The End of the World - Essay Example

He said that even if a small portion of the stuff leaks out, it will start producing more and more anti- matter and quite soon they will take over the earth. My head started throbbing after talking to him. I asked my cousin Laura if she knew about LHC. She said, "The Large Hadron Collider There's an article about it in today's New York Times " When I asked her about the end of the world, she laughed and read the article aloud, ".Next summer, the Large Hadron Collider, Europe's $9 billion investment in particle physics, will take a handful of ions, hurl them through 17 miles of circular tunnel and smash them together so hard they will shatter into the finest atomic shards anyone has ever observed.

And if all goes according to plan, the glints and flashes from those shards will at last reveal the mysterious Higgs boson, the one particle that endows all others with the property of mass" (Hirsch, 2009. New York Times) After reading the full text, she said that it was a great achievement for science and there was no need to imagine the end of the world. This made me decide to do a little research on my own about the end of the world. First, I interviewed some people about their opinions on "The End of The World ".

Of the seven people I interviewed, three were positive the world as we know it would end in the near future; two did not believe that the world would end, and the other two were not sure. Everyone gave a different reason for their belief. Mrs.J, the librarian said that the global financial meltdown showed the moral bankruptcy of our time. In her opinion, this showed that the end was near. Mrs. R also thought the end was near. "Why do you think Katrina and Ike were sent They are the warnings of the future things to come!

" she said. Mr. Pradhan, a research scholar from India said that there have been many predictions in the past and none came true. He told the story of the tribal people who live in the jungles of Orissa in India. There was a scare about the end of the world on February 13, 2001. The tribals sold all the things they possessed, gathered in a place in the jungle a week before the 'doomsday' and ate and drank and danced and had an orgy of fun. When nothing happened on the 13th February, they went back to their homes in their villages, and had a bigger thanksgiving celebration in the temple. Mr. K said that global warming would very likely cause an end of the world as we know it. Ms. A ," not sure", was a bit confused by the scriptures who predict an end of the world and the rationalists who disagree.

Both the men who did not believe that there would be an end of the world said the prophecies had never come true So .I decided to read up some predictions.The most famous of all prophecies were those made by Nostradamus. , a Frenchman who published his predictions in 1555. In the book "Centuries" he has predicted many historic events that would happen in the future. His predictions are in the form of 4-line verses called quatrains, which are difficult to interpret. I believe he had predicted the world wars, the nuclear bombs , aand9/11.

He has also predicted the end of the world. After twenty years of the moons reign Another monarch will take hold for 7000 years When the sun takes the remaining days Then my prophecy is finally accomplished.According to the interpreter, this means, "Armageddon: The sun will consume the earth around the year 7000" (Haley. P.114) The dictionary meaning for