2012 is coming very soon. The movie, that is — the disaster film directed by Roland Emmerich depicting global catastrophe of Biblical proportions. The year itself is of course a few dozen months away, and there is growing interest, excitement, and concern for both events.
The film "2012," which opens Nov. 13, takes place, rather obviously, in the year 2012, though it could have been set in 1995 or 2013. The movie's disasters have no particular link to that year, it's just when the Earth happens to start burping earthquakes and farting fire. 2012 made a perfect promotional hook for the film, because the ancient Mayans predicted that the world would end that year, if not specifically on December 21, 2012.
That's one story, anyway.
Whether or not 2012 will bring cataclysmic volcanism or a great flood, it has undeniably brought a flood of books. New Age and doomsday authors have been cranking out 2012-themed books at an amazing pace over the past few years; there are literally thousands of such titles in print, with more on the way.
While many authors and 2012 "experts" are playing up the doomsday scenario, others believe that the year will bring not disaster but a new era of global harmony (as in what did not happen with the so-called Harmonic Convergence in 1987). It seems that anyone with access to a keyboard and an opinion on 2012 (or prophecy in general) is trying to cash in. (It will be interesting to see how many of those books will be for sale on Amazon.com for one cent on Jan. 1, 2013.)
Scientists announced tonight that they have discovered “buckets” of water on the Moon following the analysis of data from a spacecraft that was deliberately crashed into a lunar crater last month.
The researchers said the evidence for the existence of significant bodies of water ice hidden in polar craters on the Moon is “definitive” and that the total quantities could be big enough to support a permanently-manned lunar base.
It is the first time that the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (Nasa) has been so categorical about the discovery of water on the Moon. Previous studies had only suggested that the presence of water might be possible and then only in trace amounts.
With the upcoming disaster film "2012" and the current hype about Mayan calendars and doomsday predictions, it seems like a good time to put such notions in context.
Most prophets of doom come from a religious perspective, though the secular crowd has caused its share of scares as well. One thing the doomsday scenarios tend to share in common: They don't come to pass. Here are 10 that didn't pan out, so far. (MSNBC) - See also : Whoops! Failed Armageddon Prophecies + Predictions
Fears about the year 2012 rest on just one of at least three Maya calendar systems unearthed by scholars, the "Long Count," which began on Aug. 13, 3114 B.C.
The Long Count tracks the duration of what the Maya called "great cycles" of time. The cycle we're currently in ends on 13.0.0.0.0, what we non-Maya call Dec. 23, 2012.
"I tell my students it is similar to an odometer," says archaeologist Lisa Lucero of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. "After it hits 100,000 miles, it starts again – but there is no new car, nor does the car self-destruct."
Worries about the date rest from a Maya inscription fragment suggesting the date's importance at the site of Tortuguero in Mexico, says archaeologist Kristin Romey, science adviser to Asylum.com. "The only problem is the Maya had Long Count calendar inscriptions mentioning baktuns (millennia) much further in the future at other sites, so 2012 hardly seems the end of the world."
This year's Leonid meteor shower peaks on Tuesday, Nov. 17th. If forecasters are correct, the shower should produce a mild but pretty sprinkling of meteors over North America followed by a more intense outburst over Asia. The phase of the Moon will be new, setting the stage for what could be one of the best Leonid showers in years.
"We're predicting 20 to 30 meteors per hour over the Americas, and as many as 200 to 300 per hour over Asia," says Bill Cooke of NASA's Meteoroid Environment Office. "Our forecast is in good accord with independent theoretical work by other astronomers."1
Right: A Leonid meteor at dawn, photographed in 2002 by Simon Filiatrault of Quebec, Canada.
Leonids are bits of debris from Comet Tempel-Tuttle. Every 33 years the comet visits the inner solar system and leaves a stream of dusty debris in its wake. Many of these streams have drifted across the November portion of Earth's orbit. Whenever we hit one, meteors come flying out of the constellation Leo.
Colourful, swirling clouds of cosmic dust interspersed with glowing star clusters are revealed in this extraordinary image of the Milky Way.
The dazzling image combining reds, yellows, blues and purples, was created by layering stunningly detailed pictures from the Hubble Space Telescope, the Spitzer Space Telescope and Chandra X-ray Observatory on top of each other.
The Milky Way is at the centre of our own galaxy and this image shows its core. The image was created to celebrate the 400th anniversary of Galileo Galilei's first demonstration of his telescope. (DailyMail UK)
Although no one noticed at the time, the Earth was almost hit by an asteroid last Friday.
The previously undiscovered asteroid came within 8,700miles of Earth but astronomers noticed it only 15 hours before it made its closest approach.
Its orbit brought it 30 times nearer than the Moon, which is 250,000 miles away.
But before you head for the nuclear bunkers you will be relieved to learn the tumbling rock was only 23ft across. Similar sized objects pass by this close to Earth about twice a year and impact on the planet about once every five years.
The world is not coming to an end on December 21, 2012, the US space agency insisted Monday in a rare campaign to dispel widespread rumors fuelled by the Internet and a new Hollywood movie.
Sony Pictures's latest big screen offering "2012" arrives in theaters on Friday, with a 200-million-dollar production about the end of the world supposedly based on myths backed by the Mayan calendar.
The doomsday scenario revolves claims that the end of time will come as an obscure Planet X -- or Nibiru -- heads toward or collides into Earth.
The mysterious planet was supposedly discovered by the Sumerians, according to claims by pseudo-scientists, paranormal activity enthusiasts and Internet theorists.
Some websites accuse NASA of concealing the truth on the wayward planet's existence, but the US space agency denounced such stories as an "Internet hoax."
"There is no factual basis for these claims," NASA said in a question-and-answer posting on its website.
Doomsday predictions are about as common as instances of surviving doomsday prognostications. Prophets of doom can have religious or secular motivations. The latest scare, that the world will end in 2012, is rooted in myths of the Mayan calendar. Doomsday scenarios have been concocted around Halley's Comet, comet Hale-Bopp, Y2K and of course the writings of Nostradamus. But the world has not ended. (Live Science )
Many recent earthquakes may have been the aftershocks of large quakes that occurred hundreds of years ago, according to scientists.
In the journal Nature, researchers described a new pattern in the frequency of aftershocks that could explain some major quakes. They found that, away from plate boundaries, echoes of past earthquakes can continue for several hundred years. Here, in the middle of a continent, the earth takes longer to recover.
It's something we had never spotted before," said Seth Stein from Northwestern University in Illinois, US.
"Most big earthquakes happen at [plate] boundaries - like the San Andreas fault. There is a lot of movement there and aftershocks go on for about ten years after a big quake."
A major quake with tsunami potential hit off eastern Indonesia Saturday, seismologists said, but there were no immediate reports of any damage and the tsunami warning was later lifted.
The 7.3-magnitude quake struck at 11:40 pm (1440 GMT) about 209 kilometres (130 miles) northwest of Saumlaki, Maluku province, at a depth of 165 kilometres, the Indonesian Meteorology and Geophysics Agency said.
A later US Geological Survey report registered the quake, in the Banda Sea, at a magnitude of 7.0.
Indonesia sits on the Pacific "Ring of Fire," where the meeting of continental plates causes high volcanic and seismic activity.
"There is no report of any death toll yet. The Maluku health agency is sending a team to Saumlaki to check on the situation. Communication there is difficult," health ministry crisis centre head Rustam Pakaya said in a text message.
Supervolcanoes and cosmic impacts get all the terrible glory for causing mass extinctions , but a new theory suggests lowly algae may be the killer behind the world's great species annihilations.
Today, just about anywhere there is water, there can be toxic algae. The microscopic plants usually exist in small concentrations, but a sudden warming in the water or an injection of dust or sediment from land can trigger a bloom that kills thousands of fish, poisons shellfish, or even humans.
James Castle and John Rodgers of Clemson University think the same thing happened during the five largest mass extinctions in Earth's history. Each time a large die off occurred, they found a spike in the number of fossil algae mats called stromatolites strewn around the planet. Castle will be presenting the research on October 19 at the annual meeting of the Geological Society of America in Portland, Oregon.
"If you go through theories of mass extinctions, there are always some unanswered questions," Castle said. "For example, an impact – how does that cause species to go extinct? Is it climate change, dust in the atmosphere? It's probably not going to kill off all these species on its own."
Have you heard about Nibiru? Well, neither had I, and that shows how out of the mainstream both of us are. Nibiru was invented in 1976 by Zecharia Sitchin, author of numerous works of speculative fiction. In the Sitchin universe, Nibiru orbits the sun every 3,600 years, and is inhabited by Anunnaki, who visit Earth from time to time to (a) stir up trouble and (b) give us some hints of the technological advances possible if only we would stop shooting each other, or something.
As you may not know, the Mayan calendar predicted that Nibiru will pass close to the Earth on Dec. 21, 2012, causing havoc and making movie stars scream at each other. This is all pre-documented in a movie called "2012," which has set up a Web site (instituteforhumancontinuity.org) that purports to give valuable advice about what you should do when Nibiru hits Earth, including a wonderful "survival lottery" for which you can sign up, so you'll have a chance to be one of the lucky ones.
Now, Sony Pictures is mentioned on the Web site, as is the movie "2012," so that should be a tip-off for people who pay attention to the small print. But people who pay attention to the small print are not the sort of people, in general, who believe in planet Nibiru. In fact, observatories and astronomy departments at universities are being flooded with inquiries about Nibiru and global devastation, so people are taking it seriously. None of the people taking it seriously are professional astronomers.
With winds raging at the speed of 260 kmph, the Hurricane Rick on Sunday reached Category Five, the top of the Saffir-Simpson scale, a U.S. weather service said.
Rick grew from a Category One to Category Four storm in about two days and is currently moving along Mexico's Pacific coast. Residents of Acapulco have been warned that it might trigger landslides and flooding in the area.
"Satellite imagery indicates that Rick has become a Category Five hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson hurricane scale with maximum sustained winds of 160 mph [260 kmph]," the Miami-based U.S. National Hurricane Center said.
Rick is expected to move along the Mexican coast during the next five days and to make landfall at the Baja California peninsula next week.
About a dozen of tropical cyclones have been registered in the Pacific in this hurricane season. In early September, Hurricane Jimena has destroyed several dozen houses in Mexico's Mulege and Comondu municipalities, killing one person and forcing the evacuation of at least 6,000.
Hurricane Rick quickly strengthened into an "extremely dangerous" Category 4 storm off Mexico's Pacific coast today and forecasters said it could strike the Baja California Peninsula in about five days.
The storm had sustained winds near 135 mph (185 kph) and has a strong chance to grow into a monster Category 5 storm with winds of 155 mph (250 kph), the U.S. National Hurricane Center in Miami reported, though it said the storm was likely to lose much of that punch before hitting land.
Rick was centered about 255 miles (410 kilometers) southwest of Acapulco this morning and it was moving west-northwest near 12 mph (19 kph), the center said.
For the past 30 years, business leaders, former government officials and scientists have been secretly working on a plan to save humanity from destruction when the Earth collides with another planet on 21 December 2012.
They have set up a covert Institute for Human Continuity which has now agreed to go public and warn the world that there is a 94 per cent probability of "cataclysmic forces" destroying our planet in three years' time.
Its website offers survival kits and encourages people to sign up for a lottery to decide who will be among the lucky few chosen to be saved.
You are probably thinking that this is an elaborate hoax – you would be right. But hundreds of people have apparently been taken in by the nonsense put out by Sony Pictures as part of a "viral marketing" campaign for its film 2012, set for release next month.
A small asteroid will zip past the Earth late Friday EDT (early Saturday GMT), flying just inside the orbit of the moon. It should pass safely by our home planet.
The space rock, named 2009 TM8, was just discovered Thursday by the Catalina Sky Survey in Arizona. It will get within 215,000 miles (348,000 km) of Earth when it zooms by at a speed of over 18,000 mph. "That's slightly closer than the orbit of our moon," NASA's Asteroid Watch team said Friday via Twitter.
The time of closest approach will be 0344 GMT Saturday, or 11:44 p.m. EDT tonight.
A colossal earthquake could hit Indonesia's Sumatra island within 30 years, triggering a tsunami and making last month's deadly temblor look tiny by comparison.
Kerry Sieh, director of the Earth Observatory of Singapore, said the next big earthquake would last more than six times as long as the 7.6 magnitude quake which struck western Sumatra on September 30, leveling the city of Padang. "We expect it will be about a magnitude 8.8, plus or minus say 0.1".
He said last month's Sumatra quake lasted about 45 seconds. "This one'll last about five minutes," Sieh said." This 7.6 is very, very small, minuscule compared to the great earthquakes ."
The official death toll reached 1,115 on Wednesday but many more are feared dead after villages were turned into mass graves. Around 100,000 houses are estimated to have been destroyed, leaving about half a million people homeless.
"We're predicting 20 to 30 meteors per hour over the Americas, and as many as 200 to 300 per hour over Asia," says Bill Cooke of NASA's Meteoroid Environment Office. "Our forecast is in good accord with independent theoretical work by other astronomers."1
