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Watch: Bill Nye vs. Sir Isaac Newton

https://www.science.org/content/article/watch-bill-nye-vs-sir-isaac-newton

Bill Nye takes on historic heavyweight Sir Isaac Newton in a rap battle that could get a little … physical. The video is the latest in the Epic Rap Battles of History series, which pits related cultural figures against each other as they ridicule each other in witty, historically accurate verse. Who won? Who's next? You decide.

Statement on the Date 2060

Stephen D. Snobelen

Originally released online: March 2003; updated May 2003 and June 2003; updated March 2025

2060: The date heard around the world

On 22 February 2003, the Daily Telegraph (London, England) published a front-page story announcing Isaac Newton’s prediction that the world would end in 2060. The story was based on interviews with myself and Malcolm Neaum, the producer of the BBC 2 documentary Newton: The Dark Heretic (first aired on 1 March 2003). I was asked to make myself available to the media because some of my academic research on Newton’s prophecy and heretical theology was used in the documentary and since I was not only interviewed for the documentary both in Jerusalem and Cambridge, but also appear in the documentary with the manuscript containing the 2060 date in Jerusalem. Although the 2060 date was not news to the small community of scholars who study Newton’s theology, this was the first time the wider public became aware of Newton’s prophetic views. Over the next few days, the news spread around the globe and was covered in newspapers (making the front pages in Israel and Canada on 23 and 24 February respectively), on the radio, on TV and on a plethora of Internet news sites. The story was covered on the Internet in all the major European languages from English, French and Spanish to Hungarian, Romanian and Russian. Websites in South America, South Africa, Australia, China, Vietnam and India also covered the story. Many of these websites picked up the story second and third hand, and several of them treated the story as a bit of a lark, with one site including a picture of a mushroom cloud (an image more readily associated with Einstein) with the caption “Party like it’s 2060”.

For almost a week, I received a barrage of requests for interviews from the media. CBC Radio and TV, Global TV in the Maritimes, Agent France Presse, the largest radio talk show in Chicago and even the Russian section of Radio Free Europe, which aired the interview in Russian translation. I tried to use this unexpected opportunity to fill in more details about Newton’s theological and prophetic thought, and to point out that Newton’s apocalyptic thought was not just doom and destruction. Although there was a sensational element in the way the news was covered by many media organizations, the story has performed a very important role in alerting the public to the fact that Isaac Newton was not merely a “scientist”, but also a theologian and a prophetic exegete (not to mention an alchemist). The public was therefore challenged to re-conceptualize Newton in all his complexity. The BBC 2 documentary, with its visual impact and much greater detail, challenged its viewers in an even more profound way.

1. Why did Newton’s prediction for 2060 become such a big news story?
2. Why is news of Newton’s prophetic studies only coming out now?
3. The logic of Newton’s apocalyptic calculations
4. How did Newton arrive at the date 2060?
5. Did Newton believe the world would end in 2060?
6. Why are his theological and prophetic beliefs important to our understanding of Newton?

Refer to the detailed information from https://isaac-newton.org/statement-on-the-date-2060/