the planet for nothing in the duration of the Universe...

© Global Research - By Stephen Lendman

The arguments are so one-sided, it's practically a given that "peak oil" is real and threatening. Or is it? This article examines both sides. It lets readers decide and deals only with supply issues, not crucial environmental ones and the need to develop alternative energy sources. First some background. The name most associated with "peak oil" is M. King Hubbert. He became the world's best known geologist when he worked for Houston-based Shell Oil Company from 1943 to 1964. His theory goes something like this. Oil is a finite resource. Peak oil, or Hubbert's peak, is the point at which maximum world production is reached, after which its rate terminally declines.

Hubbert first presented his theory in a February 4, 1949 Science magazine article called "Energy from Fossil Fuels." He gained prominence, however, from his 1956 American Petroleum Institute presentation titled "Nuclear Energy and the Fossil Fuels." In it, he predicted that US production would peak between the mid-1960s and early 1970s, and he was largely right (for the wrong reasons at the time) about cheap or what's called light sweet oil.

Most analysts believe US output peaked in 1970 and has since declined. Others, like economist and author F. William Engdahl, disagree. He's been researching oil issues since the early 1970s and believes US output peaked at the time but not because of resource depletion. It's "because Shell, Mobil, Texaco and the other partners of Saudi Aramco were flooding the US market with dirt cheap Middle East imports, tariff free, (and) at prices so low (that) many Texas domestic producers could not compete and" had to shutter their operations. But Hubbert went further as well. He predicted a worldwide peak in "about half a century" that would progress in bell-shaped curve fashion, now called "Hubbert's curve." Here's how it works for all fossil fuels. Hubbert theorized that after discovery, production increases exponentially, but at some point peak output is reached...

The W. M. Keck Observatory in Hawaii

By ROGER RESSMEYER/CORBIS

Scientists think they know how the universe began, but what happens at the other end of the space?time continuum was a deep, dark mystery?until now!

For those who live in a city or near one, the night sky isn't much to look at?just a few scattered stars in a smoggy, washed-out, light-polluted expanse. In rural Maine, though, or the desert Southwest or the high mountains of Hawaii, the view is quite different. Even without a telescope, you can see thousands of stars twinkling in shades of blue, red and yellow-white, with the broad Milky Way cutting a ghostly swath from one horizon to the other. No wonder our ancient ancestors peered up into the heavens with awe and reverence; it's easy to imagine gods and mythical heroes inhabiting such a luminous realm.

Yet for all the magnificence of the visible stars, astronomers know they are only the first shimmering veil in a cosmos vast beyond imagination. Armed with ever more powerful telescopes, these explorers of time and space have learned that the Milky Way is a huge, whirling pinwheel made of 100 billion or more stars; that tens of billions of other galaxies lie beyond its edges; and, most astonishing of all, that these galaxies are rushing headlong away from one another in the aftermath of an explosive cataclysm known as the Big Bang.

That event?the literal birth of time and space some 15 billion years ago?has been understood, at least in its broadest outlines, since the 1960s. But in more than a third of a century, the best minds in astronomy have failed to solve the mystery of what happens at the other end of time. Will the galaxies continue to fly apart forever, their glow fading until the cosmos is cold and dark? Or will the expansion slow to a halt, reverse direction and send 10 octillion (10 trillion billion) stars crashing back together in a final, apocalyptic Big Crunch, the mirror image of the universe's explosive birth? Despite decades of observations with the most powerful telescopes at their disposal, astronomers simply haven't been able to decide.

But a series of remarkable discoveries announced in quick succession starting this spring has gone a long way toward settling the question once and for all. Scientists who were betting on a Big Crunch liked to quote the poet Robert Frost: "Some say the world will end in fire,/ some say in ice./ From what I've tasted of desire/ I hold with those who favor fire." Those in the other camp preferred T.S. Eliot: "This is the way the world ends/ Not with a bang but a whimper." Now, using observations from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey in New Mexico, the orbiting Hubble Space Telescope, the mammoth Keck Telescope in Hawaii and sensitive radio detectors in Antarctica, the verdict is in: T.S. Eliot wins.

For that reason alone, the latest news from space would be profoundly significant; understanding where we came from and where we are headed have been obsessions of thinking humans, probably for as long as we've walked the earth. But the particulars of these discoveries shed light on even deeper mysteries of the cosmos, lending powerful support to radical ideas once considered speculative at best. For one thing, the new observations bolster the theory of inflation: the notion that the universe went through a period of turbocharged expansion before it was a trillionth of a second old, flying apart (in apparent, but not actual, contradiction of Albert Einstein's theories of relativity) faster than the speed of light...