I’ve mentioned all the woowoo garbage going on about 2012 (specifically Gia’s take down of it and a movie that will no doubt not help much). I do plan on a thorough and complete destruction of this nonsense in the same manner as I’ve done on the Moon Hoax, Hoagland, and Planet X.
In the meantime, Ian O’Neill at Universe Today has an article on this: No Doomsday in 2012. And if you like it, Digg it, too!
If you went to BadAstronomy.com and found yourself here, never fear: the BA Blog has moved to its new home at Discover Blogs. The original BA site (with the Moon Hoax debunking and all that) is still online, too.
Phil Plait, the creator of Bad Astronomy, is an astronomer, lecturer, and author. After ten years working on Hubble Space Telescope and six more working on astronomy education, he struck out on his own as a writer. He has written two books, dozens of magazine articles, and 12 bazillion blog articles. He is a skeptic, and fights misuses of science as well as praising the wonder of real science.
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 | Bad Astronomy was chosen as one of Time.com's Best Blogs of 2009. | |
 | Open Lab 2008 is a collection of the best blog posts of the year, all in one place. Are you a science junkie? Yeah, you want it. |
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May 19th, 2008 at 9:03 pm
According to Astronomy Cast, the earth has ~10,000 years till its burn to a crisp.
May 19th, 2008 at 9:05 pm
Why debunk it? I think January 1, 2013 will do that well enough by itself.
May 19th, 2008 at 9:15 pm
Phil, a friend of mine was watching a show last night on Sci-Fi where Hoagland et al were searching for the mysterious crystal skulls planted here by aliens to warn us to stop polluting, or something like that. Just wondering if you caught it. There are time I see or hear about things and just wish you could take them to the woodshed.
May 19th, 2008 at 9:25 pm
Phil, I’m looking forward to your takedown of this silliness! I’m the poor schmuck that gets forwarded the calls on this sort of thing that come in to the UT Austin Astronomy Dept. Sites like yours are an invaluable resource for me. I got a call just last week on this, but thankfully the woman was okay with me saying it was totally ridiculous - unlike some people who have called. There was a guy I talked to last summer whose son had seen the History Channel program about it and was totally freaked out.
BTW, on a unrelated note - I got some questions from some school kids last week about what would happen if a supernova exploded near our solar system and I took the opportunity to pimp your upcoming book for you.
May 19th, 2008 at 9:54 pm
Lara: exxxxcellent. My plan is unfolding nicely.
Matt, if only that were true. But doomsday scenarios tend to freak people out, and simply waiting for it not to happen isn’t an option. I want to nip this in the bud. i can’t stop it, but I can provide a resource for people.
May 19th, 2008 at 10:56 pm
Funny, I just got done reading that on UT. Hard to believe how caught up people get.
May 19th, 2008 at 10:58 pm
I saw that crystal skull special. As soon as I saw who it was I turned a couple friends I was watching it with and said, “this is about to get ridiculous.” He did not disappoint.
May 19th, 2008 at 11:12 pm
Brian Dunning recently did a thing on the crystal skulls on his Skeptoid podcast. Here you go…
http://skeptoid.com/episodes/4098
May 19th, 2008 at 11:12 pm
Here’s the thing:
Too many people make money by scaring others.
May 19th, 2008 at 11:17 pm
Well… you know… *something* might happen. I mean, _INSERT_DOOMSDAY_SCENARIO_ has just as much chance as happening in 2012 as it does any other year, yes?
May 19th, 2008 at 11:18 pm
Not true! I respectfully disagree! I know for a FACT that at least one major, earth-shattering event will occur in 2012!
I… will graduate from college!
(Darn close to the summer solstice, too. It’s a sign!)
May 19th, 2008 at 11:57 pm
I will ALSO graduate from college in 2012! That’s TWO important events that will happen! And it is most certainly NOT “woowoo garbage,” Mr. BA! Shame on you!
May 19th, 2008 at 11:58 pm
The world was supposed to end in 2000 (or was it 2001? I forget), and we’re still here. It’s just wonderful to see someone debunking this idiotic nonsense.
May 19th, 2008 at 11:58 pm
Personally, I’m looking forward to is Venus transiting the Sun again. Last chance for 105 years.
May 20th, 2008 at 12:17 am
As the Great Hamster in Space pointed out, lots of interesting things really will happen in 2012. From the Wikipedia page on that year http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012 here are some of the astronomical events:
* January 31 â?? 433 Eros, the second-largest Near Earth Object on record (size 13×13x33 km) is expected to pass Earth at 0.1790 astronomical units (~26.8 million kilometers; ~16.6 million miles).
* May 20 â?? Annular solar eclipse.
* June 6 â?? Second and last solar transit of the planet Venus of this century; the next pair is predicted to occur in 2117 and 2125.
* November 13 â?? Total solar eclipse (visible in northern Australia and the South Pacific).
* November 28 â?? Penumbral lunar eclipse
* December 3 â?? Jupiter oppositions.
The above is reality. A lot more interesting than the fantasies of dimwits who misunderstand the Mayan calendar.
May 20th, 2008 at 12:17 am
I second that, Zeb. The best part is I get to see the whole show this time. Unless it’s cloudy.
May 20th, 2008 at 12:26 am
Oops, sorry, that was Zeb, not Spacehamster, who first mentioned the Venus transit. My apologies to both.
May 20th, 2008 at 12:45 am
You know, Phil, something will happen in 2012. Whether it is an earthquake, hurricane or tsunami or tornado. Someone will point to such an event and say, “Told you so!” Debunking this garbage is, in my iopinion, a complete waste of time. True believers will ignore you.
May 20th, 2008 at 12:46 am
I’m preparing a big party for 22 november of 2012, for the day “when nothing happens”.
May 20th, 2008 at 1:12 am
I suppose next you’ll be telling me Time Cube is a lot of bunkum too, huh?
May 20th, 2008 at 1:37 am
I think many Brits, and in particular, Londoners will argue against nothing happening in 2012.
May 20th, 2008 at 2:02 am
Has anybody made a timeline over all the greatest world-ending events that have not happened the last 50 years? Some sort of cavalcade would have been great.
May 20th, 2008 at 2:41 am
Clearly in 2012 the ARCHITECT will reign down his TRUTH on … oh wait, wrong thread.
Anyway, it seems like UT gets more woowoos than BA. Some hilarious and at the same time depressing posts in the comments to that article.
May 20th, 2008 at 5:00 am
I’m afraid you’re sadly underestimating British incompetence in running the Olympics. The world may not *actually* end, but, for anyone living within 50 miles of London, the distinction will seem trifling.
May 20th, 2008 at 5:07 am
I’m sure lots of stuff will happen in 2012. The world ending? Not so much.
May 20th, 2008 at 5:25 am
My current 5 year diary runs out in 2010 and I will DEFINITELY be buying a replacement one : )
May 20th, 2008 at 5:27 am
Jewel, you are right, of course, but the problem will be that every woomeister will be wacthing, and ANY unfortunate event that happens that year will be pointed to as a CLEAR SIGN(TM) of the end of the world.
Oh, and my wife’s birthday just happens to be Dc. 21…..Not going to tell what age she will be as it is well known that men have ages, women only have birthdays.
May 20th, 2008 at 5:38 am
@Blaidd Drwg - yes, that is the problem, isn’t it. The woo inclined are always ready to correlate any unfortunate event with an end time prophecy or other unrelated things. It’s too bad, really. People should spend more time living their lives rather than fretting over stuff like this. Life is too short as it is.
May 20th, 2008 at 5:59 am
If there is anyone 100% sure the world will end, please send my your life savings
May 20th, 2008 at 5:59 am
Reminds me of psychic Jean Dixon’s prediction that California would be struck by a major quake around 1968 or ‘69 and everything west of the San Andreas would fall into the ocean (insert your favorite L.A. jab here). The fearless forecast generated some nifty novelty songs on Top-40 radio. The quake, of course, never occurred. Many saw it as another triumph of reason over psychic-babble. But the real force thwarting the inimitable Ms. Dixon’s prognostication was a woman named Edith Odum. She programmed the music at a small radio station in Santa Ana, Calif., where I worked at the time. As we all know, you can’t have your quake and Edith too!
May 20th, 2008 at 6:10 am
Try reading “Apocolypse Wow”, which is a very funny send up of all things “Earth ending”. It’s from the author of “Politically Correct Bedtime Stories”. Of course, it is a little dated…it came out in 1999, but it still talks about previous “predictions”.
Sorry about the over use of quotation marks…I don’t know how to italicize! Or spell, apparently!
May 20th, 2008 at 6:46 am
#
(Darn close to the summer solstice, too. It’s a sign!)
Aeryn
Not true! I respectfully disagree! I know for a FACT that at least one major, earth-shattering event will occur in 2012!
I… will graduate from college!
Mitchell Atlas
I will ALSO graduate from college in 2012! That’s TWO important events that will happen! And it is most certainly NOT “woowoo garbage,” Mr. BA!
I remember my college graduation…
we are DEFINITELY talking world-ending!
J/P=?
May 20th, 2008 at 6:57 am
Of course nothing is happening in 2012. ‘Cuz the real end of the world is coming in 2025. The Great Niblet Flood!
Heard here first folks.
May 20th, 2008 at 6:59 am
I’d love to see a slideshow of the timeline of nonexistant world-ending predictions to the tune of REM’s “It’s The End of the World (And I Feel Fine)…”
The world will “end” one day.
We may even be on it when it happens.
But when this cataclysm comes, what exactly am I supposed to do? Chant and bow?
May 20th, 2008 at 7:07 am
Blaidd Drwg, Jewel:
“yes, that is the problem, isn’t it. The woo inclined are always ready to correlate any unfortunate event with an end time prophecy or other unrelated things.”
It’s a shame the woo brigade weren’t able to foretell the Burma cyclone and the earthquake in China. That’s about 120,000 people who could have been saved had they predicted it in the same way they make other “psychic” predictions of disasters.
May 20th, 2008 at 7:26 am
No no, I heard it on late night talk radio, it has to be true!
Well, the world will end, for some number of people, as some will die in 2012.
I get it all the time. people bring up the Mayan calender.
“but it stops in 2012, so the world is going to end then!”
Uh… it stops in 2012 because that was a convenient stopping point at which their calculations could be stopped. We note that the world ended for the Mayan culture much sooner than their calender.
May 20th, 2008 at 7:30 am
I never got why people believed in this in the first place. It is mostly religious people, and the Mayans didn’t even have the same belief system as any religion to date.
May 20th, 2008 at 7:34 am
I saw Hoagland on Sci-Fi’s Skull special. When I saw him on the program I knew the rest would be junk.
It would be nice to see you debunk him and where do these skulls really come from. I saw one that looked real nice and the others seemed a little primitive.
May 20th, 2008 at 8:01 am
For those who don’t follow the Mayan Long Count today is 12.19.15.6.4 7 Zip 5 Kan 1676 days until 13.0.0.0.0 4 Ahau 3 Kankin
May 20th, 2008 at 8:27 am
@Chris
Hmm…maybe I should play those numbers in the lotto. Then I can say that the Mayans predicted my winning lots of money!
@Michael
Religion? No, no, no. As everyone knows, that’s when our solar system will pass through the Galactic Plane, at precisely 9:47am. So remember to hop round to your corner pub, drink about 6 pints, and grab a bunch of peanuts. Oh…and be sure to have your towel with you.
May 20th, 2008 at 8:29 am
The world can’t end in 2012, it will end on December 31, 9999. Won’t it?
Seriously, why is the history channel dishing this kind of trash? Beyond a shameless cash and audience grab, why? Documentaries based on fact - yes. Docu-dramas - yes. But the lunatic fringe?
Does anyone remember Chariots of the Gods and its multiple sequels? Then there was Crash Go the Chariots. I sure fewer people remember the debunking. And I’m sure it made much less money too.
Hey, how about a woo-woo channel.Sorry, what was I thinking? Clearly I didn’t think that through. Yikes.Better two woo-woo channels (after all what’s another cable position)! One the woo-woo comedy network with only non-woo-woo ads and frequent disclaimers, smack downs, etc.. The other with pure woo-woo ads for every imaginable bit of snake oil. Great science experiment. Make all the reality challenged poorer too. What a hoot!
May 20th, 2008 at 9:10 am
Beyond a shameless cash and audience grab, why?
Why do you expect anything beyond cash and audience grab?
May 20th, 2008 at 9:17 am
Sadly, I don’t.
Shame on me, I forget the <.Was that my inside voice/rant.> tags.
May 20th, 2008 at 9:43 am
From Wikipedia…
A debunker is an individual who discredits and exposes claims as being false, exaggerated, unscientific or pretentious.[1] Topics that many debunkers focus on include U.F.O.s, claimed paranormal phenomena, conspiracy theories, alternative medicine, religion, research outside mainstream science or pseudoscientific subjects. The term debunker is applied when a person functions as an activist and performs research, writes articles, gives speeches, conducts seminars, or engages in other activities with the specific intent of discounting the validity of a dubious, bizarre, or abnormal claim.
Also from Wikipedia…
Well Known Debunkers (amongst other notable individuals)
Philip Plait, also known as The Bad Astronomer, is a debunker of various theories related to space and astronomy. Most of these (and clearing up of other astronomy-related misconceptions) are accessible at his website.[2]
Since I’ve been reading Phil’s site oh these many years, he has never tried to “convert” true believers to anything. That truely would be a waste of his time.
What he does do, in my opinion, is provide invaluable information to those individuals who still retain the ability to ask questions on things they don’t understand. And those individuals are worth “saving”. Waiting until Jan 1st 2013 could result in losing some of those people. Better to swell our ranks than theirs.
May 20th, 2008 at 10:54 am
Thanks Phil for picking up my story
I’m glad you likey.
There’s more to come, I intend to slowly stretch out all the doomsday theories in front of me and kill each one in the best way I know how (and hopefully dent the sales of “The End Is Nigh” books - well, hopefully).
Cheers! Ian
May 20th, 2008 at 3:18 pm
Is it just me or do the Mayan dates look more like IP addresses?
Maybe we should alert the doomsayers to that, it’ll keep em busy punching numbers into their URL bar..
May 20th, 2008 at 3:40 pm
Ummm, all you class of 2012 graduates-to-be? Speaking as someone with a bit of experience here, don’t underestimate the power of beer, boardgames and attractive fellow students to extend your stay in the halls of academia beyond your initial plan.
Not saying it will happen, just that it’s kinda hubrisy to be nailing down an ironclad date now.
But in 2012, I will calling my new-agey acquaintances every day and asking if the world has ended yet. And the win is, if it does end, they don’t get to gloat!
May 20th, 2008 at 4:05 pm
@Phil
“My plan is unfolding nicely” - shouldn’t that read “Everything is proceeding as I have forseen”?
May 20th, 2008 at 4:43 pm
Ya know, it would make for a good “end of the world” movie, saying that, see you in 2013.
May 20th, 2008 at 7:32 pm
Yeah, can someone explain the signifigance of us crossing the galatic plane in 2012(earthquakes, tornadoes-oh my!). I saw it in another post and that person said the wooers would use that as another end of the world senario. I just want some ammo to counter act that kind of garbage.
May 21st, 2008 at 11:59 am
what is really going to happen, is that the lawsuit against the LHC is going to prevent it’s startup. the LHC will be tied up in legal tangles that won’t get sorted out until late 2011. then come, 2012 they will finally be able to start it up, only to create strangelets, mini black holes, lions, tigers and bears that will destroy the earth.
May 21st, 2008 at 6:19 pm
Firemancarl, we cross the galactic plane *every* year. The galactic center happens to be in Scorpius, not far from the ecliptic. According to astrological signs, the Sun enters Scorpius on or about Dec 21. (Actually this was true 2000 years ago, but since then due to precession, the astrological sun signs are now off by over a full constellation. Some astrologers account for this, others don’t. It doesn’t matter since it doesn’t affect the accuracy of their predictions at all.)
As to its significance, it has *none*.
Oh, by the way, we cross the galactic plane *twice* every year. Both the galactic plane and the ecliptic are great circles, and all great circles intersect twice. No one is making any sort of fuss about June 21, 2012 AFAIK.
And 2012 is no more significant than any other year. The exact time and galactic longitude of the point where the the ecliptic crosses the galactic plane changes over the course of millions of years as the solar system orbits the galaxy, but the difference from one year to the next is of order of a millionth of a degree, i.e. unmeasurably small.
So if anything were going to happen on Dec 21, 2012, it would have been equally likely to have happened on that date 100,000 years ago, or in 1968 (as Apollo 8 pretended to depart for the Moon.
May 21st, 2008 at 11:36 pm
This is all silly talk about things that will never happen. My daughter’s Hello Kitty calendar only goes to Dec 31, 2008. Therefore the world will end long before 2012.
May 23rd, 2008 at 11:23 pm
ian,
i like the article you wrote about 2012, but where did all those crazy people come from? on here and www.dailycommonsense.com its not that bad…wow.
May 29th, 2008 at 2:25 am
I’m definately NOT into Doomsday stuff but lets get to buisness. First, Ian O’Neil’s article is of little value to anyone. Wikipedia is not a good reference whereas the research of lifelong Mayan researchers like Jose Argulles and John Major Jenkins is a better place to start. Then the readers would know about the great cycle of 5 cycles (in the order of 26000 years) which is also coming to an end. Mayans also recorded dates of importance many tens of thousands of years ago. Then we could also consider the correlation of the Mayan calendar to sunspot cycles and the potential reversing of the suns magnetic field (Check out NASA observed reverse sunspot in 2006)
Now we have almost zero sunspot activity. Check Spaceweather.com
I want to see you debunk the sun transiting the equatorial plane of the galaxy. the solar system has a spiral 3D motion around the equatorial plane than crosses the plane in the vertical axis.
Also poopooing astrological implications is foolish without a profound understanding of it and coming to grips with the inextricable interconnectivity of all things. It is also foolish to say that nothing will happen. Profound things happen everyday and the world also ends for people everyday. Change is the great constant of the planet and the universe. Too much science and not enough Metaphysics leaves Jack a dull boy in a dark corner.
What ever happened to the Americans? They’ve disappeared just like the Maya, replaced by Nazis. Looks like the 3rd reich is still going strong!!
June 7th, 2008 at 4:55 am
Find on internet:what do you think about it?thank you from italy
If you wish to veiw this pane that Google Sky has left out then download Microsoft’s World Wide Telescope. The coordinates are a little diffrent than googles so i have listed them below for you to make the square as you would see it on google sky with out the block. First you will probably need to take the tour it has alot of usefull info on how to work WWT. To make your square you will need to click on the View tab. In the first quarter of the options you will see Constelation Lines, you want to make sure you have Focused Only checked. After doing that click on New beside Focused Only. You can name this whatever you wish, i chose to name it ‘quadrant for Nibiru’. After that a side menu will pop up with the constelations. Chose Orion, that should move you to the location of Orion. Ok the next step you will click on the Search tab at the top. You will see at the top mid-right of the screen RA and
Dec this is where you will search for the four points of the square were gonna make. Now after you input each of the RA,Dec coordiantes you want to zoom into that spot as close as you can and simply left click the crosshair this will map that spot and will show up in the list under Orion to the right of the screen. You will need to do this for each point and after the last point re input the first point or simply put the crosshair over the first point to compleat the sqare Once this is done you now have the pane that was missing from Google Sky to search.
Coordinates RA,Dec
Point 1.) RA: 5h54m22.22s
Dec: -5 45′25.78″
Point 2.) RA: 5h53m02.90s
Dec: -5 45′16.44″
Point 3.) RA: 5h54m21.60s
Dec: -6 16′23.01″
Point 4.) RA: 5h53m02.63s
Dec: -6 16′18.78″
Note: you must make sure when you put in the Dec part of the coordinates to leave a space between the first and second numbers for this is a space for a cintegrade symble but it is not needed
June 18th, 2008 at 3:14 pm
I can’t believe I was actually worried about this. The next venus transit will be on June 2nd 2012. My friend strongly belives that it will happen, but he is somewhat scientifically iliterate. To all you “believers” out there I assure you it won’t happen. There seems to be this idiotic idea that the ancients had a better idea of what was going than we do, that is simply not true. To the guy who wrote the book (apocalypse 2012) Lawrence E. Joseph you are, to put it delicatley in latin, moronicus maximus idioticus. You can figure it out. I read his biography on his website and he didn’t even finish university. This belief falls under the catigory of new aged and occult. Pure astrology. Infact, scientists say we have at least 1 billion years left on the earth. So no it won’t happen.
June 26th, 2008 at 12:02 am
Craig Ferguson was making fun of 2012 crackpots on The Late Late Show tonight. Funny stuff.
July 14th, 2008 at 3:37 pm
I spend too much time on Yahoo Answers. Questions about 2012 have been asked more than 10,000 times as of about 5 July and I’d say there would be 2 to 6 in every 24 hours. Some are plainly from trolls but a fair few are from frightened kids. Most are on the astronomy and space pages but some turn up on the religion and spirituality pages. A couple of the regular answerers like me have standard answers that they copy and paste in attempt to debunk the major points, planet X, Bible codes, Nibiru, planetary alignments and galactic central planes.
The kids who are submitting questions might be at least doubtful and maybe we are doing some good. But there must be thousands who take this balderdash seriously and never ask.
Short of prosecuting the perpetrators under public nuisance or similar laws I do not know what can be done about this. The “History Channel” seems to be a major offender and the whole business is yet another reason I will not have cable TV again.
Ken E.
July 27th, 2008 at 9:05 pm
Please hurry with the debunking site! I do astronomy outreach and star gazing programs on the weekends and have started getting several questions about this from people who are willing to argue it all night. It would be so much easier to send them to your site…
August 22nd, 2008 at 11:12 am
[…] it just me or is the milky way brighter..? Universe Today: No Doomsday in 2012 Bad Astronomy Blog: 2012, the year nothing will happen Universe Today: 2012: No Planet X Universe Today: 2012: Planet X is not Nibiru Universe Today: […]
August 25th, 2008 at 8:04 am
When is this Debunk of 2012 going to be up? Because im getting sick of all this talk on the internet about destruction in 2012…
August 29th, 2008 at 12:33 pm
[…] Shift in 2012? Universe Today: No Doomsday in 2012 Bad Astronomy Blog: 2012, the year nothing will happen Universe Today: 2012: No Planet X Universe Today: 2012: Planet X is not Nibiru Universe Today: […]
September 4th, 2008 at 6:38 pm
After watching the History channel last night on Nostradamous (Sp??), I was left feeling frightened and absolutely helpless. I couldn’t sleep thinking of how it will feel when the magnetic pull of the earth rips my limbs off in 2012.
And then I thought (after research) that this theory is not a bad thing. While I hope with every fiber if my being that the earth will not end on 2012, the mere thought that this is a possibility is changing the way I think. I am looking at the world in a different way today. I truly believe now more than ever that this change of thinking the Mayans predicted is here and the threat of dooms day will inevitably make people stop and think and live greener, healthier lives. Maybe that’s the reason for the prediction. To scare people straight! Something I did get from the show last night was that we can change this its not set in stone. I hear it every day ” you can make a difference….. blah blah blah”….. And until today I was like whatever! But I truly believe that. I don’t think anything external will destroy the earth, it will be us.
I would like to see a NASA report which explains what if anything could happen during that alignment.
All I believe is that we better do something to fix ourselves fast! Its up to us.
September 11th, 2008 at 6:26 am
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September 17th, 2008 at 6:27 am
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September 27th, 2008 at 11:48 pm
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October 3rd, 2008 at 8:18 pm
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October 6th, 2008 at 6:15 pm
The world might end just because of skeptic people, think about it people will believe just about anything. Having 30 billion believe that the world will end it might create panic. Look at the Y2K and how many people believe in that its was only one man that mentioned it. The 2012 thing has a lot more religion and other future prediction behind it.
October 9th, 2008 at 9:33 am
[…] about 2012 (yes, another one!) Universe Today: No Doomsday in 2012 Bad Astronomy Blog: 2012, the year nothing will happen Universe Today: 2012: No Planet X Universe Today: 2012: Planet X is not Nibiru Universe Today: […]
October 25th, 2008 at 12:29 am
i mean i was really nervous but in 2000 did anything happen i mean did they have these books and stuff out then??
October 25th, 2008 at 12:30 am
and before getting everyone in a scare they need to have a 100% anwser
October 25th, 2008 at 12:35 am
yeah what samatha said we will probably do it the mayans calender doe’s not end in 2012 it starts over and the alignment is in june not december it sounds kind of made up like 11:11 they don’t know that for 100% so why say that exact time sounds a bit fishy to me
October 28th, 2008 at 9:10 am
[…] paranoia mind due to 2012 Universe Today: No Doomsday in 2012 Bad Astronomy Blog: 2012, the year nothing will happen Universe Today: 2012: No Planet X Universe Today: 2012: Planet X is not Nibiru Universe Today: […]
November 13th, 2008 at 6:34 am
[…] of Pole Shift Universe Today: No Doomsday in 2012 Bad Astronomy Blog: 2012, the year nothing will happen Universe Today: 2012: No Planet X Universe Today: 2012: Planet X is not Nibiru Universe Today: […]
April 20th, 2009 at 10:33 am
Well, lets see. I’ve lived through 1 greeat depression, one world war, four consecutive brushfire wars, the atomic age, the jet age, the space age, the information age, etc.Will the world end? Doubt it. Will we have another great depression?
Like the 8 ball toy I used to shake for my kids,
“signs point to yes”. The bottom line is, if you hang
around long enough, something bad is sure to happen.
I suppose if hang around long enough, I will rejoin the carbon cycle.Deep time indeed.
I’m so old that I have the compass I used to carry before the last magnetic pole shift. I paid three shiney objects and,a spear for it. Got it at
Paleozoic Mountain.A large sports cahin founded
in Pre Historic times.:)
April 29th, 2009 at 4:54 pm
I for one am fed up with the History Channel. They used to have actual programs about History. Now there is all this garbage about Nostradamus, psychics, how all of us are going to die in 2012, and what the world will be like without people. Its not history. Its not even good fiction. I teach 8th grade History and my students are coming to class with a head full of garbage from the History Channel. They are so convinced that the world is coming to an end in 2012 that they actually use it as an excuse - why worry about trying to graduate. I think we should start a petition demanding that the FCC force the History Channel to change its name or else revoke their broadcasting license for filling the airwaves with alarmist crap and sullying the good name of real academic disciplines.
May 19th, 2009 at 11:21 pm
Nostradamus hostrodomas, flogonoumus pukonomus. I predict the following:
In 2012 an arrow will fire. It fires deep into the center of a sagotarus flatfooted bygynosorous. This is very bad. It will surely begin a transaction of major consequence. When this happens, we will see a bag floating in the sky. The bag will not open, but will remain closed until a certain time when the free masons have plugged in their calculations. Then when that happens a gigantic plug will appear in the sky along with a connector and a socket (from George Jetsons factory). Once that happens it will begin a cycle of clatimictic coportions. No one knows what this means for sure, but it has to do with a big clock that aligns with Jupiter and mars, and this is the age of the aquarous. Once all this occurs, according to nosdrodomus calculations, the sun will begin a transformation that will cause it to slowly erode into a sack. The sack is of unknow origins, not of this world or in fact this universe. It is a sack of antimatter that is from the bottom of a black hole. According to the prophecies of nostrodomus, it seems that this sack will be opened at the same time the bag is opened by the free masons. they will have the ancient calculations to open both the sack and the bag. This then begins the next age.
June 15th, 2009 at 11:29 pm
Phil:
You are welcome to use the Q&A from my Ask an Astrobiologist for this debunking.
David Morris0n
1. What is the origin of the prediction that the world will end in December 2012?
The story started with claims that Nibiru, a supposed planet discovered by the Sumerians, is headed toward Earth. Zecharia Sitchin, who writes fiction about the ancient Mesopotamian civilization of Sumer, claimed in several books (e.g., The Twelfth Planet, published in 1976) that he has found and translated Sumerian documents that identify the planet Nibiru, orbiting the Sun every 3600 years. These Sumerian fables include stories of “ancient astronauts” visiting Earth from a civilization of aliens called the Anunnaki. Then Nancy Lieder, a self-declared psychic who claims she is channeling aliens, wrote on her website Zetatalk that the inhabitants of a fictional planet around the star Zeta Reticuli warned her that the Earth was in danger from Planet X or Nibiru. This catastrophe was initially predicted for May 2003, but when nothing happened the doomsday date was moved forward to December 2012. Only recently have these two fables been linked to the end of the Mayan long-count at the winter solstice in 2012 – hence the predicted doomsday date of December 21, 2012.
2. The Sumerians were the first great civilization, and they made many accurate astronomical predictions, including the existence of the planets Uranus, Neptune and Pluto. So why should we not believe their predictions about Nibiru?
Nibiru is a name in Babylonian astrology sometimes associated with the god Marduk. Nibiru appears as a minor character in the Babylonian creation poem Enuma Elish as recorded in the library of Assurbanipal, King of Assyria (668-627 BCE). Sumer flourished much earlier, from about the 23rd century to the 17th century BCE. The claims that Nibiru is a planet and was known to the Sumerians are contradicted by scholars who (unlike Zecharia Sitchin) study and translate the written records of ancient Mesopotamia. Sumer was indeed a great civilization, important for the development of agriculture, water management, urban life, and especially writing. However, they left very few records dealing with astronomy. Certainly they did not know about the existence of Uranus, Neptune or Pluto. They also had no understanding that the planets orbited the Sun, an idea that first developed in ancient Greece two millennia after the end of Sumer. Claims that Sumerians had a sophisticated astronomy, or that they even had a god named Nibiru, are the product of Sitchin’s imagination.
3. How can you deny the existence of Nibiru when NASA discovered it in 1983 and the story appeared in leading newspapers? At that time you called it Planet X, and later it was named Xena or Eris.
IRAS (the NASA Infrared Astronomy Satellite, which carried out a sky survey for 10 months in 1983) discovered many infrared sources, but none of them was Nibiru or Planet X or any other objects in the outer solar system. There is a good discussion from Caltech to be found at (spider.ipac.caltech.edu/staff/tchester/iras/no_tenth_planet_yet.html). Briefly, IRAS cataloged 350,000 infrared sources, and initially many of these sources were unidentified (which was the point, of course, of making such a survey). All of these observations have been followed up by subsequent studies with more powerful instruments both on the ground and in space. The rumor about a “tenth planet” erupted in 1984 after a scientific paper was published in Astrophysical Journal Letters titled “Unidentified point sources in the IRAS minisurvey”, which discussed several infrared sources with “no counterparts”. But these “mystery objects” were subsequently found to be distant galaxies (except one, which was a wisp of “infrared cirrus”), as published in 1987. No IRAS source has ever turned out to be a planet. A good discussion of this whole issue is to be found on Phil Plait’s website (www.badastronomy.com/bad/misc/planetx/science.html#iras). The bottom line is that Nibiru is a myth, with no basis in fact. To an astronomer, persistent claims about a planet that is “nearby” but “invisible” are just plain silly.
4. Maybe we should be asking about Planet X or Eris, not Nibiru. Why does NASA keep secret the orbit of Eris?
“Planet X” is an oxymoron when applied to a real object. The term has been used by astronomers over the past century for a possible or suspected object. Once the object is found, it is given a real name, as was done with Pluto and Eris, both of which were at some time referred to as Planet X. If a new object turns out to be not real, or not a planet, then you won’t hear about it again. If it is real, it is not called Planet X.
Eris is one of several dwarf planets recently found by astronomers in the outer solar system, all of them on normal orbits that will never bring them near Earth. Like Pluto, Eris is smaller than our Moon. It is very far away, and its orbit never brings it closer than about 4 billion miles. There is no secret about Eris and its orbit, as you can easily verify by googling it or looking it up in Wikipedia.
5. Do you deny that NASA built a South Pole Telescope (SPT) to track Nibiru? Why else would they build a telescope at the South Pole?
There is a telescope at the South Pole, but it was not built by NASA and not used to study Nibiru. The South Pole Telescope was supported by the National Science Foundation, and it is a radio telescope, not an optical instrument. It cannot take images or photos. You can look it up on Wikipedia. The Antarctic is a great place for astronomical infrared and short-wave-radio observations, and it also has the advantage that objects can be observed continuously without the interference of the day-night cycle.
I should add that it is impossible to imagine a geometry in which an object can be seen only from the South Pole. Even if it were due south of the Earth, it could be seen from the entire southern hemisphere.
6. There are many photos and videos of Nibiru on the Internet. Isn’t that proof that it exists?
The great majority of the photos and videos on the Internet are of some feature near the Sun (apparently supporting the claim that Nibiru has been hiding behind the Sun for the past several years.) These are actually false images of the Sun caused by internal reflections in the lens, often called lens flare. You can identify them easily by the fact that they appear diametrically opposite the real solar image, as if reflected across the center of the image. This is especially obvious in videos, where as the camera moves, the false image dances about always exactly opposite the real image. Similar lens flare is a source of many UFO photos taken at night with strong light sources such as streetlights in the frame. I am surprised that people don’t recognize this common photo artifact. I am also amazed that these photos showing something nearly as large and bright as the Sun (a “second sun”) are accepted together with claims made on some of the same websites that Nibiru is too faint to be seen or photographed except with large telescopes.
One widely reported telescopic photo (www.greatdreams.com/nibiru-possible.jpg) shows two views of an expanding gas cloud far beyond the solar system, which is not moving; you can see this from the fact that the stars are the same in both pictures. A sharp-eyed reader of this website identified these photos as a gas shell around the star V838 Mon. Wikipedia has a nice write-up and a beautiful photo of it from Hubble. Another high school student was initially impressed by posted images of a red blob that were said to be of Nibiru. Then he worked out in his Photoshop class how to make just such pictures starting from scratch.
One video posted in summer 2008 on Youtube (www.youtube.com/watch?v=qDKtkWIx00A) shows a guy standing in his kitchen claiming that one of the objects discovered by a NASA x-ray telescope is Nibiru. What is his evidence? That since this false-color x-ray image released by NASA is blue, this must really be a nearby planet with an ocean. This would be hilarious if it were not used to frighten people.
7. Can you explain the fact that the area at (5h 53m 27s, -6 10’ 58”) has been blackened out in Google Sky and Microsoft Telescope? People suggest that these have been blackened out because those are the co-ordinates where Nibiru is located at present.
Several people have asked me about this blank rectangle in Orion in Google Sky, which is a presentation of images from the Sloan Digital Survey. This can’t be a “hiding place” for Nibiru, since it is a part of the sky that could be seen from almost everywhere on the Earth in the winter of 2007-08 when much of the talk about Nibiru began. That would contradict the claims that Nibiru was hiding behind the Sun or that it could be seen only from the southern hemisphere. But I too was curious about this blank rectangle, so I asked a friend who is a senior scientist at Google. He replied that he “found out that the missing data is due to a processing error in the image stitching program we use to display the Sloan survey images. The team assures me that in the next run through, this will be fixed!”
8. If the government knew about Nibiru, wouldn’t they keep it a secret to avoid panic? Isn’t it the government’s job to keep the population at ease?
There are many objectives of government, but they do not include keeping the population at ease. My experience is that sometimes parts of the government do just the opposite, as in the frequent references to various terrorist threats or warnings about driving accidents on long holiday weekends, which are no more dangerous than any other time. There is a long history of associating bad things with political opponents (older readers will remember the “missile gap” in the 1960 election, younger ones will note the many current references to who is or is not keeping the U.S. safe from terrorists). Further, social scientists have pointed out that many of our concepts of public panic are the product of Hollywood, while in the real world people have a good record of helping each other in a time of danger. I think everyone also recognizes that keeping bad news secret usually backfires, making the issue even worse when the facts finally come out. And in the case of Nibiru, these facts would come out very soon indeed.
Even if they wanted to, the government could not keep Nibiru a secret. If it were real, it would be tracked by thousands of astronomers, amateurs as well a professional. These astronomers are spread all over the world. I know the astronomy community, and these scientists would not keep a secret even if ordered to. You just can’t hide a planet on its way to the inner solar system!
9. Why does the Mayan calendar say the world will end in 2012? I have heard that they have been pretty accurate in the past with other planetary predictions. How can you be sure you know more than they did?
Calendars exist for keeping track of the passage of time, not for predicting the future. The Mayan astronomers were clever, and they developed a very complex calendar. Ancient calendars are interesting to historians, but of they cannot match the ability we have today to keep track of time, or the precision of the calendars currently in use. The main point, however, is that calendars, whether contemporary or ancient, cannot predict the future of our planet or warn of things to happen on a specific date such as 2012.
I note that my desk calendar ends much sooner, on December 31 2009, but I do not interpret this as a prediction of Armageddon. It is just the beginning of a new year.
10. What is the polar shift theory? Is it true that the earth’s crust does a 180-degree rotation around the core in a matter of days if not hours? Does this have something to do to do with our solar system dipping beneath the galactic equator?
A reversal in the rotation of Earth is impossible. It has never happened and never will. There are slow movements of the continents (for example Antarctica was near the equator hundreds of millions of years ago), but that is irrelevant to claims of reversal of the rotational poles. However, many of the disaster websites pull a bait-and-shift to fool people. They claim a relationship between the rotation and the magnetic polarity of Earth, which does change irregularly with a magnetic reversal taking place every 400,000 years on average. As far as we know, such a magnetic reversal doesn’t cause any harm to life on Earth. A magnetic reversal is very unlikely to happen in the next few millennia, anyway. But they falsely claim that a magnetic reversal is coming soon (in 2012) and that this is the same as, or will trigger, a reversal of rotational poles. The bottom line is: (a) Rotation direction and magnetic polarity are not related. (b) There is no reason to expect a reversal of magnetic polarity any time soon, or to anticipate any bad effects on life when it does eventually happen. © A sudden shift in rotational pole with disastrous consequences is impossible. Also, none of this has anything to do with the galactic equator or any of the other nonsense about alignments that appears on many of the conspiracy theory websites.
11. When most of the planets align in 2012 and planet Earth is in the center of the Milky Way, what will the effects of this be on planet Earth? Could it cause a pole shift, and if so what could we expect?
There is no planet alignment in 2012 or any other time in the next several decades. As to the Earth being in the center of the Milky Way, I don’t know what this phrase means. If you are referring to the Milky Way Galaxy, we are rather far toward the edge of this spiral galaxy, some 30,000 light years from the center. We circle the galactic center in a period of 225-250 million years, always keeping approximately the same distance. Concerning a pole shift, I also don’t know what this means. If it means some sudden change in the position of the pole (that is, the rotation axis of the Earth), then that is impossible, as noted in the answer to Question 10. What many websites do discuss is the alignment of the Earth and Sun with the center of the Milky Way in the constellation of Sagittarius. This happens every December, with no bad consequences, and there is no reason to expect 2012 to be different from any other year.
12. When the sun and the Earth line up on the galactic plane at the same time with the black hole being in the center couldn’t that cause something to happen, due to the fact that the black hole has such a strong gravitational pull.
There is a giant black hole in the center of our Milky Way galaxy, and like any concentration of mass it exerts gravitational force on the rest of the Galaxy. However, the galactic center is very far away, approximately 30,000 light years, so it has negligible effects on the solar system or the Earth. There are no special forces from the galactic plane or the galactic center. The only important force that acts on the Earth is the gravitation of the Sun and Moon. As far as the influence of the galactic plane, there is nothing special about this location. The last time the Earth was in the galactic plane was several million years ago. Claims that we are about to cross the galactic plane are untrue.
13. I am scared about the fact that the Earth will enter the Dark Rift in the Milky Way. What will this do? Will the Earth be swallowed up?
The “dark rift” is a popular name for the broad and diffuse dust clouds in the
inner arm of the Milky Way Galaxy, which block our view of the galactic
center. The entire “galactic alignment” scare is pretty crazy. Late in
December the Sun is always approximately in the direction of the center of
the Galaxy as seen from the Earth, but so what? Apparently the con-men who are trying to scare you have decided to use these meaningless phrases about “alignments” and the “dark rift” and “photon belt” precisely because they are not understood by the public. It is too bad, but there is no law against lying on the Internet or anywhere else except in a court of law. As far as the safety of the Earth is concerned, the important threats are from global warming and loss of biological diversity, and perhaps someday from collision with an asteroid or comet, not the pseudoscientific claims about 2012.
14. I have heard that the Earth’s magnetic field will flip in 2012 just when the strongest level of solar storms in history is predicted to take place. Will this kill us or destroy our civilization?
Near solar maximum (which happens every 11 years approximately), there are many more solar flares and coronal mass ejections than near solar minimum. Flares and mass ejections are no danger for humans or other life on Earth. They could endanger astronauts in deep space or on the Moon, and this is something that NASA must learn to deal with, but it is not a problem for you or me. Large outbursts can interrupt radio transmission, cause bright displays of the aurora (Northern and Southern Lights), and damage the electronics of some satellites in space. Today many satellites are designed to deal with this possibility, for example by switching off some of their more delicate circuits and going into a “safe” mode for a few hours. In extreme cases solar activity can also disrupt electrical transmissions on the ground, possibly leading to electrical blackouts, but this is rare.
The last solar maximum occurred in 2001, so the next one was predicted for around 2012, 11 years later. However, the most recent solar minimum was unusual, with a period of a couple of years with almost no sunspots or other indications of solar activity, so scientists now guess that the next maximum will be delayed, perhaps to 2013. However, the details of the solar cycle remain basically unpredictable.
You are correct that the Earth’s magnetic field protects us by creating a large region in space, called the Earth’s magnetosphere, within which most of the material ejected from the Sun is captured or deflected, but there is no reason to expect a reversal of magnetic polarity any time soon. These magnetic reversals happen only once in 400,000 years on average.
15. I am confused about a report on the Fox News website that in 2012 a “Powerful Solar Storm Could Shut Down U.S. for Months”. They referred to a report from the National Academy of Sciences that was commissioned and paid for by NASA. If nothing is going to happen as a result of the event in 2012, why would NASA allow such nonsense to be reported?
NASA is pleased with the National Research Council report on heliophysics. As you note, this report includes a worst-case analysis of what could happen today if there were a repetition of the biggest solar storm ever recorded (in 1859). The problem is the way such information can be used out of context. There is no reason to expect such a large solar storm in the near future, certainly not in 2012 specifically. Your reference to “the event in 2012” illustrates this problem. There is no prediction of an “event in 2012”. We don’t even know if the next solar maximum will take place in that year. The whole 2012 disaster scenario is a hoax, fueled by ads for the Hollywood science-fiction disaster film “2012”. I can only hope that most people are able to distinguish Hollywood film plots from reality.
16. All my school friends are telling me that we are all going to die in the year 2012 due to a meteor hitting earth. Is this true?
Your friends are wrong. The Earth has always been subject to impacts by comets and asteroids, although big hits are very rare. The last big impact was 65 million years ago, and that led to the extinction of the dinosaurs. Today NASA astronomers are carrying out a survey called the Spaceguard Survey to find any large near-Earth asteroids long before they hit. We have already determined that there are no threatening asteroids as large as the one that killed the dinosaurs. All this work is done openly with the discoveries posted every day on the NASA NEO Program Office website (neo.jpl.nasa.gov), so you can see for yourself that nothing is predicted to hit in 2012.
17. If Nibiru is a hoax, why doesn’t NASA issue a denial? How can you permit these stores to circulate and frighten people? Why doesn’t the U.S. government do something about it!
If you go to the NASA home page, nasa.gov, you will see many stories that expose the Nibiru-2012 hoax. Try searching nasa.com under “Nibiru” or “2012”. There is not much more that NASA can do. These hoaxes have nothing to do with NASA and are not based on NASA data, so we as an agency are not directly involved. But scientists, both within NASA and outside, recognize that this hoax with its effort to frighten people is a distraction from more important science concerns, such as global warming and loss of biological diversity. We live in a country where there is freedom of speech, and that includes freedom to lie. You should be glad there are no censors. But if you will just use common sense I am sure you can recognize the lies. As we approach 2012, the lies will be come even more obvious.
18. Can you prove to me that Nibiru is a hoax? There are so many reports that something terrible will happen in 2012. I need proof because the government and NASA are keeping so much from us.
It is not logical to ask for proof that the 2012 doomsday is a hoax. Your questions should be to the doomsday advocates to prove that what they are saying is true, not to NASA to prove it is false. If someone claimed on the Internet that there were 50-foot tall purple elephants walking through Cleveland, would anyone expect NASA to prove this wrong? The burden of proof falls on those who make wild claims. Remember the often-quoted comment from Carl Sagan that extraordinary claims demand extraordinary levels of evidence if they are to be believed.
However, I think that astronomers have reached the point where we can offer extremely strong arguments that Nibiru does not exist. A large planet (or a brown dwarf) in our solar system would have been known to astronomers for many years, both indirectly from its gravitational perturbations on other objects and by direct detection in the infrared. The NASA Infrared Astronomy Satellite (IRAS) carried out the first all-sky survey in 1983, and several subsequent surveys would also have seen Nibiru if it were there. Further, if a large mass passed through the inner solar system every 3600 years, we would see its disruptive effects on the orbits of the inner planets, and we don’t.
You don’t need to take my word for it. Just use common sense. Have you seen Nibiru? In 2008 many websites said it would be visible to the naked eye in spring 2009. If a large planet or brown dwarf were headed for the inner solar system in 2012, it would already be tracked by hundreds of thousands of astronomers, professional and amateur, all over the world. Do you know any amateur astronomers who are watching it? Have you seen any photos or discussion of it in the big popular astronomy magazines like Sky & Telescope? Just think about it. No one could hide Nibiru if it existed.
19. What about the scary ads for the new film 2012? They tell us to look at these Internet sites to verify the doomsday threat.
The pseudoscientific claims about Nibiru and a doomsday in 2012, together with distrust of the government, are being amplified by publicity for the new film from Columbia Pictures titled 2012, to be released in November 2009. The film’s trailer, appearing in theaters and on their website , shows a tidal wave breaking over the Himalayas, with only the following words: “How would the governments of our planet prepare 6 billion people for the end of the world? [long pause] They wouldn’t. [long pause] Find out the Truth. Google search 2012”.
The film publicity includes creation of a faux scientific website (www.instituteforhumancontinuity.org/) for “The Institute for Human Continuity”, which is entirely fictitious. According to this website, the IHC is dedicated to scientific research and public preparedness. Its mission is the survival of mankind. The website explains that the Institute was founded 1978 by international leaders of government, business, and science. They say that in 2004, IHC scientists confirmed with 94% certainty that the world would be destroyed in 2012. This website encourages people to register for a lottery to select those who will be saved; a colleague submitted the name of her cat, which was accepted. I learned from Wikipedia that creating this sort of fake website is a new advertising technique called “Viral Marketing”, by analogy with computer viruses.
20. Is it possible that the influx of questions you describe is part of some kind of campaign for a book or movie, in the hopes that the volume of denials is taken as more “evidence” that there is a conspiracy?
I ask myself the same questions every day, as the volume of mail I receive about Nibiru (along with various alignments and pole shifts) keeps increasing — now more than 20 per week. Clearly there is money to be made from people’s fear about an approaching doomsday. Some of this hype is apparently advertising for the science fiction disaster movie 2012 (see Question 19). Many websites are selling books and tapes about Nibiru or even “survival kits”. It is all very sad, that with so many real issues (such as global warming and financial collapse) people are being taken in by these lies. In the final chapter of a new astronomy book (The Hunt for Planet X) by Govert Shilling, he writes: “There is plenty to do for the debunkers – the archaeologists and astronomers who take a long and skeptical look at the tidal wave of Nibiru nonsense and explain with scientific precision what is wrong with this cosmic fairy-tale. They will have their work cut out in the next few years. And on December 22, 2012 there will be a new pseudoscientific cock-and-bull story doing the rounds and the whole circus will start all over again. Because no matter how many new celestial bodies are found in our solar system, there will always be a need for a mysterious Planet X.”
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