Notes
A light-hearted investigation into predictions of the end of the world.

Reprinted in 1999 and 2009.

Publisher’s Blurb – Jacket Flaps
'Behold the end is nigh . . . How many times have we seen end-of-the-world prophets, attired in sandwich-boards and urging us to repent before the Earth is destroyed? There have been nationwide panics in the past; the Millerite end-of-the-world scare in 1843 caused mass rioting in America and, going back still further to 1524, there were episodes such as the Stoffler astrological scare, when panic swept across Europe and President Auriol of Toulouse University went so far as to build an ark into which he could retire as soon as the great flood started. When no flood occurred, he said that he had built the ark merely for a fishing trip. . . .

Then there are stories of possible collisions with comets or wandering minor planets. It is indeed true that the dinosaurs may have been killed off, around 65,000,000 years ago, by such a disaster. Fears of asteroid collisions are not dead even now and brilliant comets still cause alarm; in 1973, there was a great deal of apprehension about Kohoutek's Comet though when the comet appeared, it proved to be faint and, as a spectacle, disappointing. Finally, there has been the so-called 'Jupiter Effect', in which it was claimed that during 1982 the major planets would line up and produce storms and earthquakes on a grand scale.

None of these dire predictions has any real scientific basis, and yet we have to admit that the Earth cannot exist for ever. Life here has a limited timespan and eventually, changes in the Sun will indeed lead to global destruction – though since the crisis will not be upon us for another 5,000 million years or so, there is no immediate cause for alarm.

In this book, Patrick Moore looks at the fantastic ideas and panics of the past, and then considers the scientific evidence produced by modern physics and astronomy, it is a fascinating study, bringing together all branches not only of science but also of pseudo-science.

Patrick Moore is himself an astronomer; he is President of the British Astronomical Association, a member of the International Astronomical Union and a Fellow of the Riyak Astronomical Society as well as of many foreign scientific organizations. His own research has been concerned largely with the Moon, and it was his charts of the Moon's limb regions which were used by the Russians to correlate the pictures sent back in 1969 of the Moon's far side. He has been awarded the Jackson-Gwilt Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society, the Goodacre Medal of the British Astronomical Association and the Robert-Klumpke Medal of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific. He is also an Honorary Member of the Astronomical-Geodetic Society of the U.S.S.R.; he has been awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Science by the University of Lancaster and is an Honorary Fellow of Queen Mary College, University of London.

He has been presenting the Sky at Night programme on BBC television each month since April 1957 and was awarded the QBE in 1968 for his services to Astronomy.

Front and back jacket photographs by Ric Gemmell