Every day, I see more and more adverts and announcements promising apocalypse in the year 2012. Some genius in Hollywood has capitalised on this with a blockbuster film about it, and I’m seeing more and more unrelated junk science theories being lumped together as proof that the Mayans were right. But there’s a lot of other junk out there as well, everything from New Physics theories that get published in glossy paperbacks to UFO sightings.
Countering all this are a large number of skeptical science articles, using fact and logic to pour scorn on anybody who believes all that stuff. And frankly, it’s counter-productive. If you’re not sure what to believe and are looking for answers, I doubt you’re going to listen to the guy who insults you for asking. So in these pages I hope to challenge most of the apocalyptic theories and the explanations behind them using facts and simple logic. No ad hominem attacks, no jokes at the expense of believers. With luck, people will actually read this, and maybe I can help dispel some of the darkness.
Yesterday afternoon I was contacted by a journalist who wanted to know if I knew anything about the “new 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’ (One way to pronounce it is something like oh-PHEW-cuss, in case you were wondering). My first impulse was … Continue reading →
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 … Continue reading →
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 … Continue reading →
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 … Continue reading →
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 … Continue reading →
