NASA Attempts To Assuage 2012 Fears 881
eldavojohn writes "The apocalyptic film 2012 has dominated the box office, taking in $65 million on opening weekend. But with all those uninformed eyeballs watching the film, NASA has found itself answering so many common questions that their Ask an Astrobiologist blog offers calming, professional reassurance that there is no planet Nibiru, nor will it collide with Earth (although I do recall a massive solar storm forecast). NASA's main site even offers a FAQ answering similar questions. NPR has more on NASA scientist David Morrison and his efforts to calm the ensuing public hysteria, but survivalists are already planning for the big one. Pretty funny, right? Not according to Morrison: 'I've had three from young people saying they were contemplating committing suicide. I've had two from women contemplating killing their children and themselves. I had one last week from a person who said, "I'm so scared, my only friend is my little dog. When should I put it to sleep so it won't suffer?" And I don't know how to answer those questions.'"
Comment removed (Score:4, Informative)
Re:How Histery Repeats .... (Score:5, Informative)
In the case of The War of the Worlds, the radio broadcast WAS designed to sound "real", complete with interrupting musical programs for special announcements and so on. Someone who tuned in in the middle of the show would have missed the announcement that it was just a radio program, and it predated the transistor radio by a decade so most of the people who decided to flee or whatever wouldn't have had a way to keep up with the program and hear any other announcements that they were listening to a fictional story.
There's no excuse at all for 2012.
Re:Flattering, I guess... (Score:3, Informative)
> "Mutating neutrinos"... really?
Well, that does occur in nature. Neutrinos emanating from our sun change type on the way here. Until a few years ago this was not known. The missing neutrino count from the sun (compared to theoretical predictions) was a big mystery in astrophysics, which is now explained by neutrinos changing type.
Re:Wow. (Score:5, Informative)
Is this close enough?
"And the third angel sounded, and there fell a great star from heaven, burning as it were a lamp, and it fell upon the third part of the rivers, and upon the fountains of waters; And the name of the star is called Wormwood: and the third part of the waters became wormwood; and many men died of the waters, because they were made bitter." (Revelation 8:10, 11 - KJB).
Re:Flattering, I guess... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Wow. (Score:5, Informative)
"Ignorant" is not the same as "stupid", and can be cured by means much less dramatic than death.
Correct, but I think deciding to kill yourself and your loved ones based on a work of fiction counts as stupid.
Re:Flattering, I guess... (Score:3, Informative)
Just as a footnote to your footnote, the only character in the movie who relates the end-of-the-world to the Mayans is a complete nutjob (played very well by Woody Harrelson). The rest of the cast is much too busy running and screaming and dying to worry much about the Mayans' prophetic ability.
Re:spoiler tag needed (Score:3, Informative)
I'm sorry, you're concerned about the PLOT of a disaster movie? The plot. Of a disaster movie. Stay where you are, the people who are arriving shortly are there to help you. They are bringing you shiny things.
Complete spoiler: Something scientifically impossible happens. Lots of people die and the laws of physics are apparently among the first casualties. Lots more people die. A few people suffer terrible injuries but somehow recover miraculously and are therefore immunized against death for the remainder of the film. Someone who is not in a position of authority overcomes great obstacles from clueless authority figures and breaks the laws of physics to come up with an impossible solution that, despite incredible odds, kills most of the people who disagreed with his/her theory in spectacularly ironic and/or morally righteous ways, and then works. Life immediately goes back to normal for all concerned, except those who are actually dead. The sun rises on happy people whose only complaint is that most of the people they know and love have been wiped out, but otherwise they are just so happy to be part of the small group of survivors who will soon be competing for what food is left before they descend into chaos and kill each other for stale crusts. But that can wait until the sequel.
The plot is a thin device over which special effects are generously smeared. Go watch the trailer again, and eagerly anticipate the FXfest.
Personally, the number of sheer coincidences and complete disregard for the laws of physics presented in the trailer I watched was enough to make me wonder about the state of science. Then I use my usual tactic... "just repeat to yourself 'it's just a show, I should really just relax'".
Re:Wow. (Score:4, Informative)
Just tell them there is no mention of Nibiru in the Bible
I did that, but apparently theres a mention of a "star called wormwood which will fall into the sea"
[facepalm]
Re:Wow. (Score:1, Informative)
...Just tell them there is no mention of Nibiru in the Bible...
The Bible does however say this about the end times:
Luke 21:25 "There will be signs in the sun, the moon, and the stars, and there will be distress on earth among the nations that are confused by the roaring of the sea and its waves.
Luke 21:26 People will faint with fear and apprehension because of the things that are to come on the world, for the powers of heaven will be shaken loose.
Jesus was asked by his followers what would be the signs of his coming. Those two verses are embedded in the answer he gave them. Anyone interested should read the whole chapter to get the context.
Re:Wow. (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Flattering, I guess... (Score:3, Informative)
There's some variance throughout the world, but this is the typical doctrine for union US film sets.
Re:Wow. (Score:1, Informative)
Given the mass of any star, it is us who will fall into it.
Cinematic Neurosis (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Flattering, I guess... (Score:4, Informative)
This is pretty simular. (Score:5, Informative)
The problem isn't people watching the movie 2012, it is the viral advertising surrounding it. They ran ads that made the movie sound a dramatization of a real idea rather than complete fiction, ala the Day After Tomorrow, and encourage them to search the web for the "real truth". The studio created a fake website purposing to be a scientific institute predicting a collision with earth in 2012. On top of this loonies have been talking about a 2012 apocalypse of some sort since we first understood the Mayan calendar, and latter some of them latched onto the Nimbiru idea after the books came out, so the internet is full of websites giving "evidence" of this catastrophe, many of whom claim to be scientific websites themselves.
Yeah, people with a decent bullshit detector should be able to figure out that this is all crap, but it's not like they just watched a normal movie and thought it was read - the studio is trying to present it as though it were real, by making it a conspiracy that the mainstream is covering up.
Why are you still talking? (Score:5, Informative)
"Kill yourself now, before its too late!"
alternative ending:
"Why bother, we are all gonna die in 2012!"
alternate alternate ending:
"Well its 2009, and the world ends in 2012, so if we take one number, 2009 and subtract it from 2012 you get the number 3. Its called math. So you should kill yourself in about 3 years. If you want to get really accurate, you could look at a calender and see what month it is, and what day, and really work out exactly when to do it! Either way, it isn't for awhile and your probably likely to die drowning looking up during a rain storm before that, so leave me alone..."
alternate alternate alternate ending:
"Don't worry about it we will be hit by a meteor or a comet long before then!"
As an aside I have also heard that this Mayan 2012 prediction is all buffoonery. They Mayans thought their the world would end just like we think the world ends after December. It was their calender for keeping track of time. I think it was implied that you just restart the calender once the cycle is over. Perhaps it is so implisit that they didn't feel the need to explain this just the same we don't put a sticker on every calender we ever make that says "Not to worry, world not ending, new calender next year!"
Education Time! (Score:5, Informative)
A friend of mine is taking an Arky (Archaeology for those less hip) Class, as she is an ancient & medieval history major, and she is taking a class this semester SPECIFICALLY on the Mayans. Her Prof is one of the archaelogists who work on sites like Tucan. The prof held an open public lecture in the University of Calgary in the first week of November here. My friend and I both attended, and while I never did believe in the whole Mayan Myth it's interesting to see where its origins begin.
So this prof is basically a Mayan pro, she can translate most inscriptions just by looking at them (no reference needed) and she intimately understands their number and Calendar system. The first thing to know about Mayan numbers is that they don't use Base 10, they use base 20. The other thing to know is that there is not ONE Mayan Language. They were similar to all of Europe, where the europeans had french, English, spanish, german, etc, the Mayans had about 6 to 8 different Variants. And with that in mind, they were never a single nation, each city had it's own king/queen type leader, and they peacably would trade with the other cities of the area. No one city was truly the capital, but those major trade hubs and those with rarer goods tended to prosper more than the little towns.
Anyways, so the Mayans used 2 different Calendars, and I can't remember how big, but there was a sizable gap in between the usage of each (I think like 800 years?). But basically what it breaks down into is the Short count and the Long count.
The Short count is very much like our Calendar today, 18 months of 20 days each with 5 days at the end of the year for some religious purpose (Similar to the egyptians). They also had Names for days of their week, like Monday Tuesday Wednesday (Except Mayan Gods instead of Norse Gods). So if I were to say, Friday, December 25th, you'd know I mean this Christmas and not last Christmas or the next Christmas because they don't land on a Friday. This works well for 8 years until Christmas lands on a Friday again. You could be more precise about the date if you gave me the year, which is where the Long Count comes in.
We attribute a year to 365 days. So I would say that Dec 31 2009 would be day 733285. The Mayans didn't use years, they merely counted days. Which is neat in some ways because there were 20 days in a month (And they're number system is base 20, remember?) But also a bit of a hassle in others, because there are 18 months.
So the way Archaeologists expressed their long count is in a series of numbers seperated by decimals (It looks like a long IP Address to me). Day 1 would be like 0.0.0.0.0.1 and Day 23 would be like 0.0.0.2.3 - - Except here's the kicker - Mayans didn't set day 0 as anything in particular. In fact, their creation story takes place well after 0. This leads many people to believe that the Mayans set a date in the future as some signifigance and worked their way backwards. What day that could be or what they believed it would be has yet to be discovered. There are some speculations. No, its not 2012.
Essentially the numbers further to the left represent longer periods of time, so each 1.0.0.0.0 in the long count is really like 8767 years give or take, which is a really long friggen time, right? We celebrate every year pretty much, but every odd once in a while we hold huge celebrations, like when we ushered in the new millenia in the year 2000. That sort of thing was also important to the Mayans. If I recall correctly, we're roughly around the 13.0.19.0.0 era on the Mayan Calendar. So when it rolls around to be 13.1.0.0.0 - wouldn't that be a rollover worth celebrating? To the Mayans it would be. Guess what day that happens to fall on? You're right, December 21 2012.
So now that you've got a crash course on the Calendar and how it works, where exactly does the Prophecy come in? I'll tell you. Amongst the ruins of cities, Mayans had what we call Stelas. They are basically big stones which have stories and such carved into them, very much like a monu
Re:Education Time! (Score:3, Informative)
AH!
I forgot "The Great Alignment".
There is no real planetary Alignment scheduled for Dec 21, 2012, which the Movie shows as the Moon, Earth, Jupiter, Saturn, etc, all being PERFECTLY in line. Yeah no, not going to happen.
As for the whole, Earth, and one of the constellations making a perfect line with the "Dark Rift" - Yes, that IS scheduled to happen! But guess how rare it is? It happened in 2008, and 2004, and 2000... and you get the idea. Its not very rare at all.
Re:Wow. (Score:3, Informative)
Used to be they would kill/hurt animals. No special effects. ...
Probably still do in some movies, maybe not in the west but
Of course, there actually IS a planet Nibiru . . . (Score:3, Informative)
. . . because Nibiru is the name of Jupiter in the Babylonian compendium of astrology, Mul.Apin.
Jupiter isn't going anywhere, of course.
Re:Obligatory Simpsons quote (Score:3, Informative)
spacious reasoning; reasoning with large gaps where the logic just slips right through.
Re:Wow. (Score:3, Informative)
Personally, it would be better if they find him on the 21st. The smell might put me off my mince pies.