A NASA Scientist Answers The Top 20 Questions About 2012

Even though there is a 2012 forum I chose to place this in science because it's a bit more of a rational, scientific approach to 2012.

2012 And Counting

A NASA Scientist Answers the Top 20 Questions About 2012

PUBLIC CONCERN ABOUT DOOMSDAY IN December 2012 has blossomed into a major new presence on the Internet. This fear has begun to invade cable TV and Hollywood, and it is rapidly spreading internationally. The hoax originally concerned a return of the fictitious planet Nibiru in 2012, but it received a big boost when conspiracy theory websites began to link it to the end of the Mayan calendar long count at the winter solstice (December 21) of 2012. Over the past year, many unrelated groups have joined the doomsday chorus, including Nostradamus advocates, a wide variety of eschatological Christian, Native American, and spiritualist sects, and those who fear comet and asteroid impacts or violent solar storms. At the time of this writing there are more than 175 books listed on Amazon.com dealing with the 2012 doomsday. The most popular topics are the Mayan calendar and spiritual predictions that the disaster in 2012 will usher in a new age of happiness and spiritual growth. Quite a few authors are cashing in with manuals on how to survive 2012.

As this hoax spreads, many more doomsday scenarios are being suggested, mostly unrelated to Nibiru. These include a reversal of the Earth’s magnetic field, severe solar storms associated with the 11-year solar cycle (which may peak in 2012), a reversal of Earth’s rotation axis, a 90- degree flip of the rotation axis, bombardment by large comets or asteroids, bombardment by gamma rays, or various unspecified lethal rays coming from the center of the Milky Way Galaxy or the “dark rift” seen in a nearby galactic spiral arm. A major theme has become celestial alignments: supposedly the Sun will align with the galactic center (or maybe with the Milky Way Dark Rift) on December 21, 2012, subjecting us to mysterious and potentially deadly forces.

Unlike most pseudoscience stories, there seems to be no factual core on which the Nibiru- 2012 hoax has been constructed. This is different from, for example, the claims of aliens and a crashed UFO at Roswell, New Mexico. The alien stories are a fabrication, but the core fact is that an instrumented balloon did crash in Roswell on July 7, 1947. There is no similar factual core to Nibiru—just dubious “predictions” from psychics, or the Mayans, or Nostradamus. The rest is pure fiction.

I answer questions from the public submitted online to a NASA website, and over the past two years the Nibiru-2012 doomsday has become the dominant topic people ask about. Many are curious about things they have seen on the Internet or TV, but many are also angry about supposed government cover-ups. As one wrote “Why are you lying about Nibiru? Everyone knows it is coming.” Others are genuinely frightened that the world will end just three years from now. My frustration in answering questions piecemeal motivates this “Twenty Questions” format to organize the facts and shine a skeptical light on this accumulation of myths and hoaxes.

The top 10 questions are addressed in the link.....

[edit on 21-5-2010 by traditionaldrummer]

I wonder how many people will say how "naive" you are for trusting NASA. The nail has been in the Nibiru coffin for a long time now.
Don't get me wrong...I accept the possibility that life as we know it may be terminated by forces out of our control, and it may even be 2012, but it sure as hell isn't going to have anything to do with Nibiru or a pole shift. Everyone on this forum should read this article, that way they will actually have to read what an actual scientist has to say about the subject.

Also, I like how he brings up the point that the government has done more in the past to make us more fearful and on-edge than to make us feel more safe.

Originally posted by mooseinhisglory
I wonder how many people will say how "naive" you are for trusting NASA.

Indeed, that is the risk one runs posting here on ATS. I was hoping to avoid some of that by posting it in Science instead of the 2012 forum.

NASA is just one source though. Neil DeGrasse Tyson also counters many of the 2012 myths (Youtube) and he's neither from NASA nor considered a distrusted source that I know of.

true

something may happen, yes ... because the sun activity will be very high and may cause some problems to earth ... so, who knows

but that niburu crap, niburu is hided behind planets, niburu is cloaked ... please,

after all this is over, they will say, didnt u see that? niburu came but they were invisible, you could only feel them, it was a conscience shift, blahblah, our hearts are now more pure, blah blah, our souls are more good, because of niburu invisible act

how much u wanna bet? people are $%#, thats a song, and I agree, people just want more money, so, even if they were right, I prefer to do my things and let them talk and not give them any money or attention

Liar, there are twenty questions not ten. I've lost all my hope & trust in mankind now, thanks alot.

[edit on 21-5-2010 by acrux]

Originally posted by acrux
Liar, there are twenty questions not ten. I've lost all my hope & trust in mankind now, thanks alot.

[edit on 21-5-2010 by acrux]

Good catch, my friend, thank you!

Post title corrected

Interesting article...

I'd like to know more about his sources for some of these assertions:

Nibiru is a name from Babylonian astrology sometimes associated with the god Marduk. Nibiru appears as a minor character in the Babylonian creation poem Enuma Elish as recorded in the library of Assurbanipal, King of Assyria (668–627 BCE). Sumer flourished much earlier, from about the 23rd century to the 17th century BCE. The claims that Nibiru is a planet and was known to the Sumerians are contradicted by scholars who (unlike Zecharia Sitchin) study and translate the written records of ancient Mesopotamia. Sumer was indeed a great civilization, important for the development of agriculture, water management, urban life, and especially writing. However, they left few astronomical records and they most certainly did not know about Uranus, Neptune or Pluto. They also had no understanding that the planets orbited the Sun, an idea that first developed in ancient Greece two millennia after the end of Sumer. Claims that Sumerians had a sophisticated astronomy, or that they even had a god named Nibiru, are the product of Sitchin’s imagination.

He doesn't even acknowledge that the Enuma Elish is an allegory... so Marduk/Niburu have to have real meanings behind the symbology. And I would like to know who he thinks Shamash is... Are all three just different names for the sun? Who are the "scholars who study and translate the written records of ancient Mesopotamia"?

If I'm not mistaken, they also gave us the 'zero'. What is his source to say that they didn't know about Uranus, Neptune, Pluto? If the 'myths' are allegorical tales of planets forming, like Sitchin suggests(and if you read them yourselves you can see how he came to that conclusion..) then it makes some of the gods names make much more sense... otherwise they are arbitrary and we have no idea what they were getting at..

How can he assume they didn't know that the planets revolved around the sun?! Highly ignorant... Anyone that reads the Enuma Elish/Gilgamesh can tell they had sophisticated astronomy... Sitchin is not going out on a limb in that respect.

Also, he just keeps on the subject of Niburu, which is the most outrageous of the 2012 claims... talk about a red herring/easily debunkable straw man. And anyways isn't Nibiru supposed to be a dwarf star? Not a planet?


The rest of the article, when he shifts away from Nibiru, is pretty interesting.

Some of it I would like to see more sources... because otherwise he is just another guy making 'expert' claims in his opinion. Granted, that is good standing, but I would like to see more. I guess I have a higher standard from being on ATS...

I accept the possibility that life as we know it may be terminated by forces out of our control, and it may even be 2012, but it sure as hell isn't going to have anything to do with Nibiru or a pole shift.

Indeed. It's not about nibiru or pole shifts or galatic alignments or sunspots. It's about human stupidity and the ever-growing malignant tumor on civilization called the state, that mass of organized evil, made up entirely of rationalizing self-servers, that we call government.

The downfall will be economic, and it just so happens that the tipping point will occur soon, maybe in 2012 give or take a year. This will of course be accompanied by obscene amounts of violence, so dire will the economic situation be. I will discuss it more when I reach 20 posts.

If the proverbial s**t hits the proverbial fan in 2012, maybe it's more than coincidence. Who knows? Even if prophets are real, I would still find a convergence of prophecy with actual, causal human events to be more plausible than an accurate vision of a giant asteroid hitting the earth. I can actually imagine some ancient shaman high as hell on psychedelic herbs realizing that civilizations are systems just like any other, and have a lifespan just like everything else in existence, and that the constant play of opposites in the universe implies that what goes up must come down, and modern civilization is WAY up, meaning we may see the hardest, most devastating crash and collapse of sanity in human history, dwarfing even WWII in terms of body count (which killed almost 100 million people).

Not a whole lot we can do about it as individuals though. We're part of this doomed system. Just get on the good side of whatever god(s) motivate you and hope for the best.