What Happens in 2012?

A bit of light relief from Gather:

Jersey Shore star Snooki seems to think that the economy is bad because “2012 is coming.” Does the starlet have the right idea? Are things going to hell in a hand basket because people are fearful of solar flares, tsunamis, and mass chaos in 2012?

“The economy is really scary, because 2012 is coming,” Snooki tells The Wall Street Journal in a recent interview. “I feel like the first thing that’s going to happen… is a blackout and then everyone freaks out and the world goes crazy. So hopefully, Obama will take care [of the economy] before 2012.”

It’s doubtful that even Obama will be able to save the economy before 2012. The most likely scenario is that things will get worse as 2012 approaches and more and more people become afraid that the end of the world is coming. The Mayan prophecy that the end will be on December 21, 2012 is quite different from a preacher saying the end is coming. As a result, more people believe that the world is in for one heck of a ride in 2012. Could they be right?

Snooki may have a point. Though she may be loud and drunk on most episodes of the Jersey Shore, the pint-sized star could be pretty accurate on this one. Oddly enough, she hasn’t spent much of the millions she has earned on the hit reality show. Is she saving up for her own Doomsday shelter? She may seem stupid and vain, but when it comes to the end of the world and saving herself and her family, it wouldn’t be surprising if she is saving her money for when she’ll really need it.

Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of this story is Snooki is being interviewed by The Wall Street Journal!

The end of the world really is nigh…

It’s nearly 300 million miles away and barreling toward us. The intruder from deep space, called called comet Elenin, crosses Earth’s orbit on its inbound leg and again on its outbound swing around the sun later this year.

Russian astronomer Leonid Elenin discovered the innocuous little comet on Dec. 10, 2010, at International Scientific Optical Network’s robotic observatory near Mayhill, New Mexico.

Presently the comet is a faint smudge of light in deep sky exposures. By late August comet Elenin should be visible to the naked eye as a dim “fuzzy star” with a tail. Over a few weeks the visitor will speed across the spring constellation Virgo and toward Leo on its outbound leg.

Cometgate

A dizzying collection of doomsday predictions have been linked to comet Elenin. The hysteria was inevitable as anxiety grows over the approach of 2012 – that is supposedly a game-changing year for life on Earth. At least according to some interpretations of the ancient Mayan calendar.

If you believe the gobbledygook on numerous websites and YouTube videos, this is a “renegade comet” that just couldn’t wait for 2012 to mess with the Earth.

Though it’s now over twice as far away from Earth than the sun is, comet Elenin has already been blamed for triggering earthquakes and shifting Earth’s rotation axis. The comet has also been accused of melting ice on Mars and stirring up a storm on Saturn. It’s predicted to flip Earth’s magnetic field.

And that’s just the beginning. There are numerous “Cometgate” allegations of news media and government cover-up, and the existence of hidden comet shelters for U.S. officials.

The timing of the MESSENGER spacecraft’s deceleration in orbit around Mercury last week is also suspect because our innermost planet supposedly “aligns” with the comet’s position this month.

Reality Check

Comet Elenin will sweep nearest to Earth on Oct. 16 at a distance of 21 million miles and be moving fast enough to travel the distance from Earth to the moon in under five hours!

The effects of the comet on Earth at closest approach will be as inconsequential as that of a mosquito slamming head-on into an ocean-going supertanker.

Let’s look at the physics. Comet Elenin is a loose agglomeration of volatile ices and dust a few miles across. It is therefore one hundred billionth the mass of our moon. (The relative difference is roughly the same as the mass of a mosquito vs. the mass of an oil supertanker.)

The comet will pass no closer to us than 84 times the Earth-moon distance.

Applying Isaac Newton’s laws of gravity, this means the comet’s tidal pull on Earth — at closest approach — will be approximately one-hundred trillionth the force of the moon’s tidal pull on Earth. And, we all now know that despite the dreaded Supermoon hype last week, there were no monster storms or earthquakes triggered by our satellite’s gravitational tug at closest approach to Earth.

Comet-Kazi

What’s more, comets get the worst end of the deal when they venture near larger bodies — just like that mosquito slamming into the supertanker.

Some comets dive-bomb the sun routinely. What happens? They disintegrate into pieces.

The same held true for comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 that was ripped apart by tidal forces when it ventured too close to Jupiter. When the comet pieces plunged into Jupiter in 1994, the planet simply belched a few mushroom clouds from titanic impact explosions.

On May 11, 1983 comet IRAS-Araki-Alcock swept within 3 million miles of Earth –- one of the closest comet approaches in modern times. The visitor looked as big as the full moon and sped across a wide swath of sky in just a few days.

That same day saw an explosion of protests in Santiago, Chile against the decade-long rule of General Augusto Pinochet. Unless you’re an astrologer, the comet’s influence was not to blame.

The closest ever-recoded flyby of Earth was comet Lexell in 1770, which passed at 1.4 million miles. On Jan. 26th that year a magnitude 9 earthquake took place off the west coast of the North America.

Similarly, many coincidences will happen this year that people will want to blame on comet Elenin. The most bizarre link is that the comet’s closest approach to the sun happens on the 10th anniversary of the combined terrorist attacks on the U.S. “Is it a coincidence that Elenin could be seen as “Elevennine” (9/11 backwards)?” asks one conspiracy website.

In the cosmic scheme of things, comet Elenin is simply a nice target for backyard sky watchers to follow. But Earth as a planet isn’t phased at all.

From MPNnow.com:

By Jim Hillibish
GateHouse News Service

Things are shaping up for 2012. There’s potential that this may be the year of the century. I sure hope so. I’m pretty bored right now.

First off, the Mayan calendar ends with that year, prompting various talk-show hosts to predict this is the end of the world – no, dummies, they just ran out of stone. It’s amazing their calendar lasted this long.

Supposedly, there are some words in the Bible that confirm this Armageddon, but there are words in the Bible for everything. And don’t forget Rasputin.

Still, something may happen next year that will blow your socks off. We’re talking two suns in the sky at the same time, and probably no night on Earth for months. This is not a TV preacher speaking, and it’s not Internet bloggerish. Astronomers, including Dr. Brad Carter, of Australia, believe it’s important to prepare us for this.

One of the night’s brightest stars, Betelgeuse, has been watched for centuries. As a kid, I looked at it with my telescope and kept a notebook of observations. It made for an “A” science fair project.

The star seems to be vibrating out there, getting brighter and dimmer and changing color, even in a cheap telescope.

Indeed, the star has problems. It’s burning mass and collapsing. Any day now it could explode, creating a super nova millions of times brighter than our sun.

U.S. astronomer Dr. Phil Plait adds there’s no way to tell when this might happen, but the star is on a short fuse. It may blow tonight, or it might not be for 100,000 years. Rats.

The media, bless their breathless pens, is not good at predicting Armageddon. They stopped sending out asteroid warnings after the New York Times on its front page offered a date and time for an impact – falsely. Warnings now come from documentary-disaster producers on the History Channel.

The big blow will flood Earth with neutrinos, but not to worry because the energy should pass right through us. It could actually be beneficial. Remember the Big Bang Theory that created Earth?

The Chinese documented the last star explosion about 1,000 years ago. There were two suns and no nights for weeks. They got over it, and we probably will, too.

Meanwhile, there’s nothing more fun to write about than the end of the world.

The news that the star Betelgeuse is about to explode so spectacularly that it will appear as a second sun in our sky has been floating around the Internet for several months. But it gained credibility this week when a physics lecturer at the University of South Queensland, Australia, was quoted as saying that such an event could happen next year, which happens to be when the Mayan calendar runs out. Many have said that 2012 will be the end of the world. The possibility of a supernova adds weight to those who believe the Mayan apocalypse prophecy.

Betelgeuse is a bright red supergiant star positioned in the right shoulder of the constellation Orion, the hunter, and easily seen in the night sky at this time of the year, rising in the east right after sunset.

A Miami astronomer begs to differ, at least on some of the details.

“We’ve known for a very long time that Betelgeuse is massive enough to end its life as a supernova,” said Carolyn Simpson, physics professor at Florida International University in Miami.

As for when this will happen, you can sit outside tonight and get a ringside seat for the event, but it could be a long wait.

“It could go supernova in the next five minutes, or in a million years,” said Simpson, who has a Ph.D in astronomy and loves debunking scientific misinformation. “We have no way of telling.”

And it won’t be as bright as our sun, though it could be brighter than a full moon – at night. It would be visible in the daytime, looking like a bright star or a pinprick in the daytime sky, then fading over days or weeks, Simpson said.

That might not sound like much, but it would be the only time such an event has occurred since the year 1054, when the Crab Nebula exploded.

“It will be the brightest star in the sky other than our sun,” said Jim Kimball, president of the Astronomical Society of the Palm Beaches. “That will be extremely impressive.”

As for the 2012 connection, “The Mayan thing, that’s just whacked,” said Simpson, who says that the Internet and instant media is at least partly responsible for connecting the very real possibility of Betelgeuse exploding with the scientifically questionable date for the end of the world.

“We’re humans, that’s what we do,” Simpson said. “We are pattern-finding creatures. It’s our strongest survival mechanism. Randomness makes us nervous, so sometimes we find patterns where none exist.”

A mysterious book of cryptic prophecies has been discovered at the National Library in Rome, and there is evidence to suggest that it is the final work of the most famous and controversial prophet in the history of the world, Nostradamus. Even more startling than the discovery of the book, though, are the warnings it contains, which were so blasphemous and frightening in their time that they may have been intentionally suppressed until now.

A new History Channel special – LOST BOOK OF NOSTRADAMUS – examines the life’s work of Nostradamus and the evidence and contents of this startling discovery.

The predictions of Nostradamus were in agreement with the scientist of today that the solar system will pass through the galactic plane of the Milky Way galaxy, as the earth enters its 25,800 year precession. When this happens, the gravitational wave, which exist as a flat plane along the equatorial region of the milky way sends this across any passing solar system, including Earth and the Sun, causing earthquakes in both Sun and all the planets. In this region there are broken planets and asteroids that may cause near massive object collision with earth, but also as the solar system passes the equatorial region will the planets, including earth shifts its rotation.

According to Nostradamus, when this passes, whole continents will be under water in a matter of 6-10 hours, where most of Asia will be underwater, but also other coastal regions. The land will sink fast and responsible for most of the destruction, but during this passing the Earth will lose its orbit around the sun, massive earthquakes starts from the polar shifts and gravitational waves bringing on earthquake and sinking of continents.

Nostradamus predicted land sinking very quickly, solar flares, gamma radiation during the passing of the equatorial plane of the Galaxy. This rift is located between the zodiac sign of the Sagittarius and Scorpio. The arrows of the Sagittarius points to the dark rift, which is the gravitational waves emitting from the black hole, and incident which happens every 11,000 years, an event where the drawings of Nostradamus predicted three eclipses before this event to occur.

The culmination of this event is expected to occur similar to the Mayans on 21 December 2012. It should be noted that gravitational waves causes earthquakes both on the Sun and Earth and its frequency increases dramatically as we approach closer to 2012, starting late 1990s. When this happens the Sun experiencing earthquakes sends out massive solar flares to the earth with more frequency and the earth should have experience global cooling, due to the sun spot cycle,which it didn’t because of the frequency of solar flares. As a result global warming will accelerate.

According to Nostradamus, people will experience both extreme fire, heat from global warming, which technically is more like solar system warming, but this gets to the extreme as 2012 approaches, most of the polar ice caps should melt as this time frame approaches, not just rising of water level, but lands can sink or rise as polar shifts event occur. Near massive objects and meteorites may occur due to the weakening of the Van Allen Belts, foreseen by Nostradamus to mentioned. Where people who do not experience flooding, they will experience fire and burning from solar flares and fire, where high areas are risk, and low areas at risk from flooding.

Interestingly, Nostradamus points the entry of the Age of Aquarius, after 21 December 2012. During this period major wars will escalate for resources, according to Nostradamus, between the Christians and the Muslims faith. The Pope is prominent in Nostradamus lost books, but interestingly the three rings on the head of the pope, might have signifies the three rings of Power, that controls most of the world, Washington D.C., City of London, and the Vatican. All three locations have the Egyptian obelisks, and important high level secret society symbolism that they are indeed connected in power, that people called the New World Order, but this power is not shared with the Muslim world, China, or Russia, and hence the war, that some say is the Armageddon.

ROME, Italy – Pope Benedict XVI has seen the controversial movie, “2012″ and he liked it, Vatican sources said Wednesday. “It is as it will be,” the sources quoted the pope as saying.

This is, of course, a joke, reflecting the comments that Pope John Paul II made over Mel Gibson’s movie, “The Passion of The Christ”.

I saw the 2012 movie over the weekend, and as great as some of the special effects were, the whole premise was wrong. Should the world be destroyed on December 21st, 2012, it won’t be a biblical flood that does the job; all signs point to a fiery holocaust.

This movie had such a great opportunity to tell the truth, but obviously the entire population of Earth dying in flames doesn’t have the same “feel-good” to it that remaking the story of Noah’s Ark has. (Spoiler alert – some of the world’s population is saved by modern-day “Arks” but didn’t anyone else notice that John Cusack’s character’s kid was called “Noah”…?) Also, because the Jews and Mel Gibson control Hollywood, of course…

Today I made a 2012 Advent Calendar, with all the dates of note between now and December 12, 2012. I thought I’d share them with you because it made me realize just how close we are! In fact, on Tuesday 8th September 2009 we will be down to 1200 days to go.

Here they are folks:

Also note, only 118 more shopping days until Christmas!

I first heard that the poop was going to hit the proverbial fan a few years back while I was building a website for a new age, naturopathic health company. The owner of the company tried to explain what it was all about, but either she did a terrible job, or I wasn’t open to the idea at the time.

I’m still not entirely convinced that this date in the Mayan calendar is a precursor to some terrible event, and I will explain why shortly. But there is more going on in 2012 than just a Mayan calendar date – there seems to be a convergence of ideal and beliefs, from all corners of the Earth, each indicating that 2012 holds something special for the human race. It’s a great time to be alive!

Ok, so why is 2012 – December 21, 2012 to be exact – a significant date in the Mayan calendar? The Maya civilization is a Mesoamerican civilization, noted for the only known fully developed written language of the pre-Columbian Americas, as well as its spectacular art, monumental architecture, and sophisticated mathematical and astronomical systems. (Thank you, Wikipedia!)

The Mayan calendar – the Mesoamerican Long Count calendar to be exact – was constructed by the Mayans around 250-900 AD. Prior to the Long Count calendar, the Mayans used a number of other calendars to measure time. The Tzolk’in calendar lasted for 260 days and the Haab’ approximated the solar year of 365 days. These were combined to form the “Calendar Round”, a cycle lasting 52 Haab’s (around 52 years, or the approximate length of a generation). Using the Calendar Round was fine if you simply wanted to remember the date of your birthday or significant religious periods, but what about record history? There was no way to record a date older than 52 years.

Up to this point, the Mayan Calendar may have sounded a little archaic – after all, it was possibly based on religious belief, the menstrual cycle, mathematical calculations using the numbers 13 and 20 as the base units and a heavy mix of astrological myth. The solution to a longer calendar could be found in the “Long Count”, a calendar lasting 5126 years!

The Mayan Long Count calendar uses a base unit of 20, and starts at the base year of “0.0.0.0.0″. Each zero goes from 0-19 and each represent a tally of Mayan days. The first day in the Long Count is denoted as 0.0.0.0.1. The 19th day is 0.0.0.0.19, and on the 20th day it goes up one level so we’d have 0.0.0.1.0. This count continues until 0.0.1.0.0 (about one year), 0.1.0.0.0 (about 20 years) and 1.0.0.0.0 (about 400 years).

This is all very interesting, but what has this got to do with the end of the world? The Mayan Prophecy is wholly based on the assumption that something bad is going to happen when the Mayan Long Count calendar runs out. Experts are divided as to when the Long Count ends, but as the Maya used the numbers of 13 and 20 at the root of their numerical systems, the last day could occur on 13.0.0.0.0. When does this happen? Well, 13.0.0.0.0 represents 5126 years and the Long Count started on 0.0.0.0.0, which corresponds to the modern date of August 11th 3114 BC. Some experts believe the Mayan Long Count ends 5126 years later on December 21st, 2012.

The Mayan Doomsday Prophecy is purely based on a calendar which some people believe hasn’t been designed to calculate dates beyond 2012.

Have you seen the problem yet? Each of the columns in this calendar use base 20, but for some reason, not the left column. Why would the calendar stop at 13.0.0.0.0 when the base is 20? Shouldn’t the calendar continue on to 20.0.0.0.0 until the end of the world? Or – and here’s the kicker – wouldn’t it just tick over to 0.0.0.0.0 like every other calendar ever created and start again? Why all this pessimistic doomsday stuff?

Mayan archaeo-astronomers are still debating whether the Long Count is designed to be reset to 0.0.0.0.0 after 13.0.0.0.0, or whether the calendar simply continues to 20.0.0.0.0 (approximately 8000 AD) and then resets. As Karl Kruszelnicki brilliantly writes:

“…when a calendar comes to the end of a cycle, it just rolls over into the next cycle. In our Western society, every year 31 December is followed, not by the End of the World, but by 1 January. So 13.0.0.0.0 in the Mayan calendar will be followed by 0.0.0.0.1 – or good-ol’ 22 December 2012, with only a few shopping days left to Christmas.” – Excerpt from Dr Karl’s “Great Moments in Science”.