2012 doomsday myths - garbage in, garbage out

New Media editor Don Fenley casts a big net for hidden gems about and behind the news

2012 doomsday myths - garbage in, garbage out

Published Wednesday, November 18 2009 - (0) Comments

Talk about your hype machine. The Web conspiracy theorists, hype mongers and Hollywood promoters hoping to cash in on the Thanksgiving holiday movie trade have so many people wild-eyed and actually scared that some scientists are in over-time mode to balance some of the 2012 bunk.

If you step back and apply a little critical thinking to the prevalent, persistent dooms day myths they shirk into the darkness of the childhood closet terrors. Of course critical thinking and Web's myths and hype are often a contradiction in terms. In computer jargon it's a example of garbage in, garbage out.

Ian O'Neill, a science geek/astrophysicist and writer for Discovery News, has collection of articles that attempt to pop some of the popular end-time myth balloons.

Here's a capsule of his Top 10 reasons why the world won't end in 2012. It covers most the current "the world is ending hysteria" events.

10 - Changes in Sun's magnetic fields will lead to powerful flares - it happens every 11 years and has been for eons.

9 - Earth's magnetic field will reveres - It happened about 800,000 year, but then world didn't end back then either.

8 - Earth's rotation axis will tip - It would take something the size of Mars bumping into the earth to cause this to happen, and while "Girls Gone Wild" is based on some reality the science of the solar system doesn't support a "Planets Gone Wild" reality.

7 - Grand alignment of Jupiter and Saturn will mess with Earth's graviton. - Good scare theater but there's no science here.

6 - The Sun will align with the galactic equator on the winter solstice - So what? There are coordinates in the sky and have no more significant that the fact the I-26 and I-81 intersect near between Gray and Kingsport.

5 - A black hole in the center of the Milky Way will effect the Earth. A black hole in the center of the Milky Way would have no more effect on the trillions of solar masses that exist in the galaxy than a dog wagging its tail.

4 - As asteroid will hit Earth - The odds the most likely event of this happening is 1-in-250,000 when Apophis makes its next close approach. But you'll have to wait until 2029 for that.

3 - The planet Nibiru will swing by Earth - Sorry, there's no such rogue planet.

2 - A supernovae will irradiate Earth. In the real world of science the closest two stars that would be part of this event are so far away they would have little effect. And since neither has a spin axis aimed at Earth, there little to no chance of a gamma ray overload when their core explodes. The odds makers say there a 1 percent chance of something like that happening once ever 10 billion years. That makes the odds of winning the Powerball drawing look good.

1 - A cloud of negative energy will engulf the solar system. O'Neill calls this the "dark cloud with a bad attitude" myth. The reality is there's dark energy all around us now, but it's not packaged as a cloud.

And then there's the 2012 Mayan Calendar myth.

The Mayan Long Count calendar begins in 3,114 B.C., marking time in roughly 394-year periods known as Baktuns. The 13th Baktun ends around Dec. 21, 2012, and the number 13 is a Mayan sacred number. But that doesn't mean the Mayan calendar is predicting the end of times.

That story has the Mayans and experts in the field RME, ROFL and ROFLOLAYing.

Here's how David Stuart, a real-live expert in Mayan epigraphy at the University of Texas at Austin - Hook 'em Horns - explained the calendar thing for NPR on Mayans insist that 2102 isn't the end of the world.
"It's a special anniversary of creation. The Maya never said the world is going to end, they never said anything bad would happen necessarily, they're just recording this future anniversary on Monument Six."

In more precise terms, The Long Count calendar is going from 12 Baktuns to 13 Baktuns, like when our calendar changed from 1999 to 2000. Remember the Y2K stuff?

The Mayan calendar doesn't end on 12-21-2012. When the Long Count calendar rolls over from Baktun 12 to Baktun 13 and starts over on it march toward Baktun 19 at which time it becomes Pictun 1 . When the calendar get up to Picturn 20 they'll start counting the Kinchiltuns and then the Alauturns. One Alautun is roughly 3,154,069 years.

If you're still with the doomsday myth busting, NPR's Scared about Planet Nibiru? Nasa would like to help is a good listen.

The fact of life is if you an average person the most dangerous thing you can do - the thing where you are most likely to get hurt of killed - is to get into your car and drive it. Or, you might die from a fall on the stairs at your home.

But for those who really want to worry about something here's how O'Neill says the end of the world will come, minus the change we'll pollute or war ourselves to death. "In approximately 4 billion years time, when the sun has depleted its supply of hydrogen in its core, our nearest star will swell like a balloon when it starts to burn heavier elements, swallowing the planets of the inner solar system.

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