Is the World Really Ending in 2012 as Some Predictors Claim?

[russ_watters]

I'm afraid that Dr. LaViolette's work is largely crackpottery...

To put a finer point on it, his website states explicitly that his purpose is to circumvent the scientific process. The guildelines of PhysicsForums state that discussions here are constrained to adhere to the scientific process. Please keep that in mind in further posts, raedwulf.

 

[LURCH]

Now, it seems to em a recall hearing one fairly reasonable connection between the Mayan calendar and Doomsday. It was theorized by some that the periodical mass extinctions found in the geological record are caused by meteorite impacts, and these impacts are caused by some external influence altering orbits within the asteroid belt. I can't recall, ATM, where I read this, but some astronomers were speculating that the Solar system's passage through the more densely populated space of the galactic plain may subject it to gravitational forces that effect the asteroids.

I'm going to see if I can find a reference to that theory. It's a bit thin, but not too implausable.

 

[Vanadium 50]

Lurch, I think you're thinking about Gillman and Erenler, International Journal of Astrobiology , Volume 7, Issue 01, January 2008, pp 17-26.

While the idea is intriguing, I don't think the evidence presented is terribly strong. I'll confess that the authors lack of use of significant figures put me in a bad mood, but essentially they argue that periodicities of mass extinctions correlate with the periodicities of the orbital motion of the sun - when it enters various spiral arms, and when it crosses the midplane.

I see two problems. One is that Spitzer measurements indicate that there aren't as many arms as Gillman and Erenler thought. The other is that they show no evidence of when the sun crosses the midplane; Gillman and Erenler pick one mass extinction as a guess as when the sun crosses the midplane and then show that other extinctions also correlate - but this is a far cry from evidence.

Now, onto 2012. The claim that the Mayan calendar can't represent dates after 2012 is just plain wrong: it would be exactly analogous to claiming our calendar can't represent dates after 2100. Even if it were true, the idea that a calendar deficiency somehow indicates the end of the world is just silly. If you use Gillman and Erenler as support for this, their paper suggests that we have tens of millions of years before we cross the galactic plane, not 7. Furthermore, the idea that there is a specific date where there is a problem doesn't accurately reflect the scale of things: the sun moves about 10 million miles per day. So the "danger zone" would be mighty thin. In fact, any sort of reasonable thickness to some putative danger zone, coupled with the time it would take for the purported mechanism to work would mean that the entire Mayan calendar covers this kind of event.

I'm afraid that the idea of 2012 is wrong on so many levels that it's difficult to tell where one error stops and the next begins.

 

[DaveC426913]

Or, more generally,

I'm afraid that the idea of 2012 is wrong on so many levels that ...

... I can't fathom how this thread has remained unlocked for as long as it has.

 

[LURCH]

Lurch, I think you're thinking about Gillman and Erenler, International Journal of Astrobiology , Volume 7, Issue 01, January 2008, pp 17-26.

While the idea is intriguing, I don't think the evidence presented is terribly strong. I'll confess that the authors lack of use of significant figures put me in a bad mood, but essentially they argue that periodicities of mass extinctions correlate with the periodicities of the orbital motion of the sun - when it enters various spiral arms, and when it crosses the midplane.

I see two problems. One is that Spitzer measurements indicate that there aren't as many arms as Gillman and Erenler thought. The other is that they show no evidence of when the sun crosses the midplane; Gillman and Erenler pick one mass extinction as a guess as when the sun crosses the midplane and then show that other extinctions also correlate - but this is a far cry from evidence.

Although that wasn't the article I read ( I read this about 10-15 yrs ago), it sounds almost identicle. I remember thinking that the periods were all wrong. A galactic year is about 250 MY. So, we would cross the galactic plane every 125 (or so). This would be half the frequency of periodic extinction events. I had not heard of the extra orbital dynamics added by including orbtis around the Orion arm.

 

[CosmologyTPA]

Additional info regarding galactic plane crossing and mass extinctions. I would consider Cambridge a pretty reliable source.

http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?aid=1804088

 

[vincentm]

Or, more generally,

... I can't fathom how this thread has remained unlocked for as long as it has.

Same here...

 

[D H]

Same here...

Count me as yet another PFer here who is completely confused regarding the longevity of this thread.

 

[JustFacts]

LaViolette's work has been confirmed in many disturbing ways since the early 1980s. Using the term "crackpottery" is an insult.

Some of the facts we do know with certainty aren't comforting.

Solar cycles have been getting larger and more intense and the solar peak appears to coincide with 2012. Could it be possible the Sun's magenetic field is increasingly being influenced as our solar system gets ever closer to the galactic plane? It promises to be the largest solar event ever recorded by humankind, barring, perhaps, the event 12,900 years ago that culled the human population and caused the extinction of the mammoths?

 

[Vanadium 50]

LaViolette's work has been confirmed in many disturbing ways since the early 1980s. Using the term "crackpottery" is an insult.

To whom, exactly? Other crackpots?

Solar cycles have been getting larger and more intense and the solar peak appears to coincide with 2012.

I'm sorry, but this isn't true. Whomever told you that made it up.

Solar Cycle 23 has been abnormally long, and it's not yet clear when Cycle 24 started. Based on what we know now, the best guess is around November 2008. That means the maximum would be somewhere around May 2014.

Getting something within +/- 2 years on an 11 year cycle is not my idea of a very accurate prediction. It's up there with "if you attack the Persians, a mighty empire will fall".

Could it be possible the Sun's magenetic field is increasingly being influenced as our solar system gets ever closer to the galactic plane?

Doesn't that presuppose that the sun is getting closer to the galactic plane? A statement for which there is no evidence.

It promises to be the largest solar event ever recorded by humankind, barring, perhaps, the event 12,900 years ago that culled the human population and caused the extinction of the mammoths?

I don't think "it" is doing the promising. Someone, not something is doing the promising. I hope that someone isn't the same someone who is making up sunspot data.

 

[Emreth]

it seems like 1960s had more sunspot activity...is that what spawned the hippies?