Top 10 Reasons Why The World Won't End in 2012
Filed under: Action, Sci-Fi & Fantasy, RumorMonger, Fandom
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Spoiler Warning: The world isn't going to end in 2012. The most comical aspect of Sony's marketing strategy for 2012 is that it's got people actually believing that the world is going to end in the year 2012. Folks are so beside themselves that NASA has already intervened to try to combat the thousands of paranoid emails they've received, and now Discovery.com is doing their part to calm down the human race by attempting to prove that the world will not end on December 21, 2012, contrary to what those dastardly Mayans predicted.
What they've done is collected the 10 most popular doomsday scenarios and then systematically debunked each one by presenting, ya know, facts and stuff. So before your cousin Eddie tries to convince you that he totally know what he's talking about and the world is, like, totally going to end in 2012 because he saw it somewhere on TV at some point but he doesn't remember where, well, you might want to read up on what the Discovery folks have to say. Here are a couple examples:
4. An asteroid will smash into Earth.
A threatening near-Earth asteroid that's gotten the most press is the 900-foot wide Apophis. But its chances of collision have been downgraded to 1 in 250,000 at its next close approach in 2029. In theory, an uncharted asteroid or comet could come out of the blue tomorrow. But if we don't know about it today, the Mayans certainly didn't know about it 1,200 years ago. Earth-killer impacts are tens of millions of years apart. So there's no reason to be a doomsday clock-watcher.
More after the jump ...
5. The black hole in the galactic center will affect us.
The Milky Way's black hole has no influence on the galactic disk. The black hole is three million solar masses. The Milky Way is several trillion solar masses when we add the tug of dark matter. Any gravitational influence of the black hole over the galaxy would be like the tail wagging the dog. The Milky Way's collision with the Andromeda galaxy will dump gas into the black hole and it will blaze as a quasar. But that's several billion years away.
2. Supernovae or hypernovae will irradiate Earth.
There are no stars that are so close to Earth that radiation from their supernova demise would seriously affect us. The nearest candidate, the red giant Betelgeuse, is predicted to explode in the next 1,000 years. The monster star Eta Carinae is also on a short fuse. Neither doomed star has a spin axis precisely aimed at Earth, so we don't have to worry about being fried by a narrow beam of gamma rays ejected from the core's implosion. In fact the kinds of stars that shoot out these Death Star beams are uncommon in the Milky Way. Earth has a one percent chance of getting zapped over 10 billion years. Scratch gamma ray bursts off of your homeowner's insurance policy.
Read the rest over at Discovery.com.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
11-11-2009 @ 1:40PM
EbonyDad said...
You guys also forgot the activation of the Large Hadron Collider on December 21, 2012.
Oh, you didn't know that, did you!
Reply
11-11-2009 @ 2:40PM
Tucker said...
Umm, actually, the LHC has been active since last year. In fact, they're doing runs with it this month.
11-11-2009 @ 3:07PM
Gordon McAlpin said...
It's only been on at half power, Tucker. It goes fully online this month, assuming another baguette doesn't get dropped into it.
11-11-2009 @ 1:55PM
Troy said...
They forgot to mention the fact that a some mathematicians figured out that the Mayan calender actually ends in the year 2220, not 2012.
Reply
11-11-2009 @ 3:02PM
ML said...
So after Discovery channel ran about a billion fear-mongering end-of-the-world specials, they decide to put up a web page to allay fears? How socially responsible of them!
Meanwhile, I hear that the Mayans do not believe in the end of the world, which for some reason does not surprise me. After all, one must stop figuring out calendar dates SOMEWHERE. Isn't a few thousand years enough? As Tucker mentioned the Large Hadron Collider is back up after repair. Perhaps you are looking at a prediction that it will be re-activated or produce a world-destroying anomaly on that date?
Reply
11-11-2009 @ 3:10PM
Gordon McAlpin said...
The Discovery Channel doesn't really run fear-mongering documentaries. What their shows are like is this:
"DID THE MAYANS HAVE A PROPHECY THAT THE WORLD WILL END IN 2012?!" commercial "THE QUESTION WE'VE BEEN ASKING IS DID THE MAYANS HAVE A PROPHECY" commercial "LIKE I WAS SAYING, DID THE MAYANS HAVE A PROPHECY THAT THE WORLD WOULD END" commercial "ER, RIGHT, SO TO RECAP: MAYANS PROPHECY END 2012… no."
sorry for the caps, but I was trying for verisimilitude.
11-11-2009 @ 4:16PM
ML said...
(I'm speaking to all the EotW specials they've been running, not just the 2012 ones, by the way.) Perhaps, after showing the graphic simulation (let's see how a giant tsunami might look hitting New York, shall we? - and that's one of the more realistic ones), they mention the odds of it happening, or after discussing the question for 58 minutes (including commercials) they say "Oh, right, to answer our question, no." EotW, 58 minutes. No EotW, 2 minutes, credits roll. Money banked. What do you think people remember?
12-01-2009 @ 10:02PM
Nikita Thier said...
My grandfather made a calendar 10,000 years into the future and yes it is quite possible. His calendar is quite famous and is now a family heirloom.
My husband and I have in our possession. The world will NOT end in 2012. But many problems will arise around that time. By people who still believe it. I can tell you right now that the world will end billions and billions and billions of years from now.
11-11-2009 @ 4:54PM
TRUTH said...
"No man knows the day nor the hour". It's just a movie and entertainment that's doing it's job to get viewers going.
Reply
11-11-2009 @ 9:33PM
Batzarro said...
"Betelgeuse"
!!!
Reply
12-01-2009 @ 9:22AM
Kate said...
Batzarro, hahahaha! Agreed. That movie was bomb bc of the effects, and I will say it over and over. But will the world end? Hell no. Did Y2K actually eff up the world's computers? As I recall, no. I think I was 12 and grown men were more afraid of that than I was. Anyone who is so narrow-minded as to think that ancient South Americans could see the future is totally smoking something, and I would very much enjoy it if they shared some with me lol.
11-12-2009 @ 9:15AM
Leo said...
the Mayans did NOT Predict the world to end in 2012, they never said ANYTHING about castastrophe, or wolrd ending, their calander just ended there.. thats it.
but i think one thing is the earths axis will be slightly moved , and there is no way to know what effect it will cause. but oh well,
Reply
11-12-2009 @ 11:48AM
jediknightess said...
The Mayans did not survive their own calander. A movie is for entertainment.
Reply
11-30-2009 @ 2:26PM
Bex said...
Ok, as far as the calender ending goes. What happens when our calendar ends every year? It starts again at day 1, why would theirs be any different? And as far as when the Earth would end, I honestly don't care to spend time devoting my life to worrying about when life will cease to exist. It will happen, nothing can stop it, just live life to the fullest and get on with your lives. Worrying about it will not change a thing, so why waste energy on it?
Reply
11-30-2009 @ 10:44PM
Yadunno said...
It isnt the end of the world, its a period of spiritual oneness...
You guys need to do more research.. this movie was foolish to blow it wayyy out of proportion, and of course they're going to pay the discovery channel millions to try and calm people down...
Reply
12-01-2009 @ 6:48AM
Raybeez said...
The Mayans, as far as I have been told, never predicted the end of the world, only the end of the world *as we know it*, which has a multitude of different meanings. A new age perhaps? Maybe =P.
Reply