The Dead Cosmonaut
During the 1960s, the Soviet Union and United States raced to become the world leader in space exploration. The winner would be able to claim technological superiority over the other. The Soviet Union had the early edge: In 1957, it launched Sputnik, the first man-made satellite. In 1961, the Soviet Union dealt the American space program another blow when cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first human in space. But, according to the Judica-Cordiglia brothers from Italy, Gagarin wasn't the first.
The brothers set up a listening station in Italy to intercept communication transmissions between ground operations and spacecraft for both American and Soviet missions. Weeks before Gagarin's successful flight, the brothers claimed to have detected and recorded radio transmissions of a cosmonaut slowly dying while adrift in space. The Soviet Union denied the brothers' claim. Supporters of the theory believe the Soviet government hid the cosmonaut's death to preserve the country's reputation as a leader in space exploration.
Shifting Poles
Some people believe that the Earth's North and South poles weren't always located where they are now. They believe the Earth once rotated on a different axis. Others say that the Earth always rotated about its polar axis, but that the Earth's crust shifts so that the land located at each pole changes. Climate change, earthquakes and volcanic eruptions result from stresses on the Earth's crust during the shift. Some claim that the Earth will soon experience another dramatic polar shift, and that, as a result, entire continents might sink while new ones emerge from the sea.
The polar shift hypothesis enters the world of conspiracy theories when some claim that top governments and scientists know of the impending shift but refuse to share the information with the public. Supposedly, they're keeping it a secret to avoid causing a panic. Skeptics dismiss polar shift hypotheses, saying that there's no real scientific basis for them.
2012 and the End of the World
We can blame it all on the Mayans. They created the Long Count Calendar, a time measurement system that had spiritual significance to their culture. They organized their calendar into several cycles, the last of which will end in December 2012. Some people think the Mayans had discovered that after 2012, the world would end.
There are dozens of theories about how this might happen. Some claim that 2012 is when the Earth will experience a polar shift (see above). Others say that after 2012, the Earth will experience a period of terrible destruction followed by a new age of peace and enlightenment. A few claim that in 2012, a secret government will accomplish its goal of total world domination.
Illuminati and Majestic-12
Secret governments are a staple in conspiracy theories. According to William L. Moore, a "UFOlogist," Majestic-12 was a code name for a secret government department headed by U.S. President Harry Truman. The purpose of this department: to deal with extraterrestrial beings [source: CSI]. Skeptics say that the documents Moore uses to support his claims are forgeries and that no such department exists.
Supposedly, the Illuminati is another secret organization with ties to space. There are hundreds of different theories about the Illuminati, some of which say it's the organization to which all other secret governments report. In what is possibly the strangest theory on this list, some people claim that the Illuminati are the descendants of the union between humans and an extraterrestrial reptilian race. According to this theory, these hybrid descendents have infiltrated the highest levels of government in countries around the world. The supposed goals of the Illuminati range from simple world domination to preparing the Earth for extraterrestrial colonization. Skeptics say there's no evidence to support the existence of the Illuminati, but conspiracy theorists say that the lack of evidence actually proves the group exists. Believers say the Illuminati is so effective, they've erased almost all evidence of their existence.
Roswell/Men in Black/Area 51 Conspiracy
No discussion about space conspiracy theories would be complete without mentioning the Roswell incident. In July 1947, rancher Mac Brazel discovered some strange debris in an area northwest of Roswell, N.M. Brazel couldn't identify the debris, and a nearby military base released conflicting information about the material's origin. A few local newspapers picked up the story. While people thought the incident was unusual, several years passed before the first theories about alien activity really took off. At that time, dozens of UFO enthusiasts published stories and books about the Roswell incident. The basic theory was that the debris came from an alien spacecraft and that the United States government confiscated the material for later study.
According to some theories, the government transported the debris to an Air Force base in Roswell. Others say they took it to Area 51, a secret military base in Nevada where the government tested experimental aircraft. There were stories of autopsies performed by government officials on dead aliens. Some people claimed that anyone trying to uncover the government's secrets about aliens would receive a visit from a group of intimidating officials in dark suits: the so-called Men in Black. The U.S. government repeatedly denied having any information about extraterrestrials, but many theorists dismissed the government's responses. Officially, the Air Force says that the debris found in Roswell came from a crashed surveillance balloon that was part of a top-secret project called Project Mogul and that it has no information about alien life forms
Planet X
Does our solar system contain a giant, unnamed planet? It does, according to the Planet X theory. This theory says that our solar system has a 10th planet (if you count Pluto as a planet, otherwise the mystery planet is no. 9). The planet is supposed to be enormous and on an orbital path that will bring it close to Earth soon. Proponents of this theory cite earthquake and weather data as evidence of this planet's growing influence on Earth. They also claim that the government is forcing observatories to close to keep the planet's approach secret and prevent panic. Several astronomers have said that there's no evidence for the Planet X theory, and that if the planet did exist, humans would be able to see it even without a telescope.
The USA 193 Spy Satellite
On Dec. 14, 2006, Vandenberg Air Force Base launched a rocket carrying a satellite called USA 193. The satellite was part of the National Reconnaissance Office's (NRO) intelligence program. In other words, it was a spy satellite. The satellite had trouble maintaining orbit, and by late 2007 the Air Force determined that it would soon crash to Earth. The U.S. government announced in January 2008 that it intended to shoot the satellite down with a missile.
Why shoot down the satellite? The government said it was because the satellite's fuel tank contained hydrazine, which is toxic. If the fuel tank survived re-entry, it could land on a populated area. On Feb. 20, 2008, the U.S. fired a missile and struck USA 193. Some people believe the government didn't tell the entire story. They say that the government also wanted to prevent the satellite from falling into another country's possession. Others go even further and suggest the United States only wanted to show the world that it's capable of shooting down a satellite with a missile. In 2007, China destroyed a weather satellite with a missile, calling it a test. That test spread debris in an area around the Earth filled with other satellites, endangering those machines. By contrast, the United States' approach was to fire on USA 193 when it reached a low enough orbit to minimize danger to other satellites. Was the U.S. government using USA 193 as an excuse to respond to China's test missile?
Flat Earth Society
In 1956, Samuel Shelton founded a society that subscribed to a theory about the shape of the Earth -- namely, that it's flat. Shelton based his theory upon what he called common sense and personal observation. He called the scientific evidence for a globe-shaped Earth "dogmatic," meaning scientists were making this claim without adequate evidence. Later, when people showed him pictures of the Earth taken by satellites, Shelton claimed the photos were fake. He and the members of his society continued to support the idea that the Earth is flat and that those who disagree are part of a conspiracy to keep the truth about the Earth hidden.
Shelton died in 1971, and leadership of the society passed to Charles Johnson. Johnson led the society until his death in 2001. Without leadership, the society fell apart. Critics of the Flat Earth Society say that its members simply deny any evidence that conflicts with their world view without offering real alternative hypotheses.
The Face on Mars
In the 1970s, NASA launched two spacecraft called Viking 1 and Viking 2 on missions to Mars. Both spacecraft photographed the surface of Mars and sent images back to NASA. In one photo, a hill on Mars' surface looked a little like a face. Author and conspiracy theorist Richard Hoagland went a step further and said that it didn't just look like a face, it was definitely a face. Hoagland theorized that an alien civilization colonized Mars and that the face was evidence of an alien city in the Cydonia region. When other satellites photographed the surface of Mars, the pictures of the Cydonia region revealed that the face was just an eroded mesa. Hoagland argued that the equipment NASA used to take the subsequent photos wasn't as accurate as the Viking equipment. He also claimed that NASA doctored the images, making them look less like a face
The Moon Landing was a Hoax
The granddaddy of all space conspiracy theories has to be that the moon landings were faked on a soundstage. Those who believe the moon landings were hoaxes say that the United States lacked the technology necessary to transport humans to the moon and back. They claim that NASA faked the landings in order to make people believe the U.S. had fulfilled President John F. Kennedy's promise to land a man on the moon before 1970.
What evidence do these skeptics cite? For one thing, on the lunar landing videos, you can't see any stars in the sky. NASA says that's because the moon's surface and the astronauts' suits were so reflective that it was too bright for the camera to pick up the comparatively faint stars. Another point skeptics make is that while planting the American flag in lunar soil, the flag appears to wave. With no air in space, how is that possible? NASA says that the astronauts rotated the flag's pole back and forth while planting it so that it would remain upright. The rotation of the pole caused the flag to move back and forth as if rippling in the breeze even though there's no air on the moon.
NASA says that there's plenty of evidence that men landed on the moon. There are photos, videos and testimonials from the dozen astronauts who have set foot on the moon's surface. The astronauts returned with soil and rock samples, which NASA also cites as physical evidence of our presence on the moon. Some hardcore skeptics maintain that all of this evidence is fake or came from unmanned missions to the moon.
Asteroid 2012 DA14 may be on a Collision Course with Earth
The Earth seems to be in a shooting gallery for asteroids. Last year it was YU55 that passed by closer than the moon. Now one may pass by dangerously close.
By now asteroid Apophis is well-known to those who keep up with news in space science. It’s big — 1,100 feet across — and Apohis will pass close to Earth in 2029 and 2036. Chances of it striking home are now considered low. Now a new, smaller rock is headed this way. It will pass closer than high-flying communication satellites. A small calculation error could hide a catastrophic collision.
What is Known about the New Asteroid Right now the potential villain is 2012 DA14 and is millions of miles away. Its orbit carries it close to Earth’s orbit twice a year. As a matter of fact, it passed within 1.5 million miles of Earth on February 16, 2012. No big deal there, but on February 13, 2013 — that’s not Friday the 13th — it will brush by at a scary distance of 17,000 miles — perhaps less! Geosynchronous satellites are about 22,000 miles up.
The pesky visitor is about 150 feet across. That’s not big enough to destroy the Earth or result in mass extinction, but it’s big enough to destroy a large city or cause wide-spread damage. For comparison, the object that caused Meteor Crater in Arizona was estimated to be about one-third the size of 2012 DA14 and it produced a crater nearly a mile across and over 500 feet deep. The effects of that impact extended far beyond the crater. The explosion was perhaps equal to a 20 megaton nuclear weapon.
The dinosaurs were extinguished by a huge object perhaps nine or ten miles across. The explosion from such an object is difficult to imagine — likely exceeding the explosive power of every nuclear weapon on Earth.
Scientists Believe the Earth Will Be Safe from 2012 DA14 The ability of scientists to predict the paths of objects orbiting the Sun is remarkable. The laws of motion that astrophysicists use have been incredibly accurate over the years, guiding spacecraft to distant planets with unique accuracy. Scientists are not worried about 2012 DA14, but the stated probability of impact is a rather high one chance in 675.
The belief is that, although 2012 DA14 will come very close to Earth, it will miss. But it is a year away from its destination and it has to interact with complex gravitational fields that overlap and tug on objects. Only a tiny error could make the difference between “who cares” and a catastrophe.
Actually, asteroids and meteoroids pass close to Earth with alarming frequency, but most are smaller than 2012 DA14. NASA keeps track of near-Earth-objects — NEO’s. In January of 2012, 126 objects passed within 9.3 million miles and many were much closer. Objects the size of basketballs enter Earth’s atmosphere several times daily but are reduced to the size of a baseball or less by the friction of the atmosphere by the time they impact. Asteroid 2012 DA14 would be reduced in size also, but would still be large enough to wreak havoc.
Asteroids often come close to Earth, but 2012 DA14 will likely miss Earth by a scant 17,000 miles — about twice the diameter of Earth. It will be closer than geosynchronous satellites. Nevertheless, scientists seem confident that when it passes by on February 13, 2013, it will miss. The orbit of 2012 DA14 will bring it close to Earth in the future, and it may continue to remain a threat.
Water Present Just Below the Surface of Jovian Moon liquid water has been found in a lake just below the surface of Jupiter's moon Europa, with important implications for the search for extraterrestrial life.
Based on our knowledge of life on Earth, the presence of liquid water is considered to be one of the essential requirements for the existence of extraterrestrial life. Although water is very common in the solar system, liquid water is much less common and is present only over a limited temperature range. Therefore the presence of liquid water on another body in the solar system would appear to shorten the odds of life elsewhere.
The Galileo Mission The Galileo mission was the first to probe the atmosphere of Jupiter directly, and it carried out long term measurements of the Jovian system after its launch in 1989. In 2003, the satellite was sent on a collision course with Jupiter's atmosphere to avoid affecting Europa and its possibility of harboring life. A future mission to probe for the existence of life on Europa is currently being studied by NASA.
The Composition of Europa Europa is the 4th largest satellite of Jupiter, and slightly smaller than the Earth's moon.
Based on data from the Galileo satellite, Europa is believed to consist of a small metallic core, surrounded by a large rocky layer. In turn this is covered by a liquid water ocean and an icy crust.
At such a distance, the sun does not provide much heat. Instead, the ocean is maintained by the heat generated by friction associated with tidal forces from Jupiter.
Liquid Water on Europa In a paper published in Nature on 16 November, observations from the Galileo spacecraft reveal that heated water causes fissures in the Europa crust, allowing the water to rise. Although it was previously thought that an ocean existed 10-30 km (6-18 miles) below the crust, the latest data show that a large water reservoir is in places only 3km below the surface.
In principle, recovery of the water by future missions might answer the question directly of whether primitive Europan (not to be confused with European) life forms exist. It is plausible that the deep water is being mixed with the shallow water and transferring nutrients for life in the process.
As pointed out by Martin Siegert for BBC News, similar geological processes also occurred in Antarctica, with warm water uplifting and forming cracks in the rocks on freezing and expansion. Don Blankenship, a coauthor of the Nature paper, pointed out in a NASA article that the improved understanding of Europa would not have been possible without observations of the Earth's ice sheets and floating ice.
The Prospects for Liquid Water Elsewhere in the Solar System It seems increasingly likely that the place to search for liquid water is not the inner planets (Mercury and Venus are too hot, and Mars is too cold) but rather amongst the entourage of the gas giants. Their satellites typically have rocky cores and ice. In addition, tidal forces in some cases provide the heat necessary to counteract the low sunlight. This is the likely process on Europa, in the Jovian system, while in the Saturnian system, the moon Enceladus provides prospects of harboring life of some kind: see the special issue of Science magazine, Cassini at Enceladus.
Galactic Alignment
A popular claim amongst 2012 doomsday merchants is that the Earth will be aligned with the centre of the galaxy, and then Bad Things Will Happen (In fairness, many believers in galactic alignment are teaching New Age ideas, and are keeping themselves apart from the hysteria. Good for them!). An alternative idea is that the earth will pass through the centre of the galaxy itself, with horrific consequences. Unlike many other aspects of 2012 mythology, this class of ideas is pretty easy to debunk without specialized knowledge.
The Galactic Core Our solar system sits on the edge of a minor arm of the Milky Way galaxy. We are quite far out towards the edge, where nothing exciting happens. Even so, with the naked eye alone we can see about six thousand stars with the naked eye (if you don't mind travelling to peep over the horizon!). With telescopes, that number jumps to hundreds of millions. Even this, though, is just a tiny portion of the galaxy, and the rest is shielded from our sight by the vast clouds of gas and dust which populate its spiral arms.
If we were to visit the galactic core, we would have a totally different view. The sheer number of stars packed into a much smaller volume would make our skies luminous to the point where we would need sunglasses at night. Since the average spacing between stars is only half a light year at the core, the average brightness would be much higher, with the brightest nearby stars casting shadows. All those stars blazing so near would increase the background radiation levels to a point where life would struggle to adapt, and the chances of a nearby giant star going supernova would be very high indeed. But worst of all would be the supermassive black hole at the core of our galaxy. Several hundred thousand times more massive than our Sun and tens of millions of kilometres in diameter, this beast voraciously consumes nearby stars and gas clouds. As they are drawn nearer by its awesome gravity, they get whipped up to higher and higher speeds, until tidal forces tear their very molecules apart. This process generates tremendous radiation in the Gamma and X-Ray wavelengths, making the entire region unbelievably toxic to life. If the Sun and the Earth were to pass through this region, nothing would survive.
Fortunately, this can never happen. We are bound in an orbit around the core at a distance of roughly twenty six thousand light years. We move with our neighbours around the core, not towards it. And even if something happened to disrupt our course and send us inwards, it would take millions of years to fall that far, and the effects would be very obvious to even the least educated observer thousands of years before we reached the centre. We do not see millions of stars with the naked eye, and we are still alive, therefore we are nowhere near the core, and would have millions of years warning if we were headed that way.
A less extreme idea is that we will pass through the galactic plane – sort of like moving from the galaxy's northern hemisphere to the southern hemisphere and briefly touching the equator. The obvious question is “So what?” but even allowing for some significance, one has to remember the sheer size of the galaxy. The earth takes a quarter of a billion years to make one full orbit of the galaxy, and about sixty four million years to bob back and forth from “North” to “South”. The actual crossing takes thousands of years, and any imagined effects wouldn't be obvious from one year to the next.
Alignment So the idea of us passing through the centre of the galaxy in one specific year is laughable. But what about the more moderate ideas, that we will be in alignment with the galactic plane, or the centre of the galaxy, or neighbouring astral bodies?
It certainly is true that we are very close to an alignment with the core of the galaxy – but what exactly does that mean? Specifically, for a brief moment, the Earth, Sun and Galactic core will be positioned in a straight line. This happens every single year, though, on the December Solstice (December 21). The most perfect possible alignment happened back in 1998, so that each year the alignment becomes looser and less important.
Is there any significance to this? Try a quick experiment with me: Stand up straight, and turn to face North. Do you feel any different? Consider that you are now lined up vertically with the core of the Earth, AND with the earth's axis, yet neither of these alignments have any obvious effect. You can repeat the experiment in any number of ways – lean against a fence so that you are directly lined up with the Sun, line up your bed with nearest power lines. Even if you believe that any of these objects have an effect on your life, you won't notice any change at all based on the direction you happen to be facing. Similarly, having our solar system be in alignment with parts of the galaxy doesn't have any significance. An alternative experiment is a little harder to try, but quite popular with tourists: Travel to the equator. Look for the big dotted line that somebody inevitably paints on the ground near a tourist attraction. Stand on one side of the line, then step over to the other side. Nothing happens! While the differences between North and South are real and obvious, they are not sudden – they happen gradually as you approach the crossing point, to the point where the exact position of the line becomes unimportant.
It should be obvious then that, to a scientist, none of these alignments or positioning mean anything whatsoever. There are no physical laws or phenomena which care about these things. Now, you can argue for non-physical effects (as in the case of astrologers and New Age practitioners), and that’s a matter of personal belief – science has no business arguing with that. But, as soon as you start predicting apocalypse or other physical effects, the argument falls flat. Whether you’re a scientist or not, it’s plain that there is no physical “real” significance to any of these arguments.
Is it really going to happen on 21st December 2012?
The answer, as explained in depth right here, is "No, it's not going to happen at all!" But even if you don't buy the standard Skeptics debunkings, there are a few questions you should be asking about these ancient mayan doomsday prophecies. The first, of course, should be "Where are these prophecies and why have we only heard about them in the last few years?". Actually, most archaeologists and scholars of the ancient Mayan civilization would love to know this, as they seem to think that the Mayan's had no concept of the world ending at all. But the authors of doomsday books don't seem interested in sharing their sources with the academics. I guess they're as serious about protecting their book sales as they are about warning the public of end times. . .
But a simpler question, which the experts in the field can answer, is "How do we know what date this is all actually supposed to happen? How do we convert a date on the Mayan Long Count to our Gregorian Calendar?". The various Mayan Calendars were very precisely worked out, so if we can just find an event common to both European and Mayan histories, we'll have a common date and it becomes easy to convert between the two systems.
At the beginning of the twentieth century, three Maya scholars (Joseph Goodman, Juan Martinez-Hernandez, and J. Eric S. Thompson) examined both Mayan and colonial historical documents to find common points and developed the GMT constant, currently accepted by experts in the fields as the standard conversion factor. Whenever a scholar of the ancient Mayan culture wants to convert a date from Mayan records into something that makes sense to modern readers, he uses the GMT constant. This is how we know when great battles were fought, when chieftains were born and died, and when the world is supposed to end.
But there are dissenting voices. Gerardo Aldana, associate professor of Chicana and Chicano Studies at UC Santa Barbara, has been approaching the conversion problem from a different angle and believes that the GMT constant could be out by as much as fifty or even a hundred years. Instead of trying to match up Mayan and colonial versions of history, he has taken an astronomical approach. As the doomsday prophets love to point out, the Mayans were very careful astronomers and kept careful records of the movements of the planets, as they believed that they controlled the destinies and day to day lives of ordinary Mayan people (not so different from European astrologers). The motions of Venus, in particular, were considered important enough to have their own calendar - The Venus Cycle.
An earlier scholar, Floyd Lounsbury, attempted to use the Dresden Codex Venus Table (a portion of an ancient mayan manuscript, which had been housed in a museum in Dresden for many years before it was almost destroyed in World War II) to confirm the accuracy of the GMT constant, and later scholars interpreted his work as a convincing proof that the GMT table was accurate. However, Aldana contends that none of these scholars had the astronomical background necessary to fully understand the Venus Table. In his recent publication "Calendars and Years II: Astronomy and Time in the Ancient and Medieval World" (Oxbow Books, 2010), Aldana demonstrates that Lounsbury's reasoning was flawed, and proceeds to demonstrate that the GMT constant is not in fact accurate at all, eventually leading up to the 50 to 100 year error mentioned previously.
Now it must be understood that Academics do not present truth, so much as search for it. We should not take Aldana's (or any other scholar) word as gospel. Other researchers will need to pick up the thread of his work and independently reach the same, or similar conclusions before the GMT constant can be abandoned. Nevertheless, Aldana makes a convincing case, and if he proves correct then it knocks yet another nail in the coffin of the 2012 Doomsday Cult.
Killer Comet
In December 2010, a Russian astronomer named Leonid Elenin had the good fortune to discover a comet. Following the usual practice, it was officially named Comet Elenin, after its discoverer. Once its orbit had been figured out, it caused some excitement amongst the astronomical community because it would pass unusually close to Earth (about 35 million kilometres, or a little less than ten times the distance to the Moon) and therefore had the potential to put on a very good show. Unfortunately, it turned out to be a bit of a dud, never quite getting bright enough to see through binoculars.
Meanwhile, word of this comet had reached a different community, one obsessed with predicting the end of civilisation by means of ancient prophecies and cosmic intervention. As with most other natural events, they figured they could tie it in to the 2012 phenomenon and it didn't take long for a confused mess of conflicting explanations, conspiracies and prophecies to spread across the internet. Some said that the comet's gravity was going to whip the Earth out of its orbit, causing changed weather, earthquakes, and general mayhem. Others claimed that the comet was so dim because it was actually a Brown Dwarf, or even the dread planet Nibiru.
Up till now I had ignored these claims as they seemed short-lived. It was a single comet, and the excitement would pass on its own. Weirdly, this hasn't happened, even though the comet recently began breaking up and will likely not survive its passage around the Sun. But I should have realised this would happen. Prophets of Doom become quite attached to their ideas (perhaps its the fame and attention, or the money to be made from selling scary books) and often find ways to keep a good scam going. Judging from some of the conspiracy theories around this particular comet (Apparently the comet's name is an acronym for "Extinction Level Event: Nibiru Is Nigh", which must have come as a surprise to poor Leonid!), I suspect that the photographic proof of the comet's demise will be ignored or dismissed as part of some great cover-up. Oh well.
But for all my skepticism, there is actually a grain of truth here. Comet scares are not new, as we saw in the great 1911 apparition of Halley's Comet when Earth passed directly through the great comet's tail. Thanks to the wonders of spectroscopy, astronomers knew that the comet contained trace amounts of organic compounds including cyanide, and the snake-oil salesmen had a field day selling special comet masks and comet medicine that would save the general population. Needless to say, the billions of people who had no access to these remedies were not harmed, as the amounts were so small as to be undetectable within the Earth's atmosphere!
And in the interest of staying honest, I must mention that a direct impact - one in which the comet strikes Earth directly, as opposed to passing hundreds of millions of kilometers away, is a very serious event. That would be very noticeable, and comparable to an asteroid impact. If it were to miss the vast majority of Earth's mostly human-free surface and strike a city, it would have a massive disaster with potentially millions killed. But comets aren't as stealthy as asteroids - once they pass within the orbit of Jupiter they become easy to spot with small telescopes and binoculars, and there are thousands of amateur astronomers scanning the sky every evening looking for them (Why? The fame and glory of having a heavenly body named after yourself, that's why!). The race to be a comet's discoverer means that comets get announced publicly even before their orbits are calculated. A comet on a collision course with a city on Earth would be widely known, and would give us months (at least) to begin emergency evacuations. So... serious, but not the end of the world.
And little comet Elenin? Well, after I started writing this article and before I finished it, Leonid Elenin announced that his comet no longer exists - it flew too close to the Sun, melted and broke apart. That particular apocalypse isn't going to happen.
Nearby Supernova
The story goes like this:
A nearby star, Betelgeuse, is nearing the final stages of its life. It is already a hugely swollen Red Giant and has started acting strangely. It's brightness is flickering, and Astronomers have seen that it is forming bumps and dark patches. Within the next few years, it is going to go supernova and our Solar System will be caught up in the blast. The government (for in stories like this, the convoluted structures of bureaucracy and competition between infighting departments that make up our modern democratic governments always reduces to one unified sinister force) has known about this for some time and is keeping it from us. Because, you know, that's what they do.
Variations of this story have started appearing all over the internet, usually with some mention of ancient Mayan prophecies or Planet X so as to hop on the 2012 bandwagon. But is it true?
Let's establish a few facts. Betelgeuse is one of the brightest stars in the constellation of Orion. It is very bright in the night sky and shines with a dull orange colour. It is a Red Giant, which indicates that it is very old and is in the final stages of its life. Soon it will run out of fuel and collapse. It is such a massive star that the collapse will trigger a supernova explosion. It is approximately 640 light years away, although it was previously thought to be closer than this (Our measuring techniques have become more precise over time). It is so huge that, with it's relative closeness, the latest telescopes and most modern imaging techniques have actually managed to capture a direct image of the star itself, whereas most stars are usually only visible as point sources of light. These images have indeed revealed that the star is not perfectly round, that regions are violently turbulent, and that it has mysterious dark patches appearing and disappearing on the surface.
And now the story starts to unravel, because these features are the same features we see on our own Sun all the time, except that they're on a vastly bigger and more violent scale (which, considering the size and luminosity of Betelgeuse, is only to be expected). A star is a constantly churning ball of superheated plasma with a sustained nuclear fusion reaction at it's heart, after all! Admittedly, Betelgeuse has definitely been shrinking over the last few years, but this isn't really surprising either since it has always been known as a long period variable star.
So yes, Betelgeuse is definitely going to go supernova soon, but none of the "new evidence" suggested in the scare stories is actually new. What does this mean? We need to remember that Astronomers, like geologists, are used to talking about things that take millions or billions of years to happen. When we use words like "Soon" or "Quickly", it's important to remember the context. In the case of a star like Betelgeuse, "Soon" means "Within the next few thousand years, maybe". So it's impossible to tell - we don't really know enough about how stars explode to be any more precise than that and even if we did, we don't have a clear enough picture of what's happening with Betelgeuse to make a meaningful prediction anyway. It could happen in ten thousand years time, it could happen tomorrow. All we know is that it will happen.
When it does, though, what does that mean for us on Earth? When Betelgeuse blows, it will be a Type II supernova. Models of this type of supernova give reasonable estimates of the amount of radiation and stellar material which will be cast out, but estimates of the minimum safe distance vary considerably, from 25 to more than 200 light years. This seems to depend on what the author's consider to be "safe". At a very close distance, the Earth could be completely destroyed, while at the furtherest distances we might just lose the ozone layer, have some spectacular Aurora Borealis and Australis, and find the few months of extra radiation causes cancer rates to go up for a while. However, Earth is more than three times further away from Betelgeuse than even the most pessimistic figures. We will see Betelgeuse become so bright that it shines during the day. In the evenings it will cast a shadow, and make backyard astronomy very difficult (Assuming that Betelgeuse is visible at the time, and not behind the Sun). After about a month, it will begin fading until after a few more months it will have vanished completely. Over the years, people watching through telescopes will see the remnants gradually blossoming out into a gorgeous planetary nebula (named for its appearance in small telescopes, not because it has anything to do with planets). It will be a stunning site which nobody alive will ever forget, but we will be perfectly safe. Sorry to disappoint!
Nibiru (part 1)
The world will end in May 2003
Zeta Talk In 1995,
Nancy Lieder came forward and announced on her website that the world would end in 2003. It turns out that she had met with aliens (Grey's, apparently) called Zeta's, from Zeta Reticuli, when she was a little girl. They implanted a device in her brain which allowed them to stay in contact with her, and she had recently received warning that an object called Planet X (or Nibiru) would soon sweep through the Solar System, wreaking untold havoc and kill billions of people. Our fate was sealed for May 2003. Weary astronomers and scientists explained again and again that if there was any such object, matching the rather precise descriptions offered by Ms. Lieder, it should be easily visible to the general public with the naked eye. As the big day approached, Zeta Talk (Nancy's website) was quietly edited to make Nibiru smaller and fainter, to account for all those skeptics who insisted that they were unable to find it. She preached conspiracy, and claimed that the incidence of natural disasters was increasing as the effects began to be felt. Apparently the US government didn't want to raise a panic about the end of the world, even as they whipped up hysteria in support of the war on terror!
Reprieve Then, on the due date, an amazing thing happened: Nancy changed her story! Just in time, she had discovered New Age ideas about the significance of the Mayan Long Count, and postponed the apocalypse to 12 December 2012. The world was safe for another eight years, but that now that time is running out. So what exactly is Planet X? What is all this evidence that believers refer to? Can we really trust YouTube as an impartial source? What do the ancient Sumerians have to do with any of this?
Mesopotamia History Around 6000 BC, stone age farmers began filtering into the region known as Mesopotamia (modern day Iraq). The area was irrigated by the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, which flooded annually. The floods deposited enormously fertile silt over the plains, making the entire region an ideal place for human agricultural settlement. The region near where the two rivers come closest was called Babylonia, and was divided into Akkad in the north, and Sumer in the south. Over the next few thousand years, the people of this region developed into the first civilisation as they built the first cities and invented the plough, the wheel, bronze and writing (in the shape of Cuneiform, on baked clay tablets). Much of their mythology reflects biblical events, such as the creation of Man, and the Great Flood. They understood finance, mathematics, astronomy, and gave us the sexagesimal (base sixty) number system, the remains of which persist in modern measurements of time and angles (60 seconds to the minute, etc).
Astronomy fact... The Sumerians watched the stars and planets keenly, and established a good foundation of astronomical observations were able to recognise that the Morning and Evening stars were the same object (The Planet Venus) and could then predict the length of the Venus Cycle. They also learned to predict Lunar Eclipses, by noticing the eighteen year cycle of eclipses. They named many of the constellations we know today, and were familiar with the cyclical motions of The Five Planets. They not only associated individual objects with gods, but regions of the sky as well. They were completely uninterested in the natural phenomena behind their observations though, making no attempt to understand what they were seeing (with one exception, an attempt to explain the phases of the moon which is laughably childish, considering the sophistication of the Greek's understanding only a short time later)
... and fiction However, various people in the last few decades have made some extraordinary claims about Sumerian astronomy. It seems that they were aware of all the planets we now know, plus several as yet undiscovered ones. They apparently knew that the Earth revolved around the Sun, that the planets were other worlds just like our own. And best of all, they knew this because Aliens had come and shown it to them. These theories usually include an element of upliftment, where the wise Aliens teach the stupid humans about technology. The evidence stems from an ancient image (From an engraved cylinder which served as a Seal - it would be rolled into the wet clay of a fresh contract, signing it) called 'The Berlin Seal' which is supposed to represent the planets around the Sun. The interpretation is that the big star in the middle is the Sun, nine of the things around it are the planets we know (plus Pluto), the tenth is the moon, the eleventh is one of the objects recently discovered past Pluto (Perhaps Eris), and the twelfth is the dreaded Planet X. There are some pretty big problems with this interpretation, even ignoring the fact that the "sun" is not represented by the standard sun symbol. If this is an outside alien's view of the Solar System, then why doesn't it in fact look like a solar system and why does it leave out so many characteristic features? Where are the rings of Saturn? What about the larger moons of Jupiter and Saturn, many of which are much larger than Pluto? Why stop at twelve, when in fact we've already found more than 12 planets (until we clarified the issue by redefining "planet", and incidentally demoted Pluto)? Why is it that the Human Race needed alien assistance to show us how to stick seeds into the ground, yet we managed to progress from horse-back to space shuttle without any help in less than a hundred years? Whether or not you believe in extra-terrestrial life, it's a bit of a stretch to interpret this little image as proof of anything more than that they knew how to make pretty pictures.
Nibiru The Sumerian's northern neighbours were the Akkadians. The Akkadian word for 'crossing' was Nibiru. The Babylonians (who followed after the Sumerians and Akkadians) used the word Nibiru to refer to the highest point of the ecliptic (or in layman's terms, the spot in the sky where the Sun is in the summer solstice - 21 June), and back then would have coincided with the zodiacal symbol of Libra. Nibiru was also used to refer to the planet Jupiter, in certain months, as well as the Star of Marduk (the creator). If this seems a little vague, it's because the Babylonians didn't attach special significance to individual stars or planets - individual stars and planets would be assigned to various Gods as fitted the story. Nevertheless, the latest crop of doomsday prophets have decided that one of the 'planets' on the Berlin Seal is Nibiru.
Nibiru (part 2)
Planet X
New Worlds
On 13 March 1781, William Herschel discovered a new planet, which would be named Uranus (God of the Sky, father of Saturn). This was a huge deal, as it overturned millennia of established knowledge about the Solar System. Uranus was studied and observed until astronomers were able to plot it's orbit and predict it's movements. Unfortunately, no matter how carefully they refined their figures and checked their calculations, Uranus did not move the way they expected. It kept drifting off the course they plotted for it. So, in 1846, two men (Urbain Le Verrier and John Couch Adams) suggested that perhaps there was still another planet, which nobody had seen yet, and whose gravity was tugging Uranus off course. Neither of these men were aware that the other was working on the same problem. They worked backwards from the observations and calculated a possible orbit for this new planet and distributed their work to astronomers around the world. On 23 September of that year, German astronomer Johann Gottfried Galle found a planet almost exactly where they had predicted. After much in-fighting and squabbling, the world's astronomers finally settled on Neptune as the new planet's name. The discovery was revolutionary, because it was the first time a celestial object had been discovered through mathematical predictions, instead of blind luck.
Unfortunately, the observed orbit did not fully compensate for Uranus's perturbations, and in fact had a few of its own.
In the Late 19th Century, Percival Lowell (a wealthy Bostonian and keen astronomer) became fascinated with Mars, and built a private observatory specifically to observe it. In between mapping out the canals of Mars, he worked on the Neptune problem. In 1905, he completed his mathematical analysis of Uranus's orbit, and concluded that there was a ninth planet, which he called Planet X. Having calculated a likely orbit for Planet X, he began his search which continued until his death in 1915. In 1929, Clyde Tombaugh was employed at the observatory. As the most junior staff member, he was assigned to resume Lowell's search. He did this by the painfully dull method of comparing photographs of the same section of sky taken on different dates, over and over, and looking for any stars which seemed to move. On 13 March 1930, he found it. Remarkably, that day would not only have been Lowell's 75th birthday, but the 149th anniversary of the discovery of Neptune! The movements were recorded and the maths completed. Planet X had been found, was estimated to have a mass about seven times that of Earth. In tribute to Percival Lowell, a name was chosen which began with his initials P.L.: Pluto.
Mathematical Errors In 1978, the discovery of Pluto's moon, Charon, threw a spanner in the works. By measuring the speed and size of Charon's orbit, Pluto's mass could be accurately calculated and it was found to be only one fifth of a percent of Earth's - utterly incapable of causing the deviations in Neptune's orbit. It was only an extraordinary coincidence that Pluto happened to be in the right place in the sky to be seen by Tombaugh when it was found. Was Planet X still out there?
What's more, at about the time that Lowell was searching for his Planet X, other astronomers were searching the inside of the Solar System -- they had found that Mercury's orbit was quite dramatically different from the predictions (In technical terms, it precessed far more than predicted by Newton's equations). They called this inner planet "Vulcan", but no matter how long they searched, it was nowhere to be found. The solution, to everybody's surprise, came from an employee of the Swiss Patent Office: Albert Einstein.
In 1916, he published his General Theory of Relativity, which for the first time explained what Gravity actually was, and was able to provide far more accurate predictions than Newton's laws. Once Mercury's orbit was recalculated using the new theory, all discrepancy vanished. And Lowell's predictions for Planet X? Modern astronomers are finding Neptune and Uranus exactly where they expect to find them. It's generally accepted that Lowell and his predecessors simply suffered from inaccurate measurements.
Ongoing Discoveries These days, the news is all about planets being discovered outside our Solar System. But with increasing frequency, a new object gets found on the outer edges of the Solar System. Four of these are in the same scale as Pluto, but by this time announcements of "New Planets" was becoming so common-place that it's understandable that the world's newspapers stopped reporting on them. In fact, there are many hundreds more which have been observed and catalogued and this was a large factor in the decision to redefine the word 'Planet' to exclude Pluto and it's trans-neptunian companions. It is quite astonishing that astronomers are able to find such vanishingly small objects at such mind-boggling distances, but that's nothing compared to what the Doomsday Nibiru cultists would have you believe.
Apocalypse The Facts in a Nutshell Nibiru is a real word, used by some of the peoples of ancient Mesopotamia, referring to astronomical points in the sky, and various bright lights and planets. The Mayan calendars are very complicated, with their Long Count dating the creation of the universe at a little over five thousand years ago. Since the Sumerians were fading from importance at that point, there's probably no connection between these two civilisation's mythologies and histories.
'Planet X' is a general term for any undiscovered planet which astronomers hope to find, and was in use for much of the twentieth century. Recently, however, the count of 'planets' beyond Pluto has become so commonplace (over a hundred at last count) that the IAU (International Astronomical Union) voted to define the word Planet properly to exclude these minor objects. Incidentally, since some of these objects were larger and more planet-like than Pluto, Pluto ended up being demoted, sparking howls of outrage that still haven't died down. The name 'Planet X' was only ever a place holder, and is no longer used.
It's important to remember that some of these things are absolutely tiny, a fraction of the size of our own moon, and are unimaginably far away, yet they are being routinely observed and catalogued. In fact, since astronomers learned how to see planets in other solar systems (A claim which would have had you laughed out of the room as recently as ten years ago), the discovery of planet-sized objects in out own solar system has become downright boring - the newspapers won't bother printing it.
The Claims in a Nutshell The doomsday prophets don't agree with each other. Each has their own tale of terror, and their own glossy novels and DVD's to sell, but I will try to summarise some of the common elements.
In December 2012, the world will change forever. More moderate New-Age types say that the world will shift into a new era of enlightenment and joy, as the ancient Mayans predicted that the current age will end on that date. This sounds like a restatement of the old "Shifting from the Age of Pisces into the Age of Aquarius" line. This is a religious position, and arguing against it serves no purpose. Depressingly though, this rather pleasant position is being drowned out by the disaster mongers. A number of bickering charlatans have the following to say, when not accusing each other of plagiarism:
There is a mystery Planet X (also called Nibiru), which was known to both the Sumerians and the Ancient Mayans. It is about five times the size of earth, and has a highly elliptical orbit (like a comet). It takes about 3600 years to complete an orbit, and the next close fly-by is happening in 2012. NASA scientists took a photograph of it in 1983, and are trying to cover it up, but you can find it on the internet. When it makes it's flyby of Earth, the Earth will have a Polar Shift and 90% of the population will die. If you buy my DVD and my survival kit, then you'll come out on top. Nibiru is now so close that people in the southern hemisphere can see it during daylight, and soon we'll all be able to see it and then the government can't hide it any more!
The Debunking You should be able to debunk most of this yourself based on information collected in this article alone (although I would never recommend limiting yourself to only one source - that's just sloppy). The Sumerians watched the stars and noticed patterns in the movements of the moon, sun and planets, but their most sophisticated explanations for it all boiled down to "The Gods are angry". The Mayans were a little more sophisticated, but were still limited to what could be gleaned from naked eye observations. Authors who try to show that these two people knew more than they did are inevitably confusing their cultures (presenting Aztec art as Mayan records, for example), or mistranslating original texts (very easy to do - Cuneiform is nothing like modern writing and reading it is a very specialised skill), or just plain lying.
A planet as described would be VERY easy to see - if it's only two years from perihelion (the point of it's orbit where it's closest to the Sun), then it would be closer to us now than Jupiter, and brighter than anything in the sky (except for the Sun and Moon)! As for the Secret Image circulating on the net, this was actually released as part of a routine anouncement to the press. It was a picture from a brand new infra-red telescope on a satellite in orbit, and the mission scientists were excited because they were seeing things never seen before. The press release included the speculation that "it could be a distant galaxy, a dying star, a new planet, anything!". One newspaper leaped onto the 'new planet' angle, and suddenly it became a conspiracy. There are a number of other photos, of course, but these are either very obviously photoshopped, or random images of moons or planets or nebulae with the word 'Nibiru' written on the bottom.
But the silliest claim is that of Polar Shift. The trick here is that the Magnetic Poles do occasionally reverse polarity. The timing is pretty random, although it seems to average at once every 400,000 years. With clever phrasing, they make it sound as if the whole planet will suddenly flip over, with results like we saw in the special effects in the movie 2012. In fact, a nearby passing planet can only have one of two effects: Either swinging both Earth and itself into radical new orbits, or if they get close enough, both planets get torn apart by tidal forces. But... considering how easily we can see such faint and distant things as extra-solar planets and the more local Trans-Neptunian Objects, the idea of something five times bigger than the earth getting so close without being seen is ridiculous.
There is one more very significant aspect to the whole Nibiru scare. In classic doomsday fashion, the 'facts' have been edited to suit current circumstances. This was all supposed to happen in 2003. It was supposed to be a huge menacing presence in the sky by 2000, which everybody could see. When it didn't happen, the story was changed. Eventually the collision date came and went, without any problems at all, so the story changed. The Zeta Talk website even tried to claim that they had known the real date all along but had chosen to lie about it, "To mislead the authorities" for some reason. These people are spinning lies, and changing the stories whenever the facts become too inconvenient to ignore. And since a scientists one goal is to find the one true explanation for whatever they're studying, it's no wonder they have so little respect for this nonsense.
Reversal of the Poles
There are a lot of theories as to just how the world will end on 21 December 2012, from a Mystery Planet, various ways the earth will align with different things, to the Sun going crazy. My personal favourite, however, is that the Earth's poles will reverse, with total chaos resulting. As usual with all these theories, every lunatic and crackpot has their own interpretation of what exactly this means and claims that theirs is the only Truth. While researching this article, I was surprised at the sheer number of different interpretations -- far too many to tackle individually. Their are common threads, however, usually real facts carefully edited and distorted to back the false claim, or copy-and-pasted from rival believers.
Geo-magnetic reversal
Every now and then, the Earth's magnetic poles switch places. North becomes South, and vice versa. The reversals are visible in geological records, and we can see that the field has reverse tens of thousands of times since the Earth's creation. In addition, the magnetic field fluctuates in strength, and the alignment is variable. At the moment, for example, the Magnetic North Pole is moving from Canada to Siberia, and is accelerating - it was moving at 10km per year at the beginning of the 20th century, compared to 40km per year at the beginning of the 21st century. However, the reversals have nothing to do with the rotation of the Earth.
In addition, the reversals are not regular. The last reversal was a little under eight hundred thousand years ago. The longest gap between reversals yet found is more than fifty million years, and the shortest is only a few thousand. A graph of all geo-magnetic reversals shows a random distribution - in other words, the reversals do not follow any timetable, and are not predictable. Anybody claiming to know what the next reversal will happen, or that we are "overdue", is not speaking the truth.
Polar Reversal Polar reversal refers to the North and South poles switching places. Unlike the magnetic poles, the North and South poles mark the points around which the Earth rotates - the imaginary axis of rotation passes through the North and South poles. Although there is a connection between the Earth's rotation and the Earth's magnetic field, the location of the poles has nothing to do with the location of the magnetic poles. When a geo-magnetic reversal happens, a compass will point in another direction, but the Earth won't suddenly flip over, or screech to a halt and rotate in the other direction and I will demonstrate why. The Earth's surface rotates at a speed of almost 1700km/h. You can calculate this yourself: The equator is, very roughly, about 40000km long, and a day is 24 hours. Any point on the equator therefore moves 40000km in 24 hours, or 1666.66km/h. Assuming it now suddenly rotates the other way around at the same speed, that means it has to change speed by over 3000km/h. Of course, the atmosphere is free to move as it pleases, so it will take a while to catch up. Can you imagine the effects of a 3000km/h wind, over the entire surface of the planet? What about the oceans? What would happen to every single mountain, every single house and car and boulder and animal? NOTHING would survive, and this is the scenario painted by the most extreme 2012 theorists. Now, we know that geo-magnetic reversals have happens thousands of times in the past, yet we still have mountains that are hundreds of millions of years old! We still have life on earth! In other words, there is no connection between Geo-magnetic reversals and Polar reversals.
You could argue, perhaps, that the poles change place, but that the Earth continues to rotate in the same direction. You can test this theory by spinning a gyroscope (or more dramatically, a bicycle wheel) and then suddenly trying to flip it upside down. The gyroscopic forces involved are surprisingly powerful. A hand-held gyroscope will buck wildly, the bicycle wheel will tear itself from your grip and fly across the room. An entire planet? No.
Some 2012 theorists argue that the changing magnetic field interacting with the Sun's magnetic field is what flips the earth over. But the Earth's magnetic field simply isn't that powerful. Look at how slowly the needle on a magnetic compass, weighing only a few grammes swings around. The Sun's field is actually quite powerful, but the strength fades with distance - at 150 million kilometres away it's faint enough to be undetectable. Try to imagine how powerful the force required to move trillions and trillions of tonnes of rock and magma must be, and it becomes obvious that the interacting magnetic fields have no effect at all.
Exposure to Radiation
The most important thing about the Earth's magnetic field, from the point of life, is that it carves out a region of space known as the Magnetosphere. This region marks a boundary past which certain types of radiation are deflected onto new paths. Particles from the Sun and deep space hurtling towards Earth are scooped up by the Earth's magnetic field and neatly steered towards one of the magnetic poles where they eventually swoop down and hit the upper atmosphere, exciting the gasses and creating the ghostly glows known as Aurora Borealis and Aurora Australis. Some of the doom-mongers suggest that, during a geo-magnetic reversal, we will lose the magnetosphere and be exposed to deadly radiation from space.
For once they got the basics right, but as usual they've left out some important details. First, the magnetosphere plays no part in protecting us from the most abundant forms of radiation - gamma rays, X-rays, ultra-violet light and cosmic rays. These are all absorbed by the atmosphere, ten's of kilometres above the ground. Even those particles which move slowly enough to be deflected by the magnetosphere (which, incidentally, should not be taken lightly - they pose a very real and serious danger for astronauts outside the atmosphere, and even air-liners cruising at high altitudes are exposed to a small dose) are partially absorbed by the atmosphere.
The amount of radiation reaching the surface of the Earth would definitely increase, but not by much. More people would suffer skin cancer. We would not all die horribly from radiation poisoning.
Solar Flares
As anybody with an internet connection has heard, on 21 December 2012 various events will coincide: The appearance of the dread planet Nibiru, the alignment of the Solar System with the galactic core, the end date of the Mayan Long Count, which will cause (via various pseudo-scientific mechanisms) the Sun to go crazy, belching out Solar Flares which will strip the earth of it's protective atmospheric layers and snuff out life on earth.
Gosh!
Before we go on, I need to make it clear that none of this stuff will happen. If you want to know why, browse some of my previous articles, and gain a bit of understanding on how all these causes are either over-hyped, or non-existent.
But supposing the Sun does try to kill us all? Would we be safe? Let's have a look at the various interesting and energetic phenomena on the Sun that affect us here on earth.
Sunspots
When Galileo turned his telescope towards the Sun, he shocked the established order by discovering blemishes, or spots, on its surface. The Sun was clearly not a perfect orb of heavenly light and fire, as had always been taught. The spots also changed their position and size from day to day. We now know that sunspots are relatively cold areas on the surface of the Sun (usually about four thousand degrees Celsius), and are caused by disturbances in the Sun's magnetic field. Since the Sun is made from circulating gas and plasma, and is therefore entirely fluid, the equator rotates much more rapidly than areas near the poles, which thoroughly stirs up the material. This also causes the Sun's powerful magnetic field to become twisted and deformed, and these disturbances are what cause sunspots to appear. Sunspots follow an eleven year cycle (roughly), which determines both the number of spots, and their location.
The cycles are not constant, however, as can be seen in the diagram. In fact, in the late 17th century, the sunspot cycle faded away almost entirely - an event known as the Maunder Minimum (after E. Walter Maunder, of Greenwich Observatory). The current cycle (Edit: by 2012, the cycle was definitely back on track, and approaching maximum) has been very slow to start - http://www.spaceweather.com has daily records and commentary on how remarkably quiet the Sun has been for the last few years. However, it is important to remember that this is only unusual in the very short term - the Sun has been shining for billions of years, and has always been a complex dynamic system. Solar astronomers have been recording the Sun's activity for centuries, and the records show exactly what we expect. Like all natural cycles, it is not perfect regular: Both the timing and intensity hover around an average figure, but it is only an average over time. The next time a doomsday prophet points out that the current cycle is months behind schedule, and uses this as evidence that the Sun is about to do something terrifying, you can join us as we point and laugh at his ignorance!
Prominences
The Sun's writhing magnetic field does more than just stir up sunspots, however. Sometimes localised regions of the magnetic field will twist and rise up from the Sun's surface, arcing upwards into gigantic loops many times larger than the Earth. Superheated gas and plasma are drawn up and flow along these lines, creating vast hoops of fiery solar material arcing through space. While these prominences aren't usually visible without specialised filters, if they happen to occur on the edge of the Sun (from our point of view) during a solar eclipse, they stand out boldly as weird pink circular flames. Because they have the same origins, they are about as common as sunspots, and often appear in the same place. They come in two varieties: Quiescent prominences which hang above the Sun for days on end, and Eruptive prominences which burst upwards in mere hours. The photograph was taken from Skylab in 1974, and is still one of the largest and most violent prominences on record.
Flares
Solar Flares are rather more energetic than Prominences. Taking only minutes to rise to full size, and decaying within an hour, they occur when twisted magnetic lines break and reconnect. This releases huge amounts of energy in the form of X-Rays, high energy subatomic particles and Ultraviolet Light. The X-Rays and UV light reach earth in under eight minutes, while the particles take from hours to days to reach us, depending on the intensity of the flare. Solar flares can disrupt the earth's protective ionosphere (affecting long-range radio broadcasts), damage satellites, induce surges in power transmission lines. Worst of all, they can injure or kill astronauts who lack the protection of Earth's atmosphere and magnetic field. Fortunately, there is usually sufficient warning for them to retreat to shielded locations within their spacecraft or station.
CME
If a magnetic reconnection is violent enough, it can actually blast large amounts of material from the Sun's ionised surface out into space. This is called a Coronal Mass Ejection (CME). This material rushes out into space at the speed of the Solar Wind (several hundred kilometers per second), until it either collides with a planet or dissipates into the interstellar medium. Of course, the impact isn't as dramatic as it sounds - it is only extremely thin gas, after all. But it's high temperature and electrical charge do create interesting effects: The Aurora Borealis and Aurora Australis. The material is easily swept up by the Earth's magnetic field and directed towards the poles. When it collides with the upper atmosphere, it glows to create the beautiful and ghostly displays seen in the extreme northern and southern polar latitudes.
So, in the normal course of affairs, the Sun has no nasty tricks up its sleeve. There is a tremendous amount of extremely violent activity, which is to be expected from a sustained nuclear fusion reaction burning hydrogen with the fury of millions of thermonuclear bombs, but it is so far away, and we are so efficiently protected by the various layers of our own atmosphere and our planet's magnetic field, that even the worst of these effects affect our technology far worse than any living creature on earth. But the Sun has a trump card, and unlike the rest, it's a biggy.
Death At it's current rate of consumption, the Sun has about five billion years before it begins running out of hydrogen, and the nuclear furnace at its core begins to cool. With less energy being released, the pressure begins to drop, and the unimaginable weight of the sun's outer layers will be able to press down harder, compressing the core to new extremes. The increased pressure causes the temperature to begin climbing again, which helps to sustain the fusion reactions, but this can only go on for so long. Eventually there will be so little hydrogen fuel, and so much helium "ash", that no amount of extra heat will be able to keep the fires burning. The core will collapse further and further, getting hotter and hotter till suddenly (at around one hundred million degrees Celsius!) a new nuclear reaction begins: Helium begins fusing into heavier elements. This reaction is far more violent and energetic than the plain old hydrogen reaction, so the pressure will suddenly shoot up, and the collapsing layers of the sun will rebound. From the outside, the Sun will be seen to start growing larger and larger, until it is about one hundred times larger than it is now and the outer layers swallow up the inner planets completely. The new surface of the Sun will be so close to the earth that the oceans will boil, the atmosphere will be stripped, and our planet will finally die. So the doomsday prophets aren't entirely wrong. They just happen to have their timescale out by over five billion years!
The 13th sign of the Zodiac
It seems that there's a 13th sign, which means that all the other star sign dates will have to change to make room. We'll probably all have to change to a different sign, and some of us will now be an 'Ophiuchus' - the Serpent Bearer (One way to pronounce it is something like oh-PHEW-cuss, in case you were wondering). My first impulse was to say "You mean all the horoscopes up till now have been baloney? Say it aint so!" but I restrained myself . If you want to be taken seriously, don't resort to mockery, but let the facts speak for themselves. So without further ado, let's get started.
This is news? The world of astrology is all abuzz with this news, but in fact it's not news at all. This thirteenth constellation (Ophiuchus, or The Serpent Bearer) has always been there. And astronomers have known for centuries that it's intruding into the zodiac. To us folk who actually look at the sky, this is ancient history. We're shaking our heads, looking a bit confused and saying "What, you only noticed now?". Heck, we probably knew about it before Newton figured out what gravity was!
So why has the world of Astrology taken so long to notice? Well from what little I know, the entire pseudoscience is based on tradition, and received wisdom from ancient astrologers. When new planets are discovered, astrologers either ignore them or come up with rationalisations for why their influence never mattered before but now it does. The influences ascribed to the various planets and constellations are based on Greek Mythology (Mercury was a messenger, Jupiter was happy, etc), which itself was just a series of loosely connected stories, which changed over the centuries. It's a faith, in other words, with pretensions towards real science.
Astronomers have been announcing this for years, and it's always been ignored. I think this is because people who read horoscopes simply don't want to be told it's false. What's changed? I would guess (based on no evidence or research) that an astrologer has decided to boost his popularity by writing a shocking new book detailing a "new zodiac", and hopes to make a killing. Maybe it's not an astrologer, but an astronomer who fell to the dark side. I'll definitely be updating this page when somebody emails me proper information!
Foundations of Astrology
But enough speculation. What exactly is going on here? Let's review a few basics that you would have learned in school. The Earth spins on its axis every 24 hours, and also moves around the Sun every 365.25 days (roughly). As we spin around, we spend half the day on the same side of Earth as the Sun (daytime) and the other half on the opposite side (night time). Now the stars and constellations are so far away that they're essentially motionless - we can pretty much ignore their movements. At any one date we can only ever see the stars in half the sky, because the Sun is on the other half (and when you can see that half, it's daytime). This is all pretty basic stuff that everybody knows.
But every day, the Earth moves a bit further around the Sun, so that our view of the stars shifts slightly. Today we see one half of them, but six months from now we're on the other side of the Sun, where we can see the rest. Over the course of a year, we get to see the whole sky. Of course, from the ground it looks like we're stationary and the sky is moving, taking a whole year to do a full revolution (This is how the ancients were able to measure the length of a year, incidentally.) And if you mark the Sun's position in the sky every day for a year, you'll find it moves through the same path every year. This path is called The Ecliptic.
Over two thousand years ago, when Astrology was in its infancy, the Greeks noticed that the five planets (Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn) never strayed far from the Ecliptic - they were constrained to a narrow strip of the sky. They also noticed patterns in the arrangement of the stars. Using a lot of imagination, they assigned constellations to the various patterns, and gave them names and stories from their mythology. Twelve of these constellations fitted quite neatly along the ecliptic, and completely covered the space in which the planets travelled. They called this band of constellations the Zodiac (literal translation: Animal Circle. I know, I know, they're not all animals. Astrology is not an exact science), and these constellations were the familiar signs of the zodiac. By charting the position of the Sun on the day of your birth, and the positions of the various planets in each constellation, they could draw conclusions about your personality, your future, and more. Incidentally, the Ecliptic is reasonably well aligned with the plane of the Solar System, which doesn't hurt when it comes to mystical respectability. So far so good.
Precession Unfortunately for astrologers, times have changed. The zodiac no longer lines up nicely with the Ecliptic, thanks to an effect known as Precession. If you've ever played with a toy gyroscope, or a spinning top, you will have noticed that it wobbles slowly. The more massive the gyroscope, the slower and more ponderous the wobble. This wobble is called Precession, and is caused by the gyroscopic action responding to the uneven gravitational force. The unevenness comes from the fact that the gyroscope is not perfectly upright, and so gravity pulls it more to one side than to the other (It tries to topple over, but can't). The Earth spins quite rapidly (about 1600km/h at the equator) and at six thousand billion BILLION tonnes, it is extremely massive. Although Earth can't topple over (it's in space - where would it topple to?), it is still imperfectly balanced and so the Sun's gravity pulls unevenly, causing Earth to precess at a rate of one wobble every 26,000 years. Of course, we don't feel any such wobble. Instead, we see the dome of the sky appear to wobble around us - or at least, we would if we didn't have such short lives.
Out of Alignment
So what effect does precession have on Astrology? There are two effects, actually. First of all, the wheel of the zodiac turns, so that the individual constellations gradually move away from their original position. This doesn't mean that it's actually moving separately from the rest of the stars, but that the position of the Sun on any particular date very slowly moves along to the next sign. Since there are twelve signs, the position of the Sun takes a little over two thousand years to move to the next sign. In other words, the dates neatly printed underneath each star-sign in your horoscope are off by about a month. You've been following the wrong sign.
But it gets worse than that, because the angle of precession is about 23 degrees off from the ecliptic. This means that, not only is the zodiac "turning", it's wobbling as well. The ecliptic no longer passes through the middle of the zodiac at all, but passes in and out of it twice a year. This has ruined the lovely spacing of the original signs, so that the Sun is only in some signs for a week or two, and in others for several months. So those dates in the horoscope are not only out by a few months, they're also not supposed to be so regular either!
Ophiuchus And the thirteenth sign? Well since the Ecliptic no longer lines up with the zodiac, a new constellation has managed to elbow its way into the Ecliptic so that the Sun now passes through thirteen constellations over the space of one year. Of course, Ophiuchus is not new at all - it's been around just as long as all the others. It was just never in the Zodiac before, and was therefore of no interest to astrologers. Now, though, they're suddenly all aware of it. Their responses are varied - either denying that the constellations have anything to do with star signs (as if the matching names was just a coincidence), or hastily creating a New Zodiac, with the thirteen signs (but not doing anything to correct the date shift, oh dear).
My favourite part of all this is the fact that, despite the fact that I'm talking about this as if it happened yesterday, it is seriously old news. The Ecliptic has been moving into Ophiuchus for centuries already. In fact, it's gotten so far that the sun now actually spends more time in the Ophiuchus than it does in Scorpius (or the old-fashioned Scorpio, as they call it. See what I mean about being stuck in tradition?) . Astrologers have been blissfully casting their horoscopes and telling us that "Mercury is in the house of whatever" for ages, never once looking up to notice that the universe disagrees with them!
UFO's
It's interesting that the number of reported UFO sightings seems to be going down. There was a time when everybody and their aunt had a UFO story, which would be faithfully printed in the national news. Governments around the world had military projects to investigate the sightings, UFO "experts" had regular slots on national television, and many movies (from E.T. to Close Encounters of the 3rd Kind) were made about the various UFO experiences. The problem with these sightings was that the reports were jumbled, confused, stitched together from memory with no evidence or record of what had actually happened.
Nowadays, though, everybody has a camera. Whether it's a dedicated digital camera, or the increasingly capable units built into our cellphones, nothing happens anymore without a witness who is capable of recording it. And then uploading it to youtube. It's telling that, as more people are capable of producing actual proof of their experiences, fewer experiences are happening. Still, when people are able to take advantage of modern technology and produce video fotage, it's that much more impressive and convincing. As these events come to my attention, I'll document and analyse them in these pages.
Be warned, though. I'm pretty skeptical of UFO stories. I will never claim that there is no life 'Out There', since such a claim is for all intents and purposes unprovable. But I'm going to require a LOT of convincing that such life is a) intelligent, b) interested in us and c) capable of breaking the laws of physics as we know them to d) harass rednecks and tabloid journalists.
During the 1960s, the Soviet Union and United States raced to become the world leader in space exploration. The winner would be able to claim technological superiority over the other. The Soviet Union had the early edge: In 1957, it launched Sputnik, the first man-made satellite. In 1961, the Soviet Union dealt the American space program another blow when cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first human in space. But, according to the Judica-Cordiglia brothers from Italy, Gagarin wasn't the first.
The brothers set up a listening station in Italy to intercept communication transmissions between ground operations and spacecraft for both American and Soviet missions. Weeks before Gagarin's successful flight, the brothers claimed to have detected and recorded radio transmissions of a cosmonaut slowly dying while adrift in space. The Soviet Union denied the brothers' claim. Supporters of the theory believe the Soviet government hid the cosmonaut's death to preserve the country's reputation as a leader in space exploration.
Shifting Poles
Some people believe that the Earth's North and South poles weren't always located where they are now. They believe the Earth once rotated on a different axis. Others say that the Earth always rotated about its polar axis, but that the Earth's crust shifts so that the land located at each pole changes. Climate change, earthquakes and volcanic eruptions result from stresses on the Earth's crust during the shift. Some claim that the Earth will soon experience another dramatic polar shift, and that, as a result, entire continents might sink while new ones emerge from the sea.
The polar shift hypothesis enters the world of conspiracy theories when some claim that top governments and scientists know of the impending shift but refuse to share the information with the public. Supposedly, they're keeping it a secret to avoid causing a panic. Skeptics dismiss polar shift hypotheses, saying that there's no real scientific basis for them.
2012 and the End of the World
We can blame it all on the Mayans. They created the Long Count Calendar, a time measurement system that had spiritual significance to their culture. They organized their calendar into several cycles, the last of which will end in December 2012. Some people think the Mayans had discovered that after 2012, the world would end.
There are dozens of theories about how this might happen. Some claim that 2012 is when the Earth will experience a polar shift (see above). Others say that after 2012, the Earth will experience a period of terrible destruction followed by a new age of peace and enlightenment. A few claim that in 2012, a secret government will accomplish its goal of total world domination.
Illuminati and Majestic-12
Secret governments are a staple in conspiracy theories. According to William L. Moore, a "UFOlogist," Majestic-12 was a code name for a secret government department headed by U.S. President Harry Truman. The purpose of this department: to deal with extraterrestrial beings [source: CSI]. Skeptics say that the documents Moore uses to support his claims are forgeries and that no such department exists.
Supposedly, the Illuminati is another secret organization with ties to space. There are hundreds of different theories about the Illuminati, some of which say it's the organization to which all other secret governments report. In what is possibly the strangest theory on this list, some people claim that the Illuminati are the descendants of the union between humans and an extraterrestrial reptilian race. According to this theory, these hybrid descendents have infiltrated the highest levels of government in countries around the world. The supposed goals of the Illuminati range from simple world domination to preparing the Earth for extraterrestrial colonization. Skeptics say there's no evidence to support the existence of the Illuminati, but conspiracy theorists say that the lack of evidence actually proves the group exists. Believers say the Illuminati is so effective, they've erased almost all evidence of their existence.
Roswell/Men in Black/Area 51 Conspiracy
No discussion about space conspiracy theories would be complete without mentioning the Roswell incident. In July 1947, rancher Mac Brazel discovered some strange debris in an area northwest of Roswell, N.M. Brazel couldn't identify the debris, and a nearby military base released conflicting information about the material's origin. A few local newspapers picked up the story. While people thought the incident was unusual, several years passed before the first theories about alien activity really took off. At that time, dozens of UFO enthusiasts published stories and books about the Roswell incident. The basic theory was that the debris came from an alien spacecraft and that the United States government confiscated the material for later study.
According to some theories, the government transported the debris to an Air Force base in Roswell. Others say they took it to Area 51, a secret military base in Nevada where the government tested experimental aircraft. There were stories of autopsies performed by government officials on dead aliens. Some people claimed that anyone trying to uncover the government's secrets about aliens would receive a visit from a group of intimidating officials in dark suits: the so-called Men in Black. The U.S. government repeatedly denied having any information about extraterrestrials, but many theorists dismissed the government's responses. Officially, the Air Force says that the debris found in Roswell came from a crashed surveillance balloon that was part of a top-secret project called Project Mogul and that it has no information about alien life forms
Planet X
Does our solar system contain a giant, unnamed planet? It does, according to the Planet X theory. This theory says that our solar system has a 10th planet (if you count Pluto as a planet, otherwise the mystery planet is no. 9). The planet is supposed to be enormous and on an orbital path that will bring it close to Earth soon. Proponents of this theory cite earthquake and weather data as evidence of this planet's growing influence on Earth. They also claim that the government is forcing observatories to close to keep the planet's approach secret and prevent panic. Several astronomers have said that there's no evidence for the Planet X theory, and that if the planet did exist, humans would be able to see it even without a telescope.
The USA 193 Spy Satellite
On Dec. 14, 2006, Vandenberg Air Force Base launched a rocket carrying a satellite called USA 193. The satellite was part of the National Reconnaissance Office's (NRO) intelligence program. In other words, it was a spy satellite. The satellite had trouble maintaining orbit, and by late 2007 the Air Force determined that it would soon crash to Earth. The U.S. government announced in January 2008 that it intended to shoot the satellite down with a missile.
Why shoot down the satellite? The government said it was because the satellite's fuel tank contained hydrazine, which is toxic. If the fuel tank survived re-entry, it could land on a populated area. On Feb. 20, 2008, the U.S. fired a missile and struck USA 193. Some people believe the government didn't tell the entire story. They say that the government also wanted to prevent the satellite from falling into another country's possession. Others go even further and suggest the United States only wanted to show the world that it's capable of shooting down a satellite with a missile. In 2007, China destroyed a weather satellite with a missile, calling it a test. That test spread debris in an area around the Earth filled with other satellites, endangering those machines. By contrast, the United States' approach was to fire on USA 193 when it reached a low enough orbit to minimize danger to other satellites. Was the U.S. government using USA 193 as an excuse to respond to China's test missile?
Flat Earth Society
In 1956, Samuel Shelton founded a society that subscribed to a theory about the shape of the Earth -- namely, that it's flat. Shelton based his theory upon what he called common sense and personal observation. He called the scientific evidence for a globe-shaped Earth "dogmatic," meaning scientists were making this claim without adequate evidence. Later, when people showed him pictures of the Earth taken by satellites, Shelton claimed the photos were fake. He and the members of his society continued to support the idea that the Earth is flat and that those who disagree are part of a conspiracy to keep the truth about the Earth hidden.
Shelton died in 1971, and leadership of the society passed to Charles Johnson. Johnson led the society until his death in 2001. Without leadership, the society fell apart. Critics of the Flat Earth Society say that its members simply deny any evidence that conflicts with their world view without offering real alternative hypotheses.
The Face on Mars
In the 1970s, NASA launched two spacecraft called Viking 1 and Viking 2 on missions to Mars. Both spacecraft photographed the surface of Mars and sent images back to NASA. In one photo, a hill on Mars' surface looked a little like a face. Author and conspiracy theorist Richard Hoagland went a step further and said that it didn't just look like a face, it was definitely a face. Hoagland theorized that an alien civilization colonized Mars and that the face was evidence of an alien city in the Cydonia region. When other satellites photographed the surface of Mars, the pictures of the Cydonia region revealed that the face was just an eroded mesa. Hoagland argued that the equipment NASA used to take the subsequent photos wasn't as accurate as the Viking equipment. He also claimed that NASA doctored the images, making them look less like a face
The Moon Landing was a Hoax
The granddaddy of all space conspiracy theories has to be that the moon landings were faked on a soundstage. Those who believe the moon landings were hoaxes say that the United States lacked the technology necessary to transport humans to the moon and back. They claim that NASA faked the landings in order to make people believe the U.S. had fulfilled President John F. Kennedy's promise to land a man on the moon before 1970.
What evidence do these skeptics cite? For one thing, on the lunar landing videos, you can't see any stars in the sky. NASA says that's because the moon's surface and the astronauts' suits were so reflective that it was too bright for the camera to pick up the comparatively faint stars. Another point skeptics make is that while planting the American flag in lunar soil, the flag appears to wave. With no air in space, how is that possible? NASA says that the astronauts rotated the flag's pole back and forth while planting it so that it would remain upright. The rotation of the pole caused the flag to move back and forth as if rippling in the breeze even though there's no air on the moon.
NASA says that there's plenty of evidence that men landed on the moon. There are photos, videos and testimonials from the dozen astronauts who have set foot on the moon's surface. The astronauts returned with soil and rock samples, which NASA also cites as physical evidence of our presence on the moon. Some hardcore skeptics maintain that all of this evidence is fake or came from unmanned missions to the moon.
Asteroid 2012 DA14 may be on a Collision Course with Earth
The Earth seems to be in a shooting gallery for asteroids. Last year it was YU55 that passed by closer than the moon. Now one may pass by dangerously close.
By now asteroid Apophis is well-known to those who keep up with news in space science. It’s big — 1,100 feet across — and Apohis will pass close to Earth in 2029 and 2036. Chances of it striking home are now considered low. Now a new, smaller rock is headed this way. It will pass closer than high-flying communication satellites. A small calculation error could hide a catastrophic collision.
What is Known about the New Asteroid Right now the potential villain is 2012 DA14 and is millions of miles away. Its orbit carries it close to Earth’s orbit twice a year. As a matter of fact, it passed within 1.5 million miles of Earth on February 16, 2012. No big deal there, but on February 13, 2013 — that’s not Friday the 13th — it will brush by at a scary distance of 17,000 miles — perhaps less! Geosynchronous satellites are about 22,000 miles up.
The pesky visitor is about 150 feet across. That’s not big enough to destroy the Earth or result in mass extinction, but it’s big enough to destroy a large city or cause wide-spread damage. For comparison, the object that caused Meteor Crater in Arizona was estimated to be about one-third the size of 2012 DA14 and it produced a crater nearly a mile across and over 500 feet deep. The effects of that impact extended far beyond the crater. The explosion was perhaps equal to a 20 megaton nuclear weapon.
The dinosaurs were extinguished by a huge object perhaps nine or ten miles across. The explosion from such an object is difficult to imagine — likely exceeding the explosive power of every nuclear weapon on Earth.
Scientists Believe the Earth Will Be Safe from 2012 DA14 The ability of scientists to predict the paths of objects orbiting the Sun is remarkable. The laws of motion that astrophysicists use have been incredibly accurate over the years, guiding spacecraft to distant planets with unique accuracy. Scientists are not worried about 2012 DA14, but the stated probability of impact is a rather high one chance in 675.
The belief is that, although 2012 DA14 will come very close to Earth, it will miss. But it is a year away from its destination and it has to interact with complex gravitational fields that overlap and tug on objects. Only a tiny error could make the difference between “who cares” and a catastrophe.
Actually, asteroids and meteoroids pass close to Earth with alarming frequency, but most are smaller than 2012 DA14. NASA keeps track of near-Earth-objects — NEO’s. In January of 2012, 126 objects passed within 9.3 million miles and many were much closer. Objects the size of basketballs enter Earth’s atmosphere several times daily but are reduced to the size of a baseball or less by the friction of the atmosphere by the time they impact. Asteroid 2012 DA14 would be reduced in size also, but would still be large enough to wreak havoc.
Asteroids often come close to Earth, but 2012 DA14 will likely miss Earth by a scant 17,000 miles — about twice the diameter of Earth. It will be closer than geosynchronous satellites. Nevertheless, scientists seem confident that when it passes by on February 13, 2013, it will miss. The orbit of 2012 DA14 will bring it close to Earth in the future, and it may continue to remain a threat.
Water Present Just Below the Surface of Jovian Moon liquid water has been found in a lake just below the surface of Jupiter's moon Europa, with important implications for the search for extraterrestrial life.
Based on our knowledge of life on Earth, the presence of liquid water is considered to be one of the essential requirements for the existence of extraterrestrial life. Although water is very common in the solar system, liquid water is much less common and is present only over a limited temperature range. Therefore the presence of liquid water on another body in the solar system would appear to shorten the odds of life elsewhere.
The Galileo Mission The Galileo mission was the first to probe the atmosphere of Jupiter directly, and it carried out long term measurements of the Jovian system after its launch in 1989. In 2003, the satellite was sent on a collision course with Jupiter's atmosphere to avoid affecting Europa and its possibility of harboring life. A future mission to probe for the existence of life on Europa is currently being studied by NASA.
The Composition of Europa Europa is the 4th largest satellite of Jupiter, and slightly smaller than the Earth's moon.
Based on data from the Galileo satellite, Europa is believed to consist of a small metallic core, surrounded by a large rocky layer. In turn this is covered by a liquid water ocean and an icy crust.
At such a distance, the sun does not provide much heat. Instead, the ocean is maintained by the heat generated by friction associated with tidal forces from Jupiter.
Liquid Water on Europa In a paper published in Nature on 16 November, observations from the Galileo spacecraft reveal that heated water causes fissures in the Europa crust, allowing the water to rise. Although it was previously thought that an ocean existed 10-30 km (6-18 miles) below the crust, the latest data show that a large water reservoir is in places only 3km below the surface.
In principle, recovery of the water by future missions might answer the question directly of whether primitive Europan (not to be confused with European) life forms exist. It is plausible that the deep water is being mixed with the shallow water and transferring nutrients for life in the process.
As pointed out by Martin Siegert for BBC News, similar geological processes also occurred in Antarctica, with warm water uplifting and forming cracks in the rocks on freezing and expansion. Don Blankenship, a coauthor of the Nature paper, pointed out in a NASA article that the improved understanding of Europa would not have been possible without observations of the Earth's ice sheets and floating ice.
The Prospects for Liquid Water Elsewhere in the Solar System It seems increasingly likely that the place to search for liquid water is not the inner planets (Mercury and Venus are too hot, and Mars is too cold) but rather amongst the entourage of the gas giants. Their satellites typically have rocky cores and ice. In addition, tidal forces in some cases provide the heat necessary to counteract the low sunlight. This is the likely process on Europa, in the Jovian system, while in the Saturnian system, the moon Enceladus provides prospects of harboring life of some kind: see the special issue of Science magazine, Cassini at Enceladus.
Galactic Alignment
A popular claim amongst 2012 doomsday merchants is that the Earth will be aligned with the centre of the galaxy, and then Bad Things Will Happen (In fairness, many believers in galactic alignment are teaching New Age ideas, and are keeping themselves apart from the hysteria. Good for them!). An alternative idea is that the earth will pass through the centre of the galaxy itself, with horrific consequences. Unlike many other aspects of 2012 mythology, this class of ideas is pretty easy to debunk without specialized knowledge.
The Galactic Core Our solar system sits on the edge of a minor arm of the Milky Way galaxy. We are quite far out towards the edge, where nothing exciting happens. Even so, with the naked eye alone we can see about six thousand stars with the naked eye (if you don't mind travelling to peep over the horizon!). With telescopes, that number jumps to hundreds of millions. Even this, though, is just a tiny portion of the galaxy, and the rest is shielded from our sight by the vast clouds of gas and dust which populate its spiral arms.
If we were to visit the galactic core, we would have a totally different view. The sheer number of stars packed into a much smaller volume would make our skies luminous to the point where we would need sunglasses at night. Since the average spacing between stars is only half a light year at the core, the average brightness would be much higher, with the brightest nearby stars casting shadows. All those stars blazing so near would increase the background radiation levels to a point where life would struggle to adapt, and the chances of a nearby giant star going supernova would be very high indeed. But worst of all would be the supermassive black hole at the core of our galaxy. Several hundred thousand times more massive than our Sun and tens of millions of kilometres in diameter, this beast voraciously consumes nearby stars and gas clouds. As they are drawn nearer by its awesome gravity, they get whipped up to higher and higher speeds, until tidal forces tear their very molecules apart. This process generates tremendous radiation in the Gamma and X-Ray wavelengths, making the entire region unbelievably toxic to life. If the Sun and the Earth were to pass through this region, nothing would survive.
Fortunately, this can never happen. We are bound in an orbit around the core at a distance of roughly twenty six thousand light years. We move with our neighbours around the core, not towards it. And even if something happened to disrupt our course and send us inwards, it would take millions of years to fall that far, and the effects would be very obvious to even the least educated observer thousands of years before we reached the centre. We do not see millions of stars with the naked eye, and we are still alive, therefore we are nowhere near the core, and would have millions of years warning if we were headed that way.
A less extreme idea is that we will pass through the galactic plane – sort of like moving from the galaxy's northern hemisphere to the southern hemisphere and briefly touching the equator. The obvious question is “So what?” but even allowing for some significance, one has to remember the sheer size of the galaxy. The earth takes a quarter of a billion years to make one full orbit of the galaxy, and about sixty four million years to bob back and forth from “North” to “South”. The actual crossing takes thousands of years, and any imagined effects wouldn't be obvious from one year to the next.
Alignment So the idea of us passing through the centre of the galaxy in one specific year is laughable. But what about the more moderate ideas, that we will be in alignment with the galactic plane, or the centre of the galaxy, or neighbouring astral bodies?
It certainly is true that we are very close to an alignment with the core of the galaxy – but what exactly does that mean? Specifically, for a brief moment, the Earth, Sun and Galactic core will be positioned in a straight line. This happens every single year, though, on the December Solstice (December 21). The most perfect possible alignment happened back in 1998, so that each year the alignment becomes looser and less important.
Is there any significance to this? Try a quick experiment with me: Stand up straight, and turn to face North. Do you feel any different? Consider that you are now lined up vertically with the core of the Earth, AND with the earth's axis, yet neither of these alignments have any obvious effect. You can repeat the experiment in any number of ways – lean against a fence so that you are directly lined up with the Sun, line up your bed with nearest power lines. Even if you believe that any of these objects have an effect on your life, you won't notice any change at all based on the direction you happen to be facing. Similarly, having our solar system be in alignment with parts of the galaxy doesn't have any significance. An alternative experiment is a little harder to try, but quite popular with tourists: Travel to the equator. Look for the big dotted line that somebody inevitably paints on the ground near a tourist attraction. Stand on one side of the line, then step over to the other side. Nothing happens! While the differences between North and South are real and obvious, they are not sudden – they happen gradually as you approach the crossing point, to the point where the exact position of the line becomes unimportant.
It should be obvious then that, to a scientist, none of these alignments or positioning mean anything whatsoever. There are no physical laws or phenomena which care about these things. Now, you can argue for non-physical effects (as in the case of astrologers and New Age practitioners), and that’s a matter of personal belief – science has no business arguing with that. But, as soon as you start predicting apocalypse or other physical effects, the argument falls flat. Whether you’re a scientist or not, it’s plain that there is no physical “real” significance to any of these arguments.
Is it really going to happen on 21st December 2012?
The answer, as explained in depth right here, is "No, it's not going to happen at all!" But even if you don't buy the standard Skeptics debunkings, there are a few questions you should be asking about these ancient mayan doomsday prophecies. The first, of course, should be "Where are these prophecies and why have we only heard about them in the last few years?". Actually, most archaeologists and scholars of the ancient Mayan civilization would love to know this, as they seem to think that the Mayan's had no concept of the world ending at all. But the authors of doomsday books don't seem interested in sharing their sources with the academics. I guess they're as serious about protecting their book sales as they are about warning the public of end times. . .
But a simpler question, which the experts in the field can answer, is "How do we know what date this is all actually supposed to happen? How do we convert a date on the Mayan Long Count to our Gregorian Calendar?". The various Mayan Calendars were very precisely worked out, so if we can just find an event common to both European and Mayan histories, we'll have a common date and it becomes easy to convert between the two systems.
At the beginning of the twentieth century, three Maya scholars (Joseph Goodman, Juan Martinez-Hernandez, and J. Eric S. Thompson) examined both Mayan and colonial historical documents to find common points and developed the GMT constant, currently accepted by experts in the fields as the standard conversion factor. Whenever a scholar of the ancient Mayan culture wants to convert a date from Mayan records into something that makes sense to modern readers, he uses the GMT constant. This is how we know when great battles were fought, when chieftains were born and died, and when the world is supposed to end.
But there are dissenting voices. Gerardo Aldana, associate professor of Chicana and Chicano Studies at UC Santa Barbara, has been approaching the conversion problem from a different angle and believes that the GMT constant could be out by as much as fifty or even a hundred years. Instead of trying to match up Mayan and colonial versions of history, he has taken an astronomical approach. As the doomsday prophets love to point out, the Mayans were very careful astronomers and kept careful records of the movements of the planets, as they believed that they controlled the destinies and day to day lives of ordinary Mayan people (not so different from European astrologers). The motions of Venus, in particular, were considered important enough to have their own calendar - The Venus Cycle.
An earlier scholar, Floyd Lounsbury, attempted to use the Dresden Codex Venus Table (a portion of an ancient mayan manuscript, which had been housed in a museum in Dresden for many years before it was almost destroyed in World War II) to confirm the accuracy of the GMT constant, and later scholars interpreted his work as a convincing proof that the GMT table was accurate. However, Aldana contends that none of these scholars had the astronomical background necessary to fully understand the Venus Table. In his recent publication "Calendars and Years II: Astronomy and Time in the Ancient and Medieval World" (Oxbow Books, 2010), Aldana demonstrates that Lounsbury's reasoning was flawed, and proceeds to demonstrate that the GMT constant is not in fact accurate at all, eventually leading up to the 50 to 100 year error mentioned previously.
Now it must be understood that Academics do not present truth, so much as search for it. We should not take Aldana's (or any other scholar) word as gospel. Other researchers will need to pick up the thread of his work and independently reach the same, or similar conclusions before the GMT constant can be abandoned. Nevertheless, Aldana makes a convincing case, and if he proves correct then it knocks yet another nail in the coffin of the 2012 Doomsday Cult.
Killer Comet
In December 2010, a Russian astronomer named Leonid Elenin had the good fortune to discover a comet. Following the usual practice, it was officially named Comet Elenin, after its discoverer. Once its orbit had been figured out, it caused some excitement amongst the astronomical community because it would pass unusually close to Earth (about 35 million kilometres, or a little less than ten times the distance to the Moon) and therefore had the potential to put on a very good show. Unfortunately, it turned out to be a bit of a dud, never quite getting bright enough to see through binoculars.
Meanwhile, word of this comet had reached a different community, one obsessed with predicting the end of civilisation by means of ancient prophecies and cosmic intervention. As with most other natural events, they figured they could tie it in to the 2012 phenomenon and it didn't take long for a confused mess of conflicting explanations, conspiracies and prophecies to spread across the internet. Some said that the comet's gravity was going to whip the Earth out of its orbit, causing changed weather, earthquakes, and general mayhem. Others claimed that the comet was so dim because it was actually a Brown Dwarf, or even the dread planet Nibiru.
Up till now I had ignored these claims as they seemed short-lived. It was a single comet, and the excitement would pass on its own. Weirdly, this hasn't happened, even though the comet recently began breaking up and will likely not survive its passage around the Sun. But I should have realised this would happen. Prophets of Doom become quite attached to their ideas (perhaps its the fame and attention, or the money to be made from selling scary books) and often find ways to keep a good scam going. Judging from some of the conspiracy theories around this particular comet (Apparently the comet's name is an acronym for "Extinction Level Event: Nibiru Is Nigh", which must have come as a surprise to poor Leonid!), I suspect that the photographic proof of the comet's demise will be ignored or dismissed as part of some great cover-up. Oh well.
But for all my skepticism, there is actually a grain of truth here. Comet scares are not new, as we saw in the great 1911 apparition of Halley's Comet when Earth passed directly through the great comet's tail. Thanks to the wonders of spectroscopy, astronomers knew that the comet contained trace amounts of organic compounds including cyanide, and the snake-oil salesmen had a field day selling special comet masks and comet medicine that would save the general population. Needless to say, the billions of people who had no access to these remedies were not harmed, as the amounts were so small as to be undetectable within the Earth's atmosphere!
And in the interest of staying honest, I must mention that a direct impact - one in which the comet strikes Earth directly, as opposed to passing hundreds of millions of kilometers away, is a very serious event. That would be very noticeable, and comparable to an asteroid impact. If it were to miss the vast majority of Earth's mostly human-free surface and strike a city, it would have a massive disaster with potentially millions killed. But comets aren't as stealthy as asteroids - once they pass within the orbit of Jupiter they become easy to spot with small telescopes and binoculars, and there are thousands of amateur astronomers scanning the sky every evening looking for them (Why? The fame and glory of having a heavenly body named after yourself, that's why!). The race to be a comet's discoverer means that comets get announced publicly even before their orbits are calculated. A comet on a collision course with a city on Earth would be widely known, and would give us months (at least) to begin emergency evacuations. So... serious, but not the end of the world.
And little comet Elenin? Well, after I started writing this article and before I finished it, Leonid Elenin announced that his comet no longer exists - it flew too close to the Sun, melted and broke apart. That particular apocalypse isn't going to happen.
Nearby Supernova
The story goes like this:
A nearby star, Betelgeuse, is nearing the final stages of its life. It is already a hugely swollen Red Giant and has started acting strangely. It's brightness is flickering, and Astronomers have seen that it is forming bumps and dark patches. Within the next few years, it is going to go supernova and our Solar System will be caught up in the blast. The government (for in stories like this, the convoluted structures of bureaucracy and competition between infighting departments that make up our modern democratic governments always reduces to one unified sinister force) has known about this for some time and is keeping it from us. Because, you know, that's what they do.
Variations of this story have started appearing all over the internet, usually with some mention of ancient Mayan prophecies or Planet X so as to hop on the 2012 bandwagon. But is it true?
Let's establish a few facts. Betelgeuse is one of the brightest stars in the constellation of Orion. It is very bright in the night sky and shines with a dull orange colour. It is a Red Giant, which indicates that it is very old and is in the final stages of its life. Soon it will run out of fuel and collapse. It is such a massive star that the collapse will trigger a supernova explosion. It is approximately 640 light years away, although it was previously thought to be closer than this (Our measuring techniques have become more precise over time). It is so huge that, with it's relative closeness, the latest telescopes and most modern imaging techniques have actually managed to capture a direct image of the star itself, whereas most stars are usually only visible as point sources of light. These images have indeed revealed that the star is not perfectly round, that regions are violently turbulent, and that it has mysterious dark patches appearing and disappearing on the surface.
And now the story starts to unravel, because these features are the same features we see on our own Sun all the time, except that they're on a vastly bigger and more violent scale (which, considering the size and luminosity of Betelgeuse, is only to be expected). A star is a constantly churning ball of superheated plasma with a sustained nuclear fusion reaction at it's heart, after all! Admittedly, Betelgeuse has definitely been shrinking over the last few years, but this isn't really surprising either since it has always been known as a long period variable star.
So yes, Betelgeuse is definitely going to go supernova soon, but none of the "new evidence" suggested in the scare stories is actually new. What does this mean? We need to remember that Astronomers, like geologists, are used to talking about things that take millions or billions of years to happen. When we use words like "Soon" or "Quickly", it's important to remember the context. In the case of a star like Betelgeuse, "Soon" means "Within the next few thousand years, maybe". So it's impossible to tell - we don't really know enough about how stars explode to be any more precise than that and even if we did, we don't have a clear enough picture of what's happening with Betelgeuse to make a meaningful prediction anyway. It could happen in ten thousand years time, it could happen tomorrow. All we know is that it will happen.
When it does, though, what does that mean for us on Earth? When Betelgeuse blows, it will be a Type II supernova. Models of this type of supernova give reasonable estimates of the amount of radiation and stellar material which will be cast out, but estimates of the minimum safe distance vary considerably, from 25 to more than 200 light years. This seems to depend on what the author's consider to be "safe". At a very close distance, the Earth could be completely destroyed, while at the furtherest distances we might just lose the ozone layer, have some spectacular Aurora Borealis and Australis, and find the few months of extra radiation causes cancer rates to go up for a while. However, Earth is more than three times further away from Betelgeuse than even the most pessimistic figures. We will see Betelgeuse become so bright that it shines during the day. In the evenings it will cast a shadow, and make backyard astronomy very difficult (Assuming that Betelgeuse is visible at the time, and not behind the Sun). After about a month, it will begin fading until after a few more months it will have vanished completely. Over the years, people watching through telescopes will see the remnants gradually blossoming out into a gorgeous planetary nebula (named for its appearance in small telescopes, not because it has anything to do with planets). It will be a stunning site which nobody alive will ever forget, but we will be perfectly safe. Sorry to disappoint!
Nibiru (part 1)
The world will end in May 2003
Zeta Talk In 1995,
Nancy Lieder came forward and announced on her website that the world would end in 2003. It turns out that she had met with aliens (Grey's, apparently) called Zeta's, from Zeta Reticuli, when she was a little girl. They implanted a device in her brain which allowed them to stay in contact with her, and she had recently received warning that an object called Planet X (or Nibiru) would soon sweep through the Solar System, wreaking untold havoc and kill billions of people. Our fate was sealed for May 2003. Weary astronomers and scientists explained again and again that if there was any such object, matching the rather precise descriptions offered by Ms. Lieder, it should be easily visible to the general public with the naked eye. As the big day approached, Zeta Talk (Nancy's website) was quietly edited to make Nibiru smaller and fainter, to account for all those skeptics who insisted that they were unable to find it. She preached conspiracy, and claimed that the incidence of natural disasters was increasing as the effects began to be felt. Apparently the US government didn't want to raise a panic about the end of the world, even as they whipped up hysteria in support of the war on terror!
Reprieve Then, on the due date, an amazing thing happened: Nancy changed her story! Just in time, she had discovered New Age ideas about the significance of the Mayan Long Count, and postponed the apocalypse to 12 December 2012. The world was safe for another eight years, but that now that time is running out. So what exactly is Planet X? What is all this evidence that believers refer to? Can we really trust YouTube as an impartial source? What do the ancient Sumerians have to do with any of this?
Mesopotamia History Around 6000 BC, stone age farmers began filtering into the region known as Mesopotamia (modern day Iraq). The area was irrigated by the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, which flooded annually. The floods deposited enormously fertile silt over the plains, making the entire region an ideal place for human agricultural settlement. The region near where the two rivers come closest was called Babylonia, and was divided into Akkad in the north, and Sumer in the south. Over the next few thousand years, the people of this region developed into the first civilisation as they built the first cities and invented the plough, the wheel, bronze and writing (in the shape of Cuneiform, on baked clay tablets). Much of their mythology reflects biblical events, such as the creation of Man, and the Great Flood. They understood finance, mathematics, astronomy, and gave us the sexagesimal (base sixty) number system, the remains of which persist in modern measurements of time and angles (60 seconds to the minute, etc).
Astronomy fact... The Sumerians watched the stars and planets keenly, and established a good foundation of astronomical observations were able to recognise that the Morning and Evening stars were the same object (The Planet Venus) and could then predict the length of the Venus Cycle. They also learned to predict Lunar Eclipses, by noticing the eighteen year cycle of eclipses. They named many of the constellations we know today, and were familiar with the cyclical motions of The Five Planets. They not only associated individual objects with gods, but regions of the sky as well. They were completely uninterested in the natural phenomena behind their observations though, making no attempt to understand what they were seeing (with one exception, an attempt to explain the phases of the moon which is laughably childish, considering the sophistication of the Greek's understanding only a short time later)
... and fiction However, various people in the last few decades have made some extraordinary claims about Sumerian astronomy. It seems that they were aware of all the planets we now know, plus several as yet undiscovered ones. They apparently knew that the Earth revolved around the Sun, that the planets were other worlds just like our own. And best of all, they knew this because Aliens had come and shown it to them. These theories usually include an element of upliftment, where the wise Aliens teach the stupid humans about technology. The evidence stems from an ancient image (From an engraved cylinder which served as a Seal - it would be rolled into the wet clay of a fresh contract, signing it) called 'The Berlin Seal' which is supposed to represent the planets around the Sun. The interpretation is that the big star in the middle is the Sun, nine of the things around it are the planets we know (plus Pluto), the tenth is the moon, the eleventh is one of the objects recently discovered past Pluto (Perhaps Eris), and the twelfth is the dreaded Planet X. There are some pretty big problems with this interpretation, even ignoring the fact that the "sun" is not represented by the standard sun symbol. If this is an outside alien's view of the Solar System, then why doesn't it in fact look like a solar system and why does it leave out so many characteristic features? Where are the rings of Saturn? What about the larger moons of Jupiter and Saturn, many of which are much larger than Pluto? Why stop at twelve, when in fact we've already found more than 12 planets (until we clarified the issue by redefining "planet", and incidentally demoted Pluto)? Why is it that the Human Race needed alien assistance to show us how to stick seeds into the ground, yet we managed to progress from horse-back to space shuttle without any help in less than a hundred years? Whether or not you believe in extra-terrestrial life, it's a bit of a stretch to interpret this little image as proof of anything more than that they knew how to make pretty pictures.
Nibiru The Sumerian's northern neighbours were the Akkadians. The Akkadian word for 'crossing' was Nibiru. The Babylonians (who followed after the Sumerians and Akkadians) used the word Nibiru to refer to the highest point of the ecliptic (or in layman's terms, the spot in the sky where the Sun is in the summer solstice - 21 June), and back then would have coincided with the zodiacal symbol of Libra. Nibiru was also used to refer to the planet Jupiter, in certain months, as well as the Star of Marduk (the creator). If this seems a little vague, it's because the Babylonians didn't attach special significance to individual stars or planets - individual stars and planets would be assigned to various Gods as fitted the story. Nevertheless, the latest crop of doomsday prophets have decided that one of the 'planets' on the Berlin Seal is Nibiru.
Nibiru (part 2)
Planet X
New Worlds
On 13 March 1781, William Herschel discovered a new planet, which would be named Uranus (God of the Sky, father of Saturn). This was a huge deal, as it overturned millennia of established knowledge about the Solar System. Uranus was studied and observed until astronomers were able to plot it's orbit and predict it's movements. Unfortunately, no matter how carefully they refined their figures and checked their calculations, Uranus did not move the way they expected. It kept drifting off the course they plotted for it. So, in 1846, two men (Urbain Le Verrier and John Couch Adams) suggested that perhaps there was still another planet, which nobody had seen yet, and whose gravity was tugging Uranus off course. Neither of these men were aware that the other was working on the same problem. They worked backwards from the observations and calculated a possible orbit for this new planet and distributed their work to astronomers around the world. On 23 September of that year, German astronomer Johann Gottfried Galle found a planet almost exactly where they had predicted. After much in-fighting and squabbling, the world's astronomers finally settled on Neptune as the new planet's name. The discovery was revolutionary, because it was the first time a celestial object had been discovered through mathematical predictions, instead of blind luck.
Unfortunately, the observed orbit did not fully compensate for Uranus's perturbations, and in fact had a few of its own.
In the Late 19th Century, Percival Lowell (a wealthy Bostonian and keen astronomer) became fascinated with Mars, and built a private observatory specifically to observe it. In between mapping out the canals of Mars, he worked on the Neptune problem. In 1905, he completed his mathematical analysis of Uranus's orbit, and concluded that there was a ninth planet, which he called Planet X. Having calculated a likely orbit for Planet X, he began his search which continued until his death in 1915. In 1929, Clyde Tombaugh was employed at the observatory. As the most junior staff member, he was assigned to resume Lowell's search. He did this by the painfully dull method of comparing photographs of the same section of sky taken on different dates, over and over, and looking for any stars which seemed to move. On 13 March 1930, he found it. Remarkably, that day would not only have been Lowell's 75th birthday, but the 149th anniversary of the discovery of Neptune! The movements were recorded and the maths completed. Planet X had been found, was estimated to have a mass about seven times that of Earth. In tribute to Percival Lowell, a name was chosen which began with his initials P.L.: Pluto.
Mathematical Errors In 1978, the discovery of Pluto's moon, Charon, threw a spanner in the works. By measuring the speed and size of Charon's orbit, Pluto's mass could be accurately calculated and it was found to be only one fifth of a percent of Earth's - utterly incapable of causing the deviations in Neptune's orbit. It was only an extraordinary coincidence that Pluto happened to be in the right place in the sky to be seen by Tombaugh when it was found. Was Planet X still out there?
What's more, at about the time that Lowell was searching for his Planet X, other astronomers were searching the inside of the Solar System -- they had found that Mercury's orbit was quite dramatically different from the predictions (In technical terms, it precessed far more than predicted by Newton's equations). They called this inner planet "Vulcan", but no matter how long they searched, it was nowhere to be found. The solution, to everybody's surprise, came from an employee of the Swiss Patent Office: Albert Einstein.
In 1916, he published his General Theory of Relativity, which for the first time explained what Gravity actually was, and was able to provide far more accurate predictions than Newton's laws. Once Mercury's orbit was recalculated using the new theory, all discrepancy vanished. And Lowell's predictions for Planet X? Modern astronomers are finding Neptune and Uranus exactly where they expect to find them. It's generally accepted that Lowell and his predecessors simply suffered from inaccurate measurements.
Ongoing Discoveries These days, the news is all about planets being discovered outside our Solar System. But with increasing frequency, a new object gets found on the outer edges of the Solar System. Four of these are in the same scale as Pluto, but by this time announcements of "New Planets" was becoming so common-place that it's understandable that the world's newspapers stopped reporting on them. In fact, there are many hundreds more which have been observed and catalogued and this was a large factor in the decision to redefine the word 'Planet' to exclude Pluto and it's trans-neptunian companions. It is quite astonishing that astronomers are able to find such vanishingly small objects at such mind-boggling distances, but that's nothing compared to what the Doomsday Nibiru cultists would have you believe.
Apocalypse The Facts in a Nutshell Nibiru is a real word, used by some of the peoples of ancient Mesopotamia, referring to astronomical points in the sky, and various bright lights and planets. The Mayan calendars are very complicated, with their Long Count dating the creation of the universe at a little over five thousand years ago. Since the Sumerians were fading from importance at that point, there's probably no connection between these two civilisation's mythologies and histories.
'Planet X' is a general term for any undiscovered planet which astronomers hope to find, and was in use for much of the twentieth century. Recently, however, the count of 'planets' beyond Pluto has become so commonplace (over a hundred at last count) that the IAU (International Astronomical Union) voted to define the word Planet properly to exclude these minor objects. Incidentally, since some of these objects were larger and more planet-like than Pluto, Pluto ended up being demoted, sparking howls of outrage that still haven't died down. The name 'Planet X' was only ever a place holder, and is no longer used.
It's important to remember that some of these things are absolutely tiny, a fraction of the size of our own moon, and are unimaginably far away, yet they are being routinely observed and catalogued. In fact, since astronomers learned how to see planets in other solar systems (A claim which would have had you laughed out of the room as recently as ten years ago), the discovery of planet-sized objects in out own solar system has become downright boring - the newspapers won't bother printing it.
The Claims in a Nutshell The doomsday prophets don't agree with each other. Each has their own tale of terror, and their own glossy novels and DVD's to sell, but I will try to summarise some of the common elements.
In December 2012, the world will change forever. More moderate New-Age types say that the world will shift into a new era of enlightenment and joy, as the ancient Mayans predicted that the current age will end on that date. This sounds like a restatement of the old "Shifting from the Age of Pisces into the Age of Aquarius" line. This is a religious position, and arguing against it serves no purpose. Depressingly though, this rather pleasant position is being drowned out by the disaster mongers. A number of bickering charlatans have the following to say, when not accusing each other of plagiarism:
There is a mystery Planet X (also called Nibiru), which was known to both the Sumerians and the Ancient Mayans. It is about five times the size of earth, and has a highly elliptical orbit (like a comet). It takes about 3600 years to complete an orbit, and the next close fly-by is happening in 2012. NASA scientists took a photograph of it in 1983, and are trying to cover it up, but you can find it on the internet. When it makes it's flyby of Earth, the Earth will have a Polar Shift and 90% of the population will die. If you buy my DVD and my survival kit, then you'll come out on top. Nibiru is now so close that people in the southern hemisphere can see it during daylight, and soon we'll all be able to see it and then the government can't hide it any more!
The Debunking You should be able to debunk most of this yourself based on information collected in this article alone (although I would never recommend limiting yourself to only one source - that's just sloppy). The Sumerians watched the stars and noticed patterns in the movements of the moon, sun and planets, but their most sophisticated explanations for it all boiled down to "The Gods are angry". The Mayans were a little more sophisticated, but were still limited to what could be gleaned from naked eye observations. Authors who try to show that these two people knew more than they did are inevitably confusing their cultures (presenting Aztec art as Mayan records, for example), or mistranslating original texts (very easy to do - Cuneiform is nothing like modern writing and reading it is a very specialised skill), or just plain lying.
A planet as described would be VERY easy to see - if it's only two years from perihelion (the point of it's orbit where it's closest to the Sun), then it would be closer to us now than Jupiter, and brighter than anything in the sky (except for the Sun and Moon)! As for the Secret Image circulating on the net, this was actually released as part of a routine anouncement to the press. It was a picture from a brand new infra-red telescope on a satellite in orbit, and the mission scientists were excited because they were seeing things never seen before. The press release included the speculation that "it could be a distant galaxy, a dying star, a new planet, anything!". One newspaper leaped onto the 'new planet' angle, and suddenly it became a conspiracy. There are a number of other photos, of course, but these are either very obviously photoshopped, or random images of moons or planets or nebulae with the word 'Nibiru' written on the bottom.
But the silliest claim is that of Polar Shift. The trick here is that the Magnetic Poles do occasionally reverse polarity. The timing is pretty random, although it seems to average at once every 400,000 years. With clever phrasing, they make it sound as if the whole planet will suddenly flip over, with results like we saw in the special effects in the movie 2012. In fact, a nearby passing planet can only have one of two effects: Either swinging both Earth and itself into radical new orbits, or if they get close enough, both planets get torn apart by tidal forces. But... considering how easily we can see such faint and distant things as extra-solar planets and the more local Trans-Neptunian Objects, the idea of something five times bigger than the earth getting so close without being seen is ridiculous.
There is one more very significant aspect to the whole Nibiru scare. In classic doomsday fashion, the 'facts' have been edited to suit current circumstances. This was all supposed to happen in 2003. It was supposed to be a huge menacing presence in the sky by 2000, which everybody could see. When it didn't happen, the story was changed. Eventually the collision date came and went, without any problems at all, so the story changed. The Zeta Talk website even tried to claim that they had known the real date all along but had chosen to lie about it, "To mislead the authorities" for some reason. These people are spinning lies, and changing the stories whenever the facts become too inconvenient to ignore. And since a scientists one goal is to find the one true explanation for whatever they're studying, it's no wonder they have so little respect for this nonsense.
Reversal of the Poles
There are a lot of theories as to just how the world will end on 21 December 2012, from a Mystery Planet, various ways the earth will align with different things, to the Sun going crazy. My personal favourite, however, is that the Earth's poles will reverse, with total chaos resulting. As usual with all these theories, every lunatic and crackpot has their own interpretation of what exactly this means and claims that theirs is the only Truth. While researching this article, I was surprised at the sheer number of different interpretations -- far too many to tackle individually. Their are common threads, however, usually real facts carefully edited and distorted to back the false claim, or copy-and-pasted from rival believers.
Geo-magnetic reversal
Every now and then, the Earth's magnetic poles switch places. North becomes South, and vice versa. The reversals are visible in geological records, and we can see that the field has reverse tens of thousands of times since the Earth's creation. In addition, the magnetic field fluctuates in strength, and the alignment is variable. At the moment, for example, the Magnetic North Pole is moving from Canada to Siberia, and is accelerating - it was moving at 10km per year at the beginning of the 20th century, compared to 40km per year at the beginning of the 21st century. However, the reversals have nothing to do with the rotation of the Earth.
In addition, the reversals are not regular. The last reversal was a little under eight hundred thousand years ago. The longest gap between reversals yet found is more than fifty million years, and the shortest is only a few thousand. A graph of all geo-magnetic reversals shows a random distribution - in other words, the reversals do not follow any timetable, and are not predictable. Anybody claiming to know what the next reversal will happen, or that we are "overdue", is not speaking the truth.
Polar Reversal Polar reversal refers to the North and South poles switching places. Unlike the magnetic poles, the North and South poles mark the points around which the Earth rotates - the imaginary axis of rotation passes through the North and South poles. Although there is a connection between the Earth's rotation and the Earth's magnetic field, the location of the poles has nothing to do with the location of the magnetic poles. When a geo-magnetic reversal happens, a compass will point in another direction, but the Earth won't suddenly flip over, or screech to a halt and rotate in the other direction and I will demonstrate why. The Earth's surface rotates at a speed of almost 1700km/h. You can calculate this yourself: The equator is, very roughly, about 40000km long, and a day is 24 hours. Any point on the equator therefore moves 40000km in 24 hours, or 1666.66km/h. Assuming it now suddenly rotates the other way around at the same speed, that means it has to change speed by over 3000km/h. Of course, the atmosphere is free to move as it pleases, so it will take a while to catch up. Can you imagine the effects of a 3000km/h wind, over the entire surface of the planet? What about the oceans? What would happen to every single mountain, every single house and car and boulder and animal? NOTHING would survive, and this is the scenario painted by the most extreme 2012 theorists. Now, we know that geo-magnetic reversals have happens thousands of times in the past, yet we still have mountains that are hundreds of millions of years old! We still have life on earth! In other words, there is no connection between Geo-magnetic reversals and Polar reversals.
You could argue, perhaps, that the poles change place, but that the Earth continues to rotate in the same direction. You can test this theory by spinning a gyroscope (or more dramatically, a bicycle wheel) and then suddenly trying to flip it upside down. The gyroscopic forces involved are surprisingly powerful. A hand-held gyroscope will buck wildly, the bicycle wheel will tear itself from your grip and fly across the room. An entire planet? No.
Some 2012 theorists argue that the changing magnetic field interacting with the Sun's magnetic field is what flips the earth over. But the Earth's magnetic field simply isn't that powerful. Look at how slowly the needle on a magnetic compass, weighing only a few grammes swings around. The Sun's field is actually quite powerful, but the strength fades with distance - at 150 million kilometres away it's faint enough to be undetectable. Try to imagine how powerful the force required to move trillions and trillions of tonnes of rock and magma must be, and it becomes obvious that the interacting magnetic fields have no effect at all.
Exposure to Radiation
The most important thing about the Earth's magnetic field, from the point of life, is that it carves out a region of space known as the Magnetosphere. This region marks a boundary past which certain types of radiation are deflected onto new paths. Particles from the Sun and deep space hurtling towards Earth are scooped up by the Earth's magnetic field and neatly steered towards one of the magnetic poles where they eventually swoop down and hit the upper atmosphere, exciting the gasses and creating the ghostly glows known as Aurora Borealis and Aurora Australis. Some of the doom-mongers suggest that, during a geo-magnetic reversal, we will lose the magnetosphere and be exposed to deadly radiation from space.
For once they got the basics right, but as usual they've left out some important details. First, the magnetosphere plays no part in protecting us from the most abundant forms of radiation - gamma rays, X-rays, ultra-violet light and cosmic rays. These are all absorbed by the atmosphere, ten's of kilometres above the ground. Even those particles which move slowly enough to be deflected by the magnetosphere (which, incidentally, should not be taken lightly - they pose a very real and serious danger for astronauts outside the atmosphere, and even air-liners cruising at high altitudes are exposed to a small dose) are partially absorbed by the atmosphere.
The amount of radiation reaching the surface of the Earth would definitely increase, but not by much. More people would suffer skin cancer. We would not all die horribly from radiation poisoning.
Solar Flares
As anybody with an internet connection has heard, on 21 December 2012 various events will coincide: The appearance of the dread planet Nibiru, the alignment of the Solar System with the galactic core, the end date of the Mayan Long Count, which will cause (via various pseudo-scientific mechanisms) the Sun to go crazy, belching out Solar Flares which will strip the earth of it's protective atmospheric layers and snuff out life on earth.
Gosh!
Before we go on, I need to make it clear that none of this stuff will happen. If you want to know why, browse some of my previous articles, and gain a bit of understanding on how all these causes are either over-hyped, or non-existent.
But supposing the Sun does try to kill us all? Would we be safe? Let's have a look at the various interesting and energetic phenomena on the Sun that affect us here on earth.
Sunspots
When Galileo turned his telescope towards the Sun, he shocked the established order by discovering blemishes, or spots, on its surface. The Sun was clearly not a perfect orb of heavenly light and fire, as had always been taught. The spots also changed their position and size from day to day. We now know that sunspots are relatively cold areas on the surface of the Sun (usually about four thousand degrees Celsius), and are caused by disturbances in the Sun's magnetic field. Since the Sun is made from circulating gas and plasma, and is therefore entirely fluid, the equator rotates much more rapidly than areas near the poles, which thoroughly stirs up the material. This also causes the Sun's powerful magnetic field to become twisted and deformed, and these disturbances are what cause sunspots to appear. Sunspots follow an eleven year cycle (roughly), which determines both the number of spots, and their location.
The cycles are not constant, however, as can be seen in the diagram. In fact, in the late 17th century, the sunspot cycle faded away almost entirely - an event known as the Maunder Minimum (after E. Walter Maunder, of Greenwich Observatory). The current cycle (Edit: by 2012, the cycle was definitely back on track, and approaching maximum) has been very slow to start - http://www.spaceweather.com has daily records and commentary on how remarkably quiet the Sun has been for the last few years. However, it is important to remember that this is only unusual in the very short term - the Sun has been shining for billions of years, and has always been a complex dynamic system. Solar astronomers have been recording the Sun's activity for centuries, and the records show exactly what we expect. Like all natural cycles, it is not perfect regular: Both the timing and intensity hover around an average figure, but it is only an average over time. The next time a doomsday prophet points out that the current cycle is months behind schedule, and uses this as evidence that the Sun is about to do something terrifying, you can join us as we point and laugh at his ignorance!
Prominences
The Sun's writhing magnetic field does more than just stir up sunspots, however. Sometimes localised regions of the magnetic field will twist and rise up from the Sun's surface, arcing upwards into gigantic loops many times larger than the Earth. Superheated gas and plasma are drawn up and flow along these lines, creating vast hoops of fiery solar material arcing through space. While these prominences aren't usually visible without specialised filters, if they happen to occur on the edge of the Sun (from our point of view) during a solar eclipse, they stand out boldly as weird pink circular flames. Because they have the same origins, they are about as common as sunspots, and often appear in the same place. They come in two varieties: Quiescent prominences which hang above the Sun for days on end, and Eruptive prominences which burst upwards in mere hours. The photograph was taken from Skylab in 1974, and is still one of the largest and most violent prominences on record.
Flares
Solar Flares are rather more energetic than Prominences. Taking only minutes to rise to full size, and decaying within an hour, they occur when twisted magnetic lines break and reconnect. This releases huge amounts of energy in the form of X-Rays, high energy subatomic particles and Ultraviolet Light. The X-Rays and UV light reach earth in under eight minutes, while the particles take from hours to days to reach us, depending on the intensity of the flare. Solar flares can disrupt the earth's protective ionosphere (affecting long-range radio broadcasts), damage satellites, induce surges in power transmission lines. Worst of all, they can injure or kill astronauts who lack the protection of Earth's atmosphere and magnetic field. Fortunately, there is usually sufficient warning for them to retreat to shielded locations within their spacecraft or station.
CME
If a magnetic reconnection is violent enough, it can actually blast large amounts of material from the Sun's ionised surface out into space. This is called a Coronal Mass Ejection (CME). This material rushes out into space at the speed of the Solar Wind (several hundred kilometers per second), until it either collides with a planet or dissipates into the interstellar medium. Of course, the impact isn't as dramatic as it sounds - it is only extremely thin gas, after all. But it's high temperature and electrical charge do create interesting effects: The Aurora Borealis and Aurora Australis. The material is easily swept up by the Earth's magnetic field and directed towards the poles. When it collides with the upper atmosphere, it glows to create the beautiful and ghostly displays seen in the extreme northern and southern polar latitudes.
So, in the normal course of affairs, the Sun has no nasty tricks up its sleeve. There is a tremendous amount of extremely violent activity, which is to be expected from a sustained nuclear fusion reaction burning hydrogen with the fury of millions of thermonuclear bombs, but it is so far away, and we are so efficiently protected by the various layers of our own atmosphere and our planet's magnetic field, that even the worst of these effects affect our technology far worse than any living creature on earth. But the Sun has a trump card, and unlike the rest, it's a biggy.
Death At it's current rate of consumption, the Sun has about five billion years before it begins running out of hydrogen, and the nuclear furnace at its core begins to cool. With less energy being released, the pressure begins to drop, and the unimaginable weight of the sun's outer layers will be able to press down harder, compressing the core to new extremes. The increased pressure causes the temperature to begin climbing again, which helps to sustain the fusion reactions, but this can only go on for so long. Eventually there will be so little hydrogen fuel, and so much helium "ash", that no amount of extra heat will be able to keep the fires burning. The core will collapse further and further, getting hotter and hotter till suddenly (at around one hundred million degrees Celsius!) a new nuclear reaction begins: Helium begins fusing into heavier elements. This reaction is far more violent and energetic than the plain old hydrogen reaction, so the pressure will suddenly shoot up, and the collapsing layers of the sun will rebound. From the outside, the Sun will be seen to start growing larger and larger, until it is about one hundred times larger than it is now and the outer layers swallow up the inner planets completely. The new surface of the Sun will be so close to the earth that the oceans will boil, the atmosphere will be stripped, and our planet will finally die. So the doomsday prophets aren't entirely wrong. They just happen to have their timescale out by over five billion years!
The 13th sign of the Zodiac
It seems that there's a 13th sign, which means that all the other star sign dates will have to change to make room. We'll probably all have to change to a different sign, and some of us will now be an 'Ophiuchus' - the Serpent Bearer (One way to pronounce it is something like oh-PHEW-cuss, in case you were wondering). My first impulse was to say "You mean all the horoscopes up till now have been baloney? Say it aint so!" but I restrained myself . If you want to be taken seriously, don't resort to mockery, but let the facts speak for themselves. So without further ado, let's get started.
This is news? The world of astrology is all abuzz with this news, but in fact it's not news at all. This thirteenth constellation (Ophiuchus, or The Serpent Bearer) has always been there. And astronomers have known for centuries that it's intruding into the zodiac. To us folk who actually look at the sky, this is ancient history. We're shaking our heads, looking a bit confused and saying "What, you only noticed now?". Heck, we probably knew about it before Newton figured out what gravity was!
So why has the world of Astrology taken so long to notice? Well from what little I know, the entire pseudoscience is based on tradition, and received wisdom from ancient astrologers. When new planets are discovered, astrologers either ignore them or come up with rationalisations for why their influence never mattered before but now it does. The influences ascribed to the various planets and constellations are based on Greek Mythology (Mercury was a messenger, Jupiter was happy, etc), which itself was just a series of loosely connected stories, which changed over the centuries. It's a faith, in other words, with pretensions towards real science.
Astronomers have been announcing this for years, and it's always been ignored. I think this is because people who read horoscopes simply don't want to be told it's false. What's changed? I would guess (based on no evidence or research) that an astrologer has decided to boost his popularity by writing a shocking new book detailing a "new zodiac", and hopes to make a killing. Maybe it's not an astrologer, but an astronomer who fell to the dark side. I'll definitely be updating this page when somebody emails me proper information!
Foundations of Astrology
But enough speculation. What exactly is going on here? Let's review a few basics that you would have learned in school. The Earth spins on its axis every 24 hours, and also moves around the Sun every 365.25 days (roughly). As we spin around, we spend half the day on the same side of Earth as the Sun (daytime) and the other half on the opposite side (night time). Now the stars and constellations are so far away that they're essentially motionless - we can pretty much ignore their movements. At any one date we can only ever see the stars in half the sky, because the Sun is on the other half (and when you can see that half, it's daytime). This is all pretty basic stuff that everybody knows.
But every day, the Earth moves a bit further around the Sun, so that our view of the stars shifts slightly. Today we see one half of them, but six months from now we're on the other side of the Sun, where we can see the rest. Over the course of a year, we get to see the whole sky. Of course, from the ground it looks like we're stationary and the sky is moving, taking a whole year to do a full revolution (This is how the ancients were able to measure the length of a year, incidentally.) And if you mark the Sun's position in the sky every day for a year, you'll find it moves through the same path every year. This path is called The Ecliptic.
Over two thousand years ago, when Astrology was in its infancy, the Greeks noticed that the five planets (Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn) never strayed far from the Ecliptic - they were constrained to a narrow strip of the sky. They also noticed patterns in the arrangement of the stars. Using a lot of imagination, they assigned constellations to the various patterns, and gave them names and stories from their mythology. Twelve of these constellations fitted quite neatly along the ecliptic, and completely covered the space in which the planets travelled. They called this band of constellations the Zodiac (literal translation: Animal Circle. I know, I know, they're not all animals. Astrology is not an exact science), and these constellations were the familiar signs of the zodiac. By charting the position of the Sun on the day of your birth, and the positions of the various planets in each constellation, they could draw conclusions about your personality, your future, and more. Incidentally, the Ecliptic is reasonably well aligned with the plane of the Solar System, which doesn't hurt when it comes to mystical respectability. So far so good.
Precession Unfortunately for astrologers, times have changed. The zodiac no longer lines up nicely with the Ecliptic, thanks to an effect known as Precession. If you've ever played with a toy gyroscope, or a spinning top, you will have noticed that it wobbles slowly. The more massive the gyroscope, the slower and more ponderous the wobble. This wobble is called Precession, and is caused by the gyroscopic action responding to the uneven gravitational force. The unevenness comes from the fact that the gyroscope is not perfectly upright, and so gravity pulls it more to one side than to the other (It tries to topple over, but can't). The Earth spins quite rapidly (about 1600km/h at the equator) and at six thousand billion BILLION tonnes, it is extremely massive. Although Earth can't topple over (it's in space - where would it topple to?), it is still imperfectly balanced and so the Sun's gravity pulls unevenly, causing Earth to precess at a rate of one wobble every 26,000 years. Of course, we don't feel any such wobble. Instead, we see the dome of the sky appear to wobble around us - or at least, we would if we didn't have such short lives.
Out of Alignment
So what effect does precession have on Astrology? There are two effects, actually. First of all, the wheel of the zodiac turns, so that the individual constellations gradually move away from their original position. This doesn't mean that it's actually moving separately from the rest of the stars, but that the position of the Sun on any particular date very slowly moves along to the next sign. Since there are twelve signs, the position of the Sun takes a little over two thousand years to move to the next sign. In other words, the dates neatly printed underneath each star-sign in your horoscope are off by about a month. You've been following the wrong sign.
But it gets worse than that, because the angle of precession is about 23 degrees off from the ecliptic. This means that, not only is the zodiac "turning", it's wobbling as well. The ecliptic no longer passes through the middle of the zodiac at all, but passes in and out of it twice a year. This has ruined the lovely spacing of the original signs, so that the Sun is only in some signs for a week or two, and in others for several months. So those dates in the horoscope are not only out by a few months, they're also not supposed to be so regular either!
Ophiuchus And the thirteenth sign? Well since the Ecliptic no longer lines up with the zodiac, a new constellation has managed to elbow its way into the Ecliptic so that the Sun now passes through thirteen constellations over the space of one year. Of course, Ophiuchus is not new at all - it's been around just as long as all the others. It was just never in the Zodiac before, and was therefore of no interest to astrologers. Now, though, they're suddenly all aware of it. Their responses are varied - either denying that the constellations have anything to do with star signs (as if the matching names was just a coincidence), or hastily creating a New Zodiac, with the thirteen signs (but not doing anything to correct the date shift, oh dear).
My favourite part of all this is the fact that, despite the fact that I'm talking about this as if it happened yesterday, it is seriously old news. The Ecliptic has been moving into Ophiuchus for centuries already. In fact, it's gotten so far that the sun now actually spends more time in the Ophiuchus than it does in Scorpius (or the old-fashioned Scorpio, as they call it. See what I mean about being stuck in tradition?) . Astrologers have been blissfully casting their horoscopes and telling us that "Mercury is in the house of whatever" for ages, never once looking up to notice that the universe disagrees with them!
UFO's
It's interesting that the number of reported UFO sightings seems to be going down. There was a time when everybody and their aunt had a UFO story, which would be faithfully printed in the national news. Governments around the world had military projects to investigate the sightings, UFO "experts" had regular slots on national television, and many movies (from E.T. to Close Encounters of the 3rd Kind) were made about the various UFO experiences. The problem with these sightings was that the reports were jumbled, confused, stitched together from memory with no evidence or record of what had actually happened.
Nowadays, though, everybody has a camera. Whether it's a dedicated digital camera, or the increasingly capable units built into our cellphones, nothing happens anymore without a witness who is capable of recording it. And then uploading it to youtube. It's telling that, as more people are capable of producing actual proof of their experiences, fewer experiences are happening. Still, when people are able to take advantage of modern technology and produce video fotage, it's that much more impressive and convincing. As these events come to my attention, I'll document and analyse them in these pages.
Be warned, though. I'm pretty skeptical of UFO stories. I will never claim that there is no life 'Out There', since such a claim is for all intents and purposes unprovable. But I'm going to require a LOT of convincing that such life is a) intelligent, b) interested in us and c) capable of breaking the laws of physics as we know them to d) harass rednecks and tabloid journalists.