NASA Debunks 2012 Apocalypse With New FAQ

http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/nasa_debunks_2012_apocalypse_with_new_faq.php#.TwIkaAb1Rbk.hackernews

by werencole • 15 years ago

8 7 15 years ago

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ypcx• 15 years ago

Well, I'm no doom believer myself, but for the sake of completeness, here is something interesting:

http://farsight.org/demo/Demo2008/RV_Demo_2008_Page1.html

Mind you, these remote viewers are said to be used by military, so probably not a complete hoax.

Anyway, if time travel is possible then the future is changeable. Let's be optimists.

dinde• 15 years ago

The people who believe in these types of predictions don't put much stock in science anyway. Someone who doesn't believe in carbon dating isn't going to listen to an argument regarding the Earth's age based on carbon dating.

If you really want to provide a counter in these types of discussions it is more helpful to speak in their language. My favorite example of this was when last year astronomers announced that the zodiac signs were incorrect due to a shift in the planet's position relative to the sun since the time that the zodiac was created. This produced more reverberations in the astrological community than any number of studies showing the falsehood of their predictions.

In this case, it may be helpful to point out that the December 21 is simply the date at which the next cycle in the Mayan calendar begins, as occurs every 400 years or so, and that the Mayans themselves made no predictions about cataclysmic events occurring on these dates.

chmielewski• 15 years ago

I'm not scared at all about the world ending 21DEC. What I am scared about is what people will do that week, how crowded (or empty?) the stores and streets will be that week and where I should (or should NOT) be parking my vehicle.

greenyoda• 15 years ago

Why should the U.S. taxpayers be funding NASA to debunk silly myths? How does this relate to NASA's mission of running the space program and doing aerospace research?

wkdown2• 15 years ago

It's an FAQ page that took maybe an hour for one person to write. Want me to write you a check for $0.000000001?

wkdown2• 15 years ago

Link to the source

http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/2012.html

tlb• 15 years ago

A magnetic reversal is very unlikely to happen in the next few millennia, anyway.

Not well supported. Magnetic reversals happen every few hundred thousand years, so by that measure there's a 1% chance it will happen in the next few thousand years. The mechanism is not well understood, it has been unusually long since the last flip, and the poles have shown significant activity in the last hundred years. It's hard to assign a probability less than 1%, and there are plausible arguments for higher.

NASA Debunks 2012 Apocalypse With New FAQ

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