Archive for end of the world
Let’s make a recap of what’s going to happen in 2012
Posted by: | CommentsI was thinking about 2012 and all the doomsday prophecies linked to it tonight and I started to make a recap of all the events that are supposed to happen. It’s when you do that recap that you understand properly nobody know what they’re talking about. Here’s the list of 2012 events:
- Pole shift
- Magnetic pole reversal
- Planet X getting near Earth or hitting Earth
- Meteor hitting Earth (Thanks Nostradamus)
- Planetary alignment leading to a major gravity burst with Earth being swallowed by the center of the galaxy.
- New dimensions opening
So basically, in 2012, the Earth’s axis of rotation will be modified, the north and the south pole will swap, Planet X will hit Earth as well as a meteor, the Earth will be swallowed by the center of our galaxy and new dimensions will open giving new possibilities to humans.
That is assuming all the events are happening at the same time of course. But you know, when there’s just so many possibilities, to me it just sound nobody know what they’re talking about. It’s the same as saying: “Something will happen in 2012″. Come on. All these events don’t even make sense when put together and can’t physically happen at the same time.
Make one single credible theory and I’ll start listening, but until then…
2012 and the pole shift
Posted by: | CommentsA 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=686Anyway, 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
Web bots - There’s no magic
Posted by: | CommentsThis is a follow-up to my previous article about the web bot. In that article, I briefly explained what the web bots are and if they were able to predict anything. I strongly suggest you read the article but it’s not a prerequisite to this article. In that first web bot post, I made a slight mention of the “2012 prophecy” and guess what? Most of the comments are about the 2012 prophecy and whether or not the world will end in 2012. I won’t be talking about 2012 in this article but I will focus on the limits of the web bots because there’s a really important concept we all have to understand: Web bots scan man-made information. This article might look similar to my previous one, but is shorter and more focused on limits of web bots. It is a reminder of the core concept of web bots.
Web bots scan man-made information
This is the most important concept of web bots because it sets the limits to what the web bots are able to predict. This also explains why it’s impossible to predict any end of the world prophecy. Why is that? The main goal of a web bot is simply to crawl the web the same way Google would do it to extract important information from websites. That important information is usually the most relevant keywords on a website put with a certain algorithm that is able to get the meaning of the sentences the keywords are used in. This information is then put in a large database and the final goal is to compare similar topics to determine if they each point towards similar conclusions.
So, if we put all the pieces together: The web contains information written by humans, the web bots crawl that information, find correlations and make predictions. If the web bots take its information from man-made sources, then what can it predict? Only things humans can predict or have control over. Does that includes the end of the world? No. There’s nothing super-natural in web bots. It’s computer technology at its best: Gather, keep and interpret information the human brain can’t.
Sure someone can argue they sometimes predict the stocks market, but I know people who are damn good at this too. They can try to predict a whole lot of stuff, but it cannot go any further than what we can predict.
We have to be careful here, because web bots do have a power we don’t have: to merge all that information across the web and try to find a correlation. So, they can go a little further than what a single human can do, but they can’t go any further than what’s possible to predict by humans.
If it was really possible to predict incredible stuff, Google would have the answer to every question. Wait a minute…They do! Seriously, it’s possible to extract relevant information from the web but it has a limit. Google use the data it collect to do a lot of other stuff than giving you search results, but they wouldn’t be able to predict things humans don’t have control over if they tried. That’s the same thing for web bots, except it’s much more smaller than Google.
Put everything in perspective
Web bot is a really nice project but I think it’s going to be one more argument for doomsday prophets in the future. It already started with videos about the end of the world and web bots predicting it would happen in 2012. There are certain things we don’t have control over and we have to accept it. There are certain parts of our lives we don’t control and we have to accept it. Computers are useful but they’re not God. I think the web bot project has a nice future but always keep in mind the web is man made and the bots crawl the web: there’s a limit to their capacities, it’s no magic.
Some examples
What’s best than a couple of concrete examples?
Could the web bots predict:
- Natural disaster: There’s not much chances, unless it’s a natural disaster we can predict. We sometimes know in advance of a tornado and are able to predict the disaster. In that case, a web bot could do the same by gathering information from websites talking about a possible disaster on a certain date.
- End of the world: Unless it’s a very obvious situation or caused by humans’ actions, no.
- Terrorist attacks: Yes. at least it can help.
- Stocks markets: Yes it can help.
- You get the idea.
Hope it’s clear
I hope it clears everything up so that it’s now obvious that it is impossible for a web bot to predict things humans have no control over.
2012 Explained - Why it shouldn’t be feared
Posted by: | Comments2012 is a business
Before you read this article, here is a video I recently recorded about 2012 and how people build businesses around it to make money. While a lot of people say that you can’t trust NASA or the government because they would certainly hide this 2012 stuff from us, I say there are a lot of people who want to spread this because they make money out of it. So, in the end, who do we trust? Watch it, I think that explains it all, but still, read the article and all the comments for more information.
What is 2012 about?
The year 2012 is referring to the last year of the Long Count Maya calendar. The current Great Cycle, as the Mayas call it, is set to end on the winter solstice of 2012: December 21 2012 and many people believe that on that date, the world will change and never be the same. Some predict terrible events resulting in the destruction of our world and some predict that it won’t necessarily end, but that we will enter a new era and massive changes will occur.
This article will try to answer most questions you may have in a rational way. because there are way too many websites creating some sort of fear propaganda around 2012 and as you will see, you have nothing to be scared of.
There’s too much disinformation going on about this subject and there’s an article you can read that was published around 1990 that reminds me the current situation:
What will happen on December 21 2012?
Quick answer: Nobody knows, but probably not much.
There have been a lot going on regarding the 2012 prophecy recently, including the movie “I am legend”, but surprisingly, not much information about what is really supposed to happen on that date is available. This is Probably because nobody knows and also because probably not much will happen. Most information available about 2012 is making reference to mass destruction of the world as we know it, earth’s pole shift/magnetic field reversal, Nostradamus predictions, end of Mayas calendar, etc.
The base of all the predictions is the end of the Maya calendar in 2012, which is supposed to mean the end of the world or a period of radical changes. In fact, the end of the Maya calendar is known as the end of the Great Cycle. People find it easy to believe in that theory because Maya civilization is known for advanced writing, mathematics and astronomy. It can seem like they really know what they’re talking about, but the truth is that the end of the Great Cycle is not the end of the world, it’s in fact a great celebration for the Mayas:
For the ancient Maya, it was a huge celebration to make it to the end of a whole cycle” says Sandra Noble, executive director of the Foundation for the Advancement of Mesoamerican Studies in Crystal River, Fla. To render Dec. 21, 2012, as a doomsday or moment of cosmic shifting, she says, is “a complete fabrication and a chance for a lot of people to cash in.”
From USA Today
On the winter solstice in 2012, the sun will be aligned with the center of the Milky Way for the first time in about 26,000 years(Milky Way is one of billions of galaxies in the observable universe. The Galaxy has special significance to humanity as it is the home galaxy of the planet Earth). This special alignment means that the usual energy that typically streams to Earth from the center of the Milky Way will indeed be disrupted on 12/21/12 2012 at 11:11 p.m. Universal Time. Scientists are actually in great doubt about the fact that the Mayas even knew what they were talking about.
Astronomers generally agree that “it would be impossible the Maya themselves would have known that” says Susan Milbrath, a Maya archaeoastronomer and a curator at the Florida Museum of Natural History. What’s more, she says, “we have no record or knowledge that they would think the world would come to an end at that point.”
From USA Today
Putting apart scientific data, here are the commons beliefs of the December 21 2012:
- Galactic Alignment. This Galactic Alignment occurs only once every 26,000, this is considered as the end-date in the Mayans Long Count calender. It is the alignment of the December solstice sun with the Galactic equator.
- A comet hitting Earth (Nostradamus)
- Read my article on Nostradamus to discover the real truth about Nostradamus: Nostradamus is not a valid argument!
- Earth’s Pole Shift/Magnetic field reversal
- Read my article on pole shift to discover the real truth about 2012 and pole shift: What is that pole shift thing and What is that pole shift thing part II
- Increase of calamities, natural disasters, mass destruction, etc.
I don’t want to repeat myself, but all of this is very vague as nobody really knows what will happen and the world is not at its first doomsday prophecy. There have been a lot of “Unfulfilled” prophecies in the past and you can have a look at this Wikipedia document for a list of unfulfilled religious prophecies.
What I find quite interesting about the 2012 theory is that there’s not much publications from well respected scientific organizations. NASA has published a couple of articles about the pole shift, but nothing else that could reveal a certain fear of the end of the world. Now you could argue that “big organizations” certainly wouldn’t reveal anything that has to do with the end of the world, but that’s another debate.
2012 conspiracy theory
I mentioned in the “What will happen” section that there’s a lack of scientific information coming from well respected sources like NASA. Some people claim there’s a conspiracy theory behind the prophecy to hide it from the public so it doesn’t create mass panic. Now, this does and doesn’t make sense. At first, it sounds like it could be true because I totally agree the government could restrain publications from the NASA as it’s a governmental agency, but I find it weird that this kind of information wouldn’t “leak”.
Do you really think something as big as the end of the world wouldn’t leak from any agency? Keep the NASA apart, do you really think the scientific community would miss something as big as that? When there’s no scientific data about a subject, you really have to doubt.
You’ve probably read a lot of information on websites from people claiming they know more than they should know and that the government is hiding all this information from you. Government is hiding a lot of things from you, more than you probably imagine and they would probably try to hide the end of the world if it was going to happen. But, let’s picture this: The Mayas were there 1000 years before Christ which makes it about 3000 years from now. Do you think someone could hide the end of the world for 3000 years if it was really going to happen and was really that possible and scientific?
I have my doubts.
Pole shift/reversal, the only 2012 end of the world possibility
The only rational “2012 End of world” possibility is actually pole shifting. A Pole shift is a rare phenomenon and is characterized by the north and the south poles swapping places. Such reversals, recorded in the magnetism of ancient rocks, are unpredictable. They come at irregular intervals averaging about 300,000 years; the last one was 780,000 years ago. I wrote an article on pole shift that explains the whole process, have a look: What is that pole shift thing?
Such event could really disrupt our planet that’s true. Imagine the North pole and South pole swapping places: Telecommunications, animals, humans, etc. would all be affected and it would be a really important change. There’s only one thing you need to consider… I’ve read in a lot of different places that a polar shift is going to happen on December 21 2012 and it is totally false:
Polar shift is a process that roughly takes 5,000 years to complete and doesn’t start on a specific date and time. The real truth is that nobody knows when the next one is due.
The process takes time and another myth wants the earth’s magnetic field strength to be near zero during that transition time. It would actually be as strong as it is now but simply a lot more complicated. Once again, it is explained in my What is that pole shift thing? article.
Will I die on December 21 2012?
I can’t tell, the Mayas can’t, Nostradamus can’t and the aliens can’t. On December 21 2012, a comet won’t hit the earth, a pole shift won’t happen instantly and a massive gravity burst won’t happen either. The only thing you can fear is a pole shift and it can take up to 5,000 years to complete…
What if you’re wrong?
In the case that I am wrong, that every scientist on this planet is wrong and that the NASA can’t figure out a simple galactic alignment that would put our world to an end then I guess we are all in the same situation. You, me and everyone will die. Scary isn’t it? Well, no one can tell what will happen tomorrow or in 2012.
Hope you enjoyed
I hope you enjoyed reading on the 2012 end of the world prophecy and that you are looking at it in a completely different way. Post your comments and come back to Daily Common Sense for more scam debunking.
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