2012 and the pole shift

A DCS reader sent an email to Cornell University’s astronomy division about 2012 and pole shift and he did receive an interesting answer which I think should be published. So, here it is:

The crust will definitely slide in the year 2012. But it is also
sliding right now.

Before I explain, let me just say that nothing unusual is going to
happen in 2012. Or at least, nothing that has anything to do with
cosmic alignments or the end of the Mayan calendar. Take a look at our
answer about the Mayan
calendar:http://curious.astro.cornell.edu/question.php?number=686

Anyway, yes, the crust will slide and is sliding, but there will be no
sudden catastrophic movement, except for normal earthquakes. Heres
why…

It would be incredibly difficult to shift the Earth’s entire crust.
First of all, the crust is not a single solid layer like the candy
coating on an M&M, but is broken up into plates that are constantly
colliding and grinding into each other. Even if you could move one
plate, it wouldn’t mean that you would therefore move them all.
Instead you’d just create a new mountain range or ocean trench by
smashing the plates together or driving one under the other.

But it’s even more difficult than that: the Earth’s plates are not
floating on a sea of liquid rock, as many people believe. The crust is
solid rock, and so is the mantle. They act sort of like silly putty:
pull it slowly and it will stretch, but move too fast and it becomes
brittle and breaks. The plates of the crust move because the mantle is
slightly softer than the crust, so over geologic time (millions of
years) they can slide. There is nothing that could happen in the tiny
timespan of one year, such as 2012, that could shift the whole crust
independent of the mantle.

Plus, where would the force to do something like this come from?
Gravity is always there, and it doesn’t suddenly get stronger. Every
piece of matter in the universe is constantly pulling on every other
piece of matter. Tides are just a result of the gravity of the sun and
moon, and that’s not going to change. Meteor impacts happen way too
fast to move the crust as a whole, they just create a big explosion. I
can;t think of anything that could exert a slow, steady force on the
earth’s entire crust to make it shift the way that history channel
show was talking about.

So, bottom line is, don’t worry about 2012. It will be a year like any
other year. It will have its share of natural disasters, but nothing
out of the ordinary.

I hope this helps clear things up. Feel free to contact me if you have
any other questions!

Ryan Anderson
Graduate Student
Cornell University