LauraLynn386 (guest) 15 Sep 2010 22:33
I just wanted to post this response I got from DAvid Morrison. I contacted him through NASA's Ask An Astrobiologist with some concerns that I've had. It has some good links to it. I hope it can help other like me that are scared of the 2012 DoomsDay.
"Pleases don't fall for this pseudoscience. Stories about some disaster or
even the ³end of the world² in 2012 are a hoax. Nothing will happen in 2012.
There is no science behind these claims. Indeed, the idea that the world
will end after 4.6 billion years is absurd.
One widespread assertion is that there is a planet or brown dwarf or perhaps
even a ³second sun² (called Planet X or Nibiru) that will hit the Earth or
pass close by in December 2012. But there is no evidence that such an object
exists. If it did, astronomers would have been tracking it for at least a
decade, and by now it would be easily visible even without a telescope.
(Note that Nibiru/Planet X is not to be confused with any of the infrared
sources discovered by the NASA IRAS satellite in 1983, which were distant
galaxies; or with the icy dwarf planet Eris discovered in 2005 by Mike
Brown, which never comes closer than 14 billion miles; or with the long-ago
postulated companion star to Earth on a 25-million-year orbit called
Nemesis, which does not exist; or with the bright planets Venus and Mars
frequently visible in the evening sky.)
Other doomsday stories concern so-called alignments. Many in the public
think that when planets line up, something terrible will happen. But
astronomers know that such alignments don¹t have any effect on us. Besides,
there are no planet alignments in 2012. What does happen is that every
December, the Sun, as seen from the Earth, is approximately in the direction
of the center of the Milky Way galaxy. This happens every year.
Some say that the rotation of the Earth will suddenly reverse, with the Sun
rising in the west. This ³pole shift² has never happened and never will.
Others are worried that the magnetic poles of the Earth will reverse. This
is something that happens every 400,000 years on average, but there is no
reason to expect such a reversal in magnetic polarity in 2012.
A legitimate but highly exaggerated concern is over solar outbursts (flares
or CMEs, coronal mass ejections). One source of this fear is the science
fiction disaster film ³2012², in which some sort of solar outburst
³destabilizes the core of the Earth² and leads to the destruction of the
planet. The truth is that the Sun goes through an 11-year activity cycle.
Near peak activity, there are solar flares and CMEs that can cause some
damage to space satellites, although engineers have learned to design their
electronics to withstand such events. The next solar maximum is predicted
for 2013, and it is expected to be unusually weak, although the Sun is never
completely predictable. If you survived the solar maximum in 1990 or 2001,
you have nothing to fear from the next maximum in 2012-2013.
None of the doomsday predictions has any scientific validity. Yet many
people are still afraid of December 2012. The reason this date is selected
is that it represents the end of one of the large cycles in the ancient Maya
calendar: a baktun, which has duration of 144,000 days, equivalent to 394.25
years. Scholars who study the Mayan culture say that this calendar event
does not predict anything, let alone a global disaster. Note also that the
last time this happened, in 1618, there was no global disaster.
There are also many outright lies that are circulating, such as that the
government or NASA or the Vatican knows the world will end but is keeping
this secret, or that Nibiru/Planet X is being tracked secretly from the
South Pole, or that underground bunkers are being prepared to shelter
selected people from disaster, or that the approach of Nibiru/Planet X is
responsible for global warming or for increased seismic activity, or even
that the greenhouse effect is a government hoax to distract us from the
approaching doomsday in 2012.
It is sad that so many people are falling for this doomsday hoax. Many who
write to me are genuinely frightened. Children are especially vulnerable.
Nearly every week I receive a note from a child or teenager who threatens to
commit suicide before the world ends. A few mothers have written that they
intend to kill their children and themselves before the destruction begins.
Many of those who promote this hoax, of course, are in it for the money,
selling books and tapes and ³2012 survival kits². I think it is ethically
wrong to promote a hoax that causes so much distress. The only way to fight
back is with education. For a survey of the doomsday claims (and a 4 min
video) see
[http://astrobiology.nasa.gov/ask-an-astrobiologist/intro/nibiru-and-doomsda
y-2012-questions-and-answers]. For more detailed information, organized by
topic, see [http://www.2012hoax.org/]. Another good summary is at the
Astronomical Society of the Pacific [http://www.astrosociety.org/2012]."
(account deleted)
