Interest Articles replied by concerned_man @ Tue, 16 Sep 2008 22:40:11 +0800

concerned_man — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 22:40:11 +0800

German scientists discover 120 million year-old ant

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080916/od_uk_nm/oukoe_uk_germany_ant

Interest Articles replied by An Eternal Now @ Tue, 26 Aug 2008 17:22:01 +0800

An Eternal Now — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 17:22:01 +0800

Originally posted by concerned_man:

Tests clear way for "Big Bang" experiment

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080825/sc_nm/science_cern_dc;_ylt=AnECIyngSZm0AaaT7oZ2uH4DW7oF

What if our universe was actually the result of an experiment by a group of scientists outside this universe trying to 'test' the big bang?

(just kidding)

Interest Articles replied by concerned_man @ Tue, 26 Aug 2008 14:15:58 +0800

concerned_man — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 14:15:58 +0800

Tests clear way for "Big Bang" experiment

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080825/sc_nm/science_cern_dc;_ylt=AnECIyngSZm0AaaT7oZ2uH4DW7oF

Interest Articles replied by Herzog_Zwei @ Thu, 26 Jun 2008 15:14:40 +0800

Herzog_Zwei — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 15:14:40 +0800

Originally posted by sinweiy:

i actually go and check out the meanin of "Afterlife" or "Life after death".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afterlife#Types_of_views_on_the_afterlife

it's of a wider range than the typical Christian idea. it can also involve Buddhist's concept of "radio-wave".

ha, the article is not specific in which type though. :)

/\

Actually it doesn't even involve physics but meta-physics. Different topic.

Interest Articles replied by sinweiy @ Thu, 26 Jun 2008 14:08:41 +0800

sinweiy — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 14:08:41 +0800

i actually go and check out the meanin of "Afterlife" or "Life after death".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afterlife#Types_of_views_on_the_afterlife

it's of a wider range than the typical Christian idea. it can also involve Buddhist's concept of "radio-wave".

Types of views on the afterlife

There are two fundamentally different types of views on the afterlife: views claiming to be scientific and religious views.

The first type claims to be based on some form of an observation by a human or an instrument (for example a radio or a voice recorder, which are used in EVP)^[clarify]. These observations come from reincarnation research, near death experiences, out-of-body experiences, astral projection, electronic voice phenomena, mediumship, various forms of photography etcetera. They are studied by survivalism. The work of people like Bruce Moen and Robert Monroe are also of this type. Also scientific research into near death experiences based on observation, for example the work of Pim van Lommel. ^[1]

The second type is based on some form of faith, usually faith in the stories that are told by ancestors or faith in religious books like the Bible, the Qur'an, the Talmud, the Vedas, the Tripitaka et cetera. This article is mainly about this second type.

The afterlife in different metaphysical models

Afterlife research in the early 20th century

Afterlife in modern science

Afterlife as reincarnation

An afterlife concept that is found among Hindus, Rosicrucians, Spiritists, and Wicca is reincarnation, as evolving humans life after life in the physical world, that is, acquiring a superior grade of consciousness and altruism by means of successive reincarnations. This succession is conceived to lead toward an eventual liberation or spiritual rebirth as spiritual beings.

Some practitioners of eastern religions follow a different concept called metempsychosis which purposes that human beings can transmigrate into animals, vegetables, or even minerals.^{[citation
needed]} One consequence of the Hindu and Spiritist beliefs is that our current lives are also an afterlife. According to those beliefs events in our current life are consequences of actions taken in previous lives, or Karma.

ha, the article is not specific in which type though. :)

Interest Articles replied by sinweiy @ Thu, 26 Jun 2008 13:49:02 +0800

sinweiy — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 13:49:02 +0800

ya, "born again" is the word.

of cos it's not 'rebirth' in the Buddhist sense.

Interest Articles replied by An Eternal Now @ Wed, 25 Jun 2008 21:28:32 +0800

An Eternal Now — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 21:28:32 +0800

They mean 'born again', it's more like a spiritual birth. A quantum shift in perception, from 'I' (ego) to the 'Christ' Self, or Spirit.

It does not mean 'rebirth' in the Buddhist sense, though...

Interest Articles replied by sinweiy @ Wed, 25 Jun 2008 20:52:59 +0800

sinweiy — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 20:52:59 +0800

somemore X'tian got use the word "reborn" in the sense reborn during this life.

Interest Articles replied by An Eternal Now @ Wed, 25 Jun 2008 19:42:00 +0800

An Eternal Now — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 19:42:00 +0800

Originally posted by sinweiy:

yes that's what i thought, though if it's refering to that, then wat abt the 18% of the believers who don't believe in life after death? they, even though are Christians, they don't believe that they'll gain Eternal Life (in heaven), even after death? hmm..

/\

Judaism believes in God but does not believe in heaven or hell in the Christian sense. Probably many jews don't believe in afterlife, though they do have this concept.

http://www.jewfaq.org/olamhaba.htm

Interest Articles replied by sinweiy @ Wed, 25 Jun 2008 17:03:36 +0800

sinweiy — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 17:03:36 +0800

Originally posted by An Eternal Now:

no, generally Christians don't believe in rebirth as human.

They believe that they will gain Eternal Life (in heaven), even after death.

yes that's what i thought, though if it's refering to that, then wat abt the 18% of the believers who don't believe in life after death? they, even though are Christians, they don't believe that they'll gain Eternal Life (in heaven), even after death? hmm..

Interest Articles replied by An Eternal Now @ Wed, 25 Jun 2008 16:36:58 +0800

An Eternal Now — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 16:36:58 +0800

Originally posted by concerned_man:

Astronomers on Verge of Finding Earth's Twin

Planet hunters say it's just a matter of time before they lasso Earth's twin, which almost surely is hiding somewhere in our star-studded galaxy.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/space/20080624/sc_space/astronomersonvergeoffindingearthstwin

...most definitely...

The day will come where 4 planets, including this, will be ruled by one wheel turning king.

Interest Articles replied by An Eternal Now @ Wed, 25 Jun 2008 16:35:58 +0800

An Eternal Now — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 16:35:58 +0800

Originally posted by sinweiy:

ya, that's wat i thought.

though the statement seem to mean as if life after death is rebirth or "reincarnation". life after death as human rather than life after death in heaven or hell?

then wat abt the 18% of the believers who don't believe in life after death?

btw, by (God) believers, i mean not just Christians, can be Jews, Roman Catholics, mainline Protestants etc.

/\

no, generally Christians don't believe in rebirth as human.

They believe that they will gain Eternal Life (in heaven), even after death.

Interest Articles replied by concerned_man @ Wed, 25 Jun 2008 15:30:35 +0800

concerned_man — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 15:30:35 +0800

Astronomers on Verge of Finding Earth's Twin

Planet hunters say it's just a matter of time before they lasso Earth's twin, which almost surely is hiding somewhere in our star-studded galaxy.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/space/20080624/sc_space/astronomersonvergeoffindingearthstwin

Interest Articles replied by sinweiy @ Wed, 25 Jun 2008 13:30:57 +0800

sinweiy — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 13:30:57 +0800

ya, that's wat i thought.

though the statement seem to mean as if life after death is rebirth or "reincarnation". life after death as human rather than life after death in heaven or hell?

then wat abt the 18% of the believers who don't believe in life after death?

btw, by (God) believers, i mean not just Christians, can be Jews, Roman Catholics, mainline Protestants etc.

Interest Articles replied by An Eternal Now @ Tue, 24 Jun 2008 19:00:52 +0800

An Eternal Now — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 19:00:52 +0800

Christians also believe in life after death. They believe that people either go to hell eternally or heaven eternally.

Interest Articles replied by sinweiy @ Tue, 24 Jun 2008 15:22:16 +0800

sinweiy — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 15:22:16 +0800

Originally posted by concerned_man:

Americans: My Religion Isn't The Only Way

Survey Finds 70 Percent In U.S. Believe Other Faiths Can Lead To Eternal Life

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/06/23/national/main4202617.shtml

By many measures, Americans are strongly religious: 92 percent believe in God, 74 percent believe in life after death and 63 percent say their respective scriptures are the word of God.

so potion of believers also believe in life after death ? not contradicting? interesting.

Interest Articles replied by concerned_man @ Tue, 24 Jun 2008 14:07:19 +0800

concerned_man — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 14:07:19 +0800

Americans: My Religion Isn't The Only Way

Survey Finds 70 Percent In U.S. Believe Other Faiths Can Lead To Eternal Life

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/06/23/national/main4202617.shtml

Interest Articles replied by concerned_man @ Thu, 15 May 2008 08:26:39 +0800

concerned_man — Thu, 15 May 2008 08:26:39 +0800

Secret UFO files released by UK government

http://edition.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/europe/05/14/britain.ufos/index.html

Interest Articles replied by concerned_man @ Thu, 10 Apr 2008 04:47:57 +0800

concerned_man — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 04:47:57 +0800

Key scientist sure "God particle" will be found soon

Mon Apr 7, 2008 12:27pm EDT

http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSL0765287220080407?pageNumber=1&virtualBrandChannel=0

Interest Articles replied by concerned_man @ Wed, 09 Apr 2008 22:01:12 +0800

concerned_man — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 22:01:12 +0800

Smallest planet outside solar system found

Wed Apr 9, 2008 9:34am EDT

http://www.reuters.com/article/scienceNews/idUSL0956988620080409

Interest Articles replied by concerned_man @ Sun, 09 Mar 2008 10:40:36 +0800

concerned_man — Sun, 09 Mar 2008 10:40:36 +0800

Is there a hole in the universe?

http://science.howstuffworks.com/hole-in-universe.htm

by Jacob Silverman

Interest Articles replied by justdoit77 @ Thu, 28 Feb 2008 06:49:40 +0800

justdoit77 — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 06:49:40 +0800

Found this doggerel (打油詩) by 17th karmapa

當年我倆一個樣兒，
你挺精進成了佛，
老子特懶跑輪迴，
今兒個老子得向您磕頭了！

Interest Articles replied by An Eternal Now @ Wed, 27 Feb 2008 13:27:58 +0800

An Eternal Now — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 13:27:58 +0800

http://www.jenchen.org.sg/vol8no2a.htm

These three calamities of fire, water and wind will not occur simultaneously, but each will take its turn. At that time, balance in space will be lost, planets of all the worlds will leave their orbits, and looking from the earth, one will see seven suns appear in the sky at the same time. The suns' fiery heat will burn up all the worlds. The destruction will reach the farthest depths of the Hell of Ceaseless Suffering, including all the worlds of the Three Thousand Great Chilocosm World of Desires, and even the 1st Jhana of the World of Forms.

http://www.dharmaling.org/component/option,com_glossary/func,display/letter,All/page,4/catid,25/Itemid,78/

Kalpa of destruction(tib.: jik pe kal pa) In the first nineteen small kalpas of the kalpa of decline, sentient beings in the six lower worlds from hell through the world of heavenly beings gradually disappearAt the beginning of the 20th eon, the rain stops and all vegetation dies, the sun supernovas, and splits into two. Later a third sun forms, and all rivers and streams evaporate. A fourth sun forms, and large lakes dry up. A fifth sun forms, and oceans dry up. A sixth sun forms, and continents go up in smoke. A seventh sun forms, and the planet burns up, which also causes the first level of the form realm to burn up. There are other kalpas of destruction by wind or water. There are also minor destruction eons where inhabitants destroy the planet with weapons, etc.

Interest Articles replied by An Eternal Now @ Wed, 27 Feb 2008 13:24:26 +0800

An Eternal Now — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 13:24:26 +0800

Earth's Final Sunset Predicted

By Clara Moskowitz
Staff Writer
posted: 2008 February 26
07:00 am ET

"Some say the world will end in fire, Some say in ice," wrote the poet Robert Frost. Astronomers, it turns out, are in the former camp.

A new calculation predicts that Earth will be swallowed up by the sun in 7.6 billion years, capping off a longstanding debate over whether the sun's gravitational pull will have weakened enough for Earth to escape final destruction or not.

Other theorists have predicted that our planet will fry as the sun expands in its old age. But the time estimates have varied by a couple billion years.

"Although people have looked at these problems before, we would claim this is the best attempt that's been made to date, and probably the most reliable," said astronomer Robert Smith, emeritus reader at the U.K.'s University of Sussex, who made the new calculations with astronomer Klaus-Peter Schroeder of the University of Guanajuato in Mexico. "What we've done is to refine existing models and to put the best calculations we can at each point in the model."

If 7.6 billion years doesn't sound like an urgent death sentence, don't relax yet. Regardless of whether Earth will ultimately be vaporized, as the sun heats up, our planet will become too hot to live on before then.

"After a billion years or so you've got an Earth with no atmosphere, no water and a surface temperature of hundreds of degrees, way above the boiling point of water," Smith told SPACE.com. "The Earth will become dry basically. It will become completely impossible for life of any kind to exist. It's a pretty gloomy forecast."

Nonetheless, scientists are curious about the ultimate fate of our planet after we are gone (like all previous hominids and more than 99 percent of all species that have lived on Earth, humans will probably go extinct, and it will likely happen sooner than a billion years).

Smith's earlier studies found that Earth would narrowly escape being engorged. As the sun ages and expands into a red giant star, it will shed its outer gaseous layers, thus losing mass and weakening its gravitational pull. Previous calculations found that this let-up would allow the Earth's orbit to shift outward, enabling the planet to slip free of the smoldering sun.

But this scenario doesn't account for tidal forces, and the drag of the sun's outer layers. As the Earth orbits the sun, its smaller gravitational pull isn't completely negligible — it actually causes the side of the sun closest to our planet to hoard more mass and bulge out toward us.

"Just as the Earth is pulling on the sun's bulge, it's pulling on the Earth, and that causes the Earth to slow in its orbit," Smith said. "It will spiral back and finally end up inside the sun."

In addition, the gas that the sun expels will also drag Earth inward toward its demise.

Smith's previous calculations had ignored these effects.

"We didn't think it mattered, but it turns out it does," he said. "You might say our previous models had a gap."

There may even be hope for Earth. Some scientists have proposed a scheme for down the road to use the gravity of a passing asteroid to budge Earth out of the way of the sun toward cooler territory, assuming there is life around at the time that is intelligent enough to engineer this solution.

"It sounds like science fiction, but there's a group of people who have quite seriously suggested that it might be possible," Smith said. "If it's done right, that would just keep the Earth moving fast enough to keep it out of harm's way. Maybe life could go on for as much as 7 billion years."

Smith's findings have been accepted for publication in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

Interest Articles replied by concerned_man @ Tue, 26 Feb 2008 06:59:08 +0800

concerned_man — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 06:59:08 +0800

America's Unfaithful Faithful

http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1716987,00.html

A major new survey presents perhaps the most detailed picture we've yet had of which religious groups Americans belong to. And its big message is: blink and they'll change. For the first time, a large-scale study has quantified what many experts suspect: there is a constant membership turnover among most American faiths. America's religious culture, which is best known for its high participation rates, may now be equally famous (or infamous) for what the new report dubs "churn."

Recent Posts in 'Interest Articles' | sgForums.com

Interest Articles replied by concerned_man @ Tue, 16 Sep 2008 22:40:11 +0800

Interest Articles replied by An Eternal Now @ Tue, 26 Aug 2008 17:22:01 +0800

Interest Articles replied by concerned_man @ Tue, 26 Aug 2008 14:15:58 +0800

Interest Articles replied by Herzog_Zwei @ Thu, 26 Jun 2008 15:14:40 +0800

Interest Articles replied by sinweiy @ Thu, 26 Jun 2008 14:08:41 +0800

Types of views on the afterlife

Interest Articles replied by sinweiy @ Thu, 26 Jun 2008 13:49:02 +0800

Interest Articles replied by An Eternal Now @ Wed, 25 Jun 2008 21:28:32 +0800

Interest Articles replied by sinweiy @ Wed, 25 Jun 2008 20:52:59 +0800

Interest Articles replied by An Eternal Now @ Wed, 25 Jun 2008 19:42:00 +0800

Interest Articles replied by sinweiy @ Wed, 25 Jun 2008 17:03:36 +0800

Interest Articles replied by An Eternal Now @ Wed, 25 Jun 2008 16:36:58 +0800

Interest Articles replied by An Eternal Now @ Wed, 25 Jun 2008 16:35:58 +0800

Interest Articles replied by concerned_man @ Wed, 25 Jun 2008 15:30:35 +0800

Interest Articles replied by sinweiy @ Wed, 25 Jun 2008 13:30:57 +0800

Interest Articles replied by An Eternal Now @ Tue, 24 Jun 2008 19:00:52 +0800

Interest Articles replied by sinweiy @ Tue, 24 Jun 2008 15:22:16 +0800

Americans: My Religion Isn't The Only Way

Survey Finds 70 Percent In U.S. Believe Other Faiths Can Lead To Eternal Life

Interest Articles replied by concerned_man @ Tue, 24 Jun 2008 14:07:19 +0800

Americans: My Religion Isn't The Only Way

Survey Finds 70 Percent In U.S. Believe Other Faiths Can Lead To Eternal Life

Interest Articles replied by concerned_man @ Thu, 15 May 2008 08:26:39 +0800

Secret UFO files released by UK government

Interest Articles replied by concerned_man @ Thu, 10 Apr 2008 04:47:57 +0800

Key scientist sure "God particle" will be found soon

Interest Articles replied by concerned_man @ Wed, 09 Apr 2008 22:01:12 +0800

Smallest planet outside solar system found

Interest Articles replied by concerned_man @ Sun, 09 Mar 2008 10:40:36 +0800

Interest Articles replied by justdoit77 @ Thu, 28 Feb 2008 06:49:40 +0800

Interest Articles replied by An Eternal Now @ Wed, 27 Feb 2008 13:27:58 +0800

Interest Articles replied by An Eternal Now @ Wed, 27 Feb 2008 13:24:26 +0800

Interest Articles replied by concerned_man @ Tue, 26 Feb 2008 06:59:08 +0800