Ivan Stein
Ivan Stein's ideas make no sense.

Image Unavailable
Ivan (Evon) Stein

Ivan1 Stein has a website at http://timeline2012.com, and has a series of videos on YouTube where he expounds on his ideas about global warming, pole shifts, and physics. Many of Stein's claims are bizarre.

Biographical information

Education

  • BSEE, BSCS University of Conneticut, 1984

Business Experience

  • Started his first company at the age of twenty six
  • Holds patents in the fields of optoelectronics and pre-natal education devices.
  • Designed ICs2 for the aerospace industry
  • Designed optoelectronic devices
  • Founder and owner of a computer retail and consultant firm

Spiritual beliefs

In the early 90's, Ivan found that life had lost most of its meaning and he began a journey on the road to spiritual discovery. Shortly thereafter, he quit his job and started meditating for up to 10 hours a day. Over the next couple years, Ivan channeled a tremendous amount of spiritual information which became the foundation for his own spiritual evolution and his message. Just as he was about to move to Tibet and become a Buddhist monk, he was shown that his path was to rejoin society. He soon found that people were interested in his spiritual message which launched him on the path as a spiritual advisor, teacher, and lecturer.[26]

  • Created a four part workshop "Healing for Positive Manifestation"
  • Lecturer on "the world of spirit"
  • Founded Timeline 2012, "a spiritual organization that is dedicated to conscious evolution and creation of sustainable communities that will thrive beyond the coming cataclysmic events with an optimal conscious awareness".[26]

YouTube Videos

Here are some of the strange claims that Stein makes in his YouTube videos.

It is hard to know where to begin on these videos, they are such a confused morass of scientific misconceptions.

Magnetic Reversals

Stein claims that reversals of the Earth's magnetic field are caused by objects hitting the Earth, reversing it's actual rotation. This is total nonsense. The angular momentum of the Earth is ENORMOUS. To stop it rotating, let alone reverse it, would require an impact from a body of comparable mass to the Earth itself. He suggests Comets as one possibility, but these are nowhere near massive enough. Even assuming a high velocity, their momentum (p=mv) is insufficient. The nuclei of the largest comets are only a few tens of miles in diameter (the coma and tails are larger, but these contain very little mass). The mass of Halley's comet, for example, is estimated at 2 × 10^14 kg, while the Earth's mass is roughly 6 × 10^24 kg. This means that the Earth contains the mass of about 30,000,000,000 Halley-sized comets (thirty thousand million!). Reversing the Earth's spin with a comet is like trying to reverse a helicopter rotor by throwing a peanut at it.

If an impacting body did contain sufficient mass to reverse the Earth's spin, it would not do so in any sort of controlled fashion. It would not just gently set it spinning in the opposite direction. It would be a catastrophic collision. Huge amounts of kinetic energy would be converted to heat. It would destroy the planet. And given that the geological record shows there have been hundreds of these magnetic field reversals, Stein's theory would require the Earth to have been hit hundreds of times by planets! Earth would, by now, be just some scattered fragments of rock. Also, it is known that geomagnetic reversals occur very slowly, with a gradual decline in field strength over tens of thousands of years, not "sudden impact" reversals.3

While the detailed mechanisms of Geomagnetic Reversal are still being debated, there is a general consensus that they involve turbulence and other changes in the flow of liquid metals in the Earth's core. A few theories do include external impact events as possible triggers, of for example mantle-core shear forces, but none propose wholesale reversals of Earth's spin. Stein's theory is utter nonsense.

Hale-Bopp

Stein also claims that comet Hale-Bopp was "supposed" to strike the Earth but the scientists "forgot" to take into account the fact that it "slows down as going around the Sun". Wrong again. Comets follow elliptical orbits, and travel FASTEST during the part of their orbit closest to the Sun.

Galactic Equator

Stein then goes on to say that we "pass the Galactic Equator" every 25,630 years. He shows a diagram in which the Solar System starts off above the galactic plane, becomes level with it in 2012, and then moves below it.

THIS IS TOTALLY WRONG.

The period of 25,630 years that he refers to is for the Precession Of The Equinoxes. This has nothing whatsoever to do with the Solar System physically passing through the equator or plane of the Galaxy. Stein's diagram must rank as one of the most misleading in history.

This confusion between the Precession Of The Equinoxes (hereafter abbreviated to "Precession") and PHYSICALLY PASSING THROUGH The Galactic Plane ("Plane Passing") is very common among 2012 fanatics. However, they are totally different:-

  • Precession is a change in the orientation of the Earth's axis of rotation ….. Plane Passing is a movement perpendicular to the plane of the Galaxy.
  • Precession involves the Earth, Moon, and Sun (astronomers refer to it as Lunisolar Precession) ….. Plane Passing involves the whole Solar System.
  • Precession does not alter our location within the Galaxy ….. Plane Passing does.
  • Precessional motion is circular ….. Plane Passing is sinusoidal.
  • A complete Precessional cycle takes about 26 thousand years ….. A complete Plane Passing cycle takes about 33 million years (or 66 million years peak-to-peak, incorporating two equatorial crossings per sinewave cycle).
  • Precession is caused by the gravitational pull of the Sun and Moon acting on the equatorial bulge of the Earth ….. Plane Passing is caused by the gravitational pull of the contents of the galaxy acting on the Solar System. When the Solar System is above the galactic mid-plane there is, on average, more mass below it than above, resulting in an overall downward pull, and vice versa when it is below the plane.
  • The direction of Precession remains the SAME throughout the cycle ….. The direction of Plane Crossing REVERSES during a cycle. After travelling "up" through the plane, the perpendicular velocity decreases towards the peak of the sinewave, eventually reaching zero. It then begins to accelerate "down" towards the plane, and will pass through it in the opposite direction to the previous passage. At the lower limit it will reverse again and travel "up". It is an example of Simple Harmonic Motion, a similar class of behaviour to a pendulum or a spring/mass system.

To summarize;

The causes and effects of Precession lie entirely WITHIN the Solar System. It is a LOCAL drift of Earth's axis, causing only a VISUAL change in Earth's view of the Galaxy. Precession of the Equinoxes has NOTHING WHATSOEVER to do with either the Earth or the Sun physically passing through the Galactic Plane or from one hemisphere of the Galaxy to the other.

So now, having confused Precession with Plane Passing, Stein goes on to "explain" what causes it. The real reason why the Solar System moves vertically within the plane of the Galaxy was explained above. Stein however invokes some vague "rotational force coming off the Galaxy". To illustrate this, he shows a photograph of The Cartwheel Galaxy. NOTHING he says about this is remotely true:-

The Cartwheel Galaxy

The Cartwheel Galaxy is actually the result of a head on collision between two Galaxies. What Stein describes as "a ring of energy coming off the galactic equator" is actually a ring of stars forming, due to compression of the interstellar gas and dust in the collision. It is matter condensing into stars, not a "ring of energy". And what Stein calls "a ball of energy that was shot out of the middle of the galaxy" is actually the remains of the smaller galaxy which passed through the larger one, and is now still moving away from the collision zone.

The real astronomy of the Cartwheel Galaxy is beautiful and awesome.4 Physicists have also used Supercomputers to model particle simulations of the collision.5 Note that these Galaxy Collision movies are not simply artists impressions. Nor are the movements programmed in directly or guessed at. The observed behaviour actually emerges from a deep mathematical modelling of the gravitational interactions between thousands of individual components (a computationally intense task requiring a supercomputer). The emergent structure matches the astronomical observations of the Cartwheel Galaxy.

It is a damn shame that all of this fascinating science is available, yet people are diverted away from it by Stein's pathetic nonsense.

Energy Field

At various times, Stein refers to "the energy field that exists at the Galactic Equator", or a "rotational force coming off the galaxy". Other 2012 fanatics speak of similar ill-defined "energies" and "lines of centrifugal force";

There is no concentration or build up of gravity associated with the galactic plane (although there will be local variations due to the amount of matter in a given region). The gravitational pull from the matter at the galactic centre, including the black hole, depends on the distance from it. An object near the galactic equator will feel no more pull from the galactic centre than an object that is north or south of the equator at the same radial distance. And regarding a "rotational force coming off the galaxy", this is naive pseudoscience. Centrifugal force is a consequence of Inertia. It is a property possessed by objects in motion. It is not a separate "force" that can "come off" objects or fly through space to hit other objects (for example, the clothes inside a spin drier will be centrifuged, those held an inch outside the drum will not).

The above misconceptions are popular because most 2012 fanatics do not understand simple celestial mechanics, or how orbits work, or how co-planarity arises. Instead they have naive and vague ideas about "lines of centrifugal force", "alignments", and "energies". Stein appeals to them because he speaks their language.

Jaw-Dropping Statements

But to continue with the videos… we now come to three jaw-droppingly stupid statements from Stein;-

"You can't look at the Sun any more".

Stein claims that when he was younger, he was able to squint at the Sun, and its colour was orange or yellow. But now it is too bright to look at, and the colour has changed to white. Does he not realise that astronomers can accurately detect even the smallest of changes in the light from astronomical objects using instruments such as Spectroscopes? While there are some detectable changes in the Sun's spectra, the gross visible changes that Stein suggests are nonsense.

(Note that the *perceived* colour of the Sun is very unreliable, due to the complex physiology of the human visual system and psychological factors such as colours appearing subjectively yellower against a blue background. The only reliable determination of the Sun's colour is from instruments measuring the solar spectral energy distribution.)

Editor's Note: Never, ever, look at the sun except through special solar filters (NOT SUNGLASSES). Looking at the sun can seriously and permanently damage your eyes. - Astrogeek

Static since the Big Bang

According to Stein, we are "taught" that the Solar System "has been static since the big bang". And "Astronomers [who] say that the Solar System has been static since the big bang";

These are such deeply ignorant statements that one wonders whether Stein actually believes them. He drops a hint that this is so, when he says, with some doubt in his voice, "at least that's what I remember from high school". Is this just part of his general anti-mainstream agenda? Or does he really believe that what's taught in schools is that the Solar System just popped out fully formed from the big bang? Either way, it's a lie.

What is actually taught, is that an enormous number of changes have taken place, over billions of years, on every scale, between the big bang and today's Solar System;

The thin disc of our Galaxy was not formed until billions of years after the big bang - then came many generations of stars - being born - carrying out nucleosynthesis - dying in supernovas - seeding the galaxy with heavier elements - then our Solar System began to form - condensing from a molecular cloud - forming a protoplanetary disc - accreting planetesimals - regrouping through countless chaotic collisions - forming planets and moons - the "late heavy bombardment" - and so on. Hardly "static" is it.

Given this long history of changes (each of which is the subject of voluminous scientific publications) Stein's claim is laughable.

Jupiter's Great Red Spot

Stein claims that "Jupiter's red spot is rotating in the opposite direction". Stein thinks this happened "some time in the late 90's". Wrong. No change of direction has ever been observed;

Observations from Earth-based telescopes in the 1960's showed the spot to be rotating counter-clockwise, with a period of about 12 days. Progressively better images of Jupiter have been captured from 1974 onwards by the space probes Pioneer 10, Voyagers 1 and 2, Galileo, Cassini and New Horizons. Time-lapse movies clearly confirmed the counter-clockwise rotation of the spot. The Hubble continues to confirm this. Stein's claim of direction reversal is simply a lie.

Stein then moves on to the Mayan Calendars, which he tries to correlate with the Earth's "passing through the galactic plane at 25,630 year intervals". As was explained previously, this simply does not happen on that time scale, so the support that this supposedly gives to the Mayan Calendars vanishes.

The videos then move onto Stein's version of Geology, which is equally as naive as his physics and astronomy.

The remaining videos contain nothing of any substance, just lots of spiritual rambling and vacuous new-age woo.

Author: mHexE7D7mHexE7D7



BlinkListblogmarksdel.icio.usdiggFarkfeedmelinksFurlLinkaGoGoNewsVineNetvouzRedditYahooMyWebFacebook

Unless otherwise stated, the content of this page is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 License