And do you think the world is going to end on 21-12-2012?

[pagroove]

Lots of Doomsday movies about this on youtube. Also lots of opinions and possible things that can or cannot happen.
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Or just nothing happens
ideas?

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Not that I'm really afraid because IF somethings happen it's so big no-one will escape such a disaster

[Lestradae]

The biggest unit of the maya calendar (5.200 years, 1/5 earth precession) might, but the world? Nope.

[Disembodied]

No, no, the world ends in 2038, on the Unix Millennium ...

[ClymAngus]

Wouldn't it be terribly neat if it did. Which usually means it won't.

Of course should you feel the NEED for an apocalypse then lobby your PM to start a nuclear war on said date. Man created the calendar, it's there fore down to man to invent the necessary ragnarok.

What? Oh no, no, no. These things don't happen by themselves. They take organizing.

[Cmdr Wyvern]

That's the date (I hope) Micro$haft files a Chapter 11.
Doomsday? Maybe for the paid $hills and troll$, not to mention all the $ecurity vendor$ and viru$ coders that depend on all the glaring flaws in window$ $oftware.

For the rest of us, it would be a rapture.

[Randy]

The end of the world has been predicted so many times and so many times the date has come and gone and the world is still here. But it sells books and television spots and makes charlatans rich.

Assuming for the moment that somehow there really is an invisible planet on a collision course with Earth (or whatever the latest absurdity is) why worry about it? We can't exactly leave.

Besides, 2012 is a couple of years off. If one is hit by a bus tomorrow on the way to work and is killed, then that person won't care.

Plan for tomorrow but live like today is your last.

And now I am planning to wake up tomorrow for work.

Randy

[Cmd. Cheyd]

That's the date (I hope) Micro$haft files a Chapter 11.
Doomsday? Maybe for the paid $hills and troll$, not to mention all the $ecurity vendor$ and viru$ coders that depend on all the glaring flaws in window$ $oftware.

For the rest of us, it would be a rapture.

A total collapse in 3 years is virtually impossible. And yes, it would mean a doomsday. Too much business infrastructure would be impacted. And hey, some of us like some (not all) of their products.

As I have said many times in my life: Use the right tool for the right job. Sometimes it's Microsoft, sometimes it's Mac. Sometimes it's Linux. And sometimes, just sometimes.... It's a Barrett M107 .50 Cal sniper...

[Wolfwood]

The end of the world has been predicted so many times and so many times the date has come and gone and the world is still here. But it sells books and television spots and makes charlatans rich.

It does?

Huh, I never realised people paid any attention to such crap... Maybe I should start writing something like that myself... Will just have to come up with a nice date that's not too far off (people need to feel the immediacy of the danger - it does no good if you start talking about millions of years...)...

[Diziet Sma]

It won't be the end of the world, but I believe that there are better than good odds of some seriously interesting (as in disruptive on a massive scale) shit going down... for some perfectly scientific reasons, too....

There are a number of events currently taking place all of which appear to be coming to a head at around the same time, to wit, in 2012. The combination of them has the potential to be a real kick in the gonads to our society.

For reasons unknown, Earths magnetic field has been weakening for the last 2000 years. Some 500 years ago, the rate of decrease became much more rapid. Another acceleration took place about 100 years ago, to the point that in the last century alone there has been a 50% decrease in field strength. In the last 20 years or so, it has also become erratic, to the point that aeronautical maps of the world have had to be revised globally in order for the autopilot systems to work.

Recently a tear was found in the Earth's magnetic field, four times the diameter of the Earth (ten times what was considered the theoretical maximum). For complex reasons such a hole creates a situation where the effects of solar storms and CME's at the next period of sunspot activity are amplified to 20 times stronger than usual. Sunspot Cycle 24 is expected to peak in 2012. The best model forecasts it to be one of the strongest in centuries, 30-50 percent stronger than the last one.

A study by the Metatech Corporation, commissioned by NASA IIRC, found that if we had a solar event similar to that of 1859 (the strongest in the last 200 years) it would take out the entire North American electrical grid. A study by the US National Academy of Sciences has outlined some very grim possibilities for the US in a worst-case solar storm scenario.

Then there is the Suns' behaviour to consider. While the magnetic field of Earth is getting weaker, the suns' has increased by 230% since 1901. Solar output has increased by 50% in the same timeframe. We are not alone in our global warming situation, global warming is also being observed in at least 5 other planets in the Solar System. It is entirely possible that the human contribution to global warming is negligible.

Now we have another die to roll... As the Solar System gradually rotates around the Galactic Rim, it regularly passes through the thickest part of the Galactic Plane, (or Disc) from one side to the other in a 62 million year cycle. The galaxy itself has a magnetic field, and the disc is the divider between the North and South poles. For some complex reasons I suspect there is a good chance that passing through the disc will cause the Earth's magnetic field to collapse to zero before flipping poles. If the field collapses, the Earth could effectively become a giant microwave oven for some unknown (hopefully brief) period of time.

Passing through the thickest part of the disc takes around 20 years, and you'll never guess when we reach the half-way point, or middle...

Yep, Dec 2012.

Personally, I believe that all 3 of the above factors are directly related.

Other studies link solar weather cycles to violent weather on Earth, galactic cycles to ice-ages and mass extinctions, and so on.. We're actually also about due for another ice-age, too.. the Yellowstone Caldera should pop its cork sometime soon if it keeps to its almost clockwork-like cycle again.

it's entirely possible that the above events could trigger a new ice-age, the latest studies show that, far from being gradual, an ice-age comes about very rapidly, typically in 3-5 years.

You pays your money and you takes your choice.

For Homo Digitalus, the potential consequences of the above could very well seem like the end of the world.


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The above is summarised VERY briefly... PM me if you want to read about it..

[Lestradae]

Hi Diziet Sma!

Hm, some of what you said is simply not correct the way you put it.

For reasons unknown, Earths magnetic field has been weakening for the last 2000 years. Some 500 years ago, the rate of decrease became much more rapid. Another acceleration took place about 100 years ago, to the point that in the last century alone there has been a 50% decrease in field strength. In the last 20 years or so, it has also become erratic, to the point that aeronautical maps of the world have had to be revised globally in order for the autopilot systems to work.

This is basically correct, but the reasons are not unknown. The earth's iron core has some pretty massive electrical charges rotating inside. That produces a magnetic field. This is what makes a compass move. It orients onto the earth's magnetic field lines.

Those electrical streams are actually behaving like a slow pendulum. Because they interact with the earth's rotation and also probably the sun's magnetic field, they are basically adjusted poles to the rotation axis.

But, the pendulum is unbalancing itself slowly. As a result of that, it "snaps" its poles every few hundred thousand years or so, and we happen to be in the beginning stage of just such a transition. The transition itself is - as the magnetic field pendulum is oscillating chaotically - going to take a few hundred years, too. It has been estimated that this one started about 200 years ago.

The earth's rotational axis and magnetic poles have already started to deviate from each other, and the magnetic field lowered. On the tipping point, there will most likely be a short period where the magnetic field shuts off. Then no compass will work. Then there will be another brief period of low magnetic field which's poles are not aligned with the rotational axis. But the northern compass needle will point to the south then.

After that, there will be another few hundred thousand years of stable, strong magnetic field with magnetic poles and axis aligned, just the compass north will point to the south. And then it's going to repeat itself.

A few 100.000 years might sound long, but this has happened thousands of times in the past. There will be no microwave oven. A bit more radiation from space will come in, but if we leave some of our ozone layer on, we should be fine with a bit more sunblockers than before during the transitional period.

Then there is the Suns' behaviour to consider. While the magnetic field of Earth is getting weaker, the suns' has increased by 230% since 1901. Solar output has increased by 50% in the same timeframe. We are not alone in our global warming situation, global warming is also being observed in at least 5 other planets in the Solar System. It is entirely possible that the human contribution to global warming is negligible.

Perhaps less than 1% of any climate researcher you might ask would agree with "It is entirely possible that the human contribution to global warming is negligible". The Bush administration wanted it to be so so that they wouldn't have to react to it and helped studies and people along who would dance to their tune - but that had political reasons, not scientific ones.

If solar output had increased by 50% over hundred years, the average temperature on earth's surface would have risen to about +150°C, the oceans would start boiling and, I'd say, we'd generally have noticed that one.

Also, the sun did not increase its magnetic field by 230%. The sun has a 22-year-cycle during which it's magnetic field pulses between orientations. More about that here:

http://csep10.phys.utk.edu/astr162/lect ... netic.html

Last, but not least:

... the Solar System gradually rotates around the Galactic Rim, it regularly passes through the thickest part of the Galactic Plane, (or Disc) from one side to the other in a 62 million year cycle. The galaxy itself has a magnetic field, and the disc is the divider between the North and South poles. For some complex reasons I suspect there is a good chance that passing through the disc will cause the Earth's magnetic field to collapse to zero before flipping poles. If the field collapses, the Earth could effectively become a giant microwave oven for some unknown (hopefully brief) period of time.

If it were as you say, we would pass through the galactic field of lowest field strength in all 62 million years. That would mean, no effect. On us, at all.

Why should the disappearance of one field lead to the collapse of another? And, as said above, the earth's magnetic field will indeed collapse in the comparably near future, as it has done many times before, there will be no microwave oven. Astronauts have already spent a lot of time outside the earth's protective screen, and that can be a problem for long-duration missions (like one to Mars which would take three years atm) but the problem is more the missing atmosphere than the magnetic field.

Sorry, but what you wrote illustrates the shortfalls of theories like the "12-2012, we're gonna burn" one.



L

[ClymAngus]

It is a sad unfortunate fact that despite obsessing about a "group Hug" end of the world, we will all sooner or later endure our own personal dooms day.

An experience who's final steps we will (more likely than not) have to face alone. There will be an ending, so live accordingly.

[Disembodied]

Ah, but if Frank J. Tipler is right, we'll all get to live again in an infinite number of simulated realities at the end of time. Although if you think about it, if there are to be an infinite number of simulations, and only one base reality, then it's a racing certainty that this is one of the simulations and not the Real Thing at all. And, frankly, it's a little buggy: hence what happens when you cut a Möbius strip lengthways down the middle. Shoddy programming, that is.

[Lestradae]

... the Real Thing ... a little buggy ... Shoddy programming, that is.

I already guessed that one.

[Paranoid Android]

and if Edgar Mitchell (sixth man on the moon: the bloke the photographed the other bloke - Alan Shepard - playing golf up there) is right then it may well have something to do with our own Thargoids woop!

[Azathoth]

I still have an old DVD player that proudly states that it is “Y2K” compatible. If the change in millennium didn’t fry this baby, no amount of alien attacks or meteorites will. Whether I survive is another story.