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NASA On Full Court Press To Deflate Doomsday Prophecies
coondoggie writes "Insidious unknown planets lurking behind the sun ready to slam into Earth, supernova set to engulf the planet and giant, unseen asteroids screaming toward our globe are all theories espoused across the Internet as to how we will meet our demise on 12/21/2012. Do any of these theories even remotely hold out a scintilla of evidence they could happen? Not even remotely if you look at the material NASA has put out which pretty much debunks any and all of the notions being floated in across the cybersphere."
...we have NASA. I was really beginning to think it was The End.
This is all disinformation. I read on the Internet that it was going to be a zombie apocalypse. Hell, even the government has plans preparing for it!
In the event the world ends or the source is /.'ed here's additional linkage
Article links to a NASA video via YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=QY_Gc1bF8ds
And NASA.gov has much the same information. http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/yoemans20091110.html
NASA already released a statement saying that they don't know of any significant astronomical events on Friday, and as far as they know, there's nothing to worry about. Beyond that, people are going to believe what they want to believe, and a "full court press" is not going to change that. Either that or they're in cahoots with Quetzlcoatl.
There's 2 options here:
1. Everything is fine, no gobal apocalypse
2. There's something on the way that's going to kill us all, but if we tell you about it the whole world will panic and riots will stop the government getting itself to safety along with a handpicked few 'key' people
Either way - they'll say it's safe
And on that note, I'm going to hang up my tin foil hat
A new international holiday.
This hardly seems like it's worth NASA's effort. You already know that the loons won't be convinced by it. A press release consisting of the single word "NO" is all it should really take.
But it's also a great opportunity. Not on the 20th, but on the 22nd. When everybody wakes up, they say, "Wow, NASA got it right, and the kooks were kooks. Score one for science." It's nice to see science be able to just slam-dunk something without it getting balled up in revisionism, hedging, and accusations of malfeasance.
And if people learn just a little bit more about gravity, seasons, the solar system, and the galaxy, so much the better.
So kudos to NASA for seizing the day. "Proving that the world isn't ending" isn't really one of NASA's missions, but if it results in better support for NASA's real missions (both financially and in terms of having their results taken seriously), then I want to say "Good job" to their PR department. (Cheap, too!)
I'm postponing my doomsday-device test until December 22, just so I can laugh at those idiots who believe all that nonsense.
"It's too bad that stupidity isn't painful." - Anton LaVey
I guess they think that if they don't try to debunk something that is important to only a very small percentage of the public, that that group will then assume NASA's silence is "proof" that Nibiru is on its way to smash into us.
Hey, I'm all for a good conspiracy theory but this is utter horseshit.
Humanity has so many things on its plate that coming up with a contrived pseudo-history doomsday event is just ridiculous. Hey, Nibiru nuts,I've got some brand new black-and-white Nike Decades athletic shoes for you to try on.
We play the game with the bravery of being out of range
They wouldn't deny it unless it were true!
...and we should trust NASA over everyone else because?
<PARANOID-CONSPIRACY-THEORY>
It's the supernova, because there's no way that NASA could know about it in advance!
</PARANOID-CONSPIRACY-THEORY>
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
The truth is that Desmond Miles saved us all at the last minute. Otherwise it would have been much worse. However, he let out some sort of demi-god thing that's going to make ubisoft lots of money for the next few years.
I put on my robe and wizard hat..
Good thing there are only 12 months in a year then!
Alien invasion
Stargates
Wormholes
Radiation (cosmic or otherwise)
Thermonuclear war
Dinosaurs
Or atlanteans.
My vote for likely events on friday are : wormholes and or aliens.
This and our complete inability to embrace the metric system are one of the few things I'll accept that Europeans are right about.
Python: 'And then suddenly you have a language which says "we're all stuck with whatever the whiniest coder wants".'
These crackpots do have some entertainment value though, my employer is throwing a party as a result on that day. But other than that, the usual: Stupidity, self-aggrandizement,... . Human scum at work. I think if the right 5% died, this planet could be a peaceful paradise.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
...you can't fix stupid.
At least, not yet. Science, genetics specifically, still offers us a little hope of finally leaving superstition behind us.
But it sure is difficult to watch the deluded go about their hand waving, crystal gazing, and ancient calendar worshiping.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
I'm surprised the Fox news isn't reporting 'The End'
Fox only wants to frighten it's viewers if it aligns with their agenda. There is nothing to be gained by Fox if all their viewers think the end is nigh.
Moved to http://soylentnews.org/. You are invited to join us too!
...I'm going to laugh my ass off if the apocalypse DOES happen on Friday. I mean, I'll laugh as long as I'm able to...probably with quite a few swearwords and an "about damn time"
While I have make plans for the weekend, I do believe that a small measure of such paranoia might be an evolutionary adaptation. While any particular doomsday scenario seems unlikely - our species and life at large has faced many in its history. Perhaps this paranoia has dispersed and thus saved some humans or their ancestors from localized natural disasters.
The more of you believe there is no Mayan Apocolypse, the fewer people crowding me from pole position when I catch the wave after the Mayan Apocolypse and surf safely to land.
Oh, and if you could keep it down when you're dying, I'd appreciate it, cause screams really harsh my mellow.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
This and our complete inability to embrace the metric system are one of the few things I'll accept that Europeans are right about.
Metric system?
Heck, we don't even have high speed trains.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
durrr posted: "The amount of stupidity will exceed the swarzchild limit, luckily nothing will escape from here after that."
And here in two posts we have examples of that unthinking reactionary bloviation right here on Slashdot.
...... some Black Swan will hit. We can't know when or how big it will be, the only certainty is uncertainty.
So crazy. This whole Mayan doomsday prophecy stuff all amounts to nothing more than an ancient form of the y2k bug.
I've often imagined getting together a crew to do a remake of Office Space , only where everyone would be wearing Mayan outfits, carrying chisels, and complaining about having to rework all these bloody great stone calendar wheels.
If I only had the time, and the budget... :)
Cheers,
"What in the name of Fats Waller is that?"
"A four-foot prune."
You guys understand that the vast, overwhelming majority of people are having fun with this Mayan thing, right? That there are only a teeny tiny number of conspiracy nuts and other wackos that actually think the world is going to end? And you know what's the MOST fun for these people? Reading about Slashdot and NASA news postings "debunking" their fun.
Hee hee. Haven't had this much fun since Hale-Bopp
I can think of better things for them to be doing with my money. Let the wackjobs hide in their basements and bunkers. Who gives a flying fsck?
I'm convinced that the threat is real, and as a result I have signed up for the maximum amount of debt I could and, frankly, I'm in the process of blowing through every last penny I have. I can't point to any particular proof, but I'm certain this entire planet will be "reset" in a matter of days.
No offense intended to Mayans. I am sure they were very smart relative to other primitive people, and are probably not more stupid than a lot of people living today (i.e. the people that defer to Mayans for modern doomsday predictions). The fact remains that science is by far the best tool available for explaining the universe and making predictions about future events. The Mayans and a lot of other ancient civilizations did a lot of things that could be considered scientific (like noticing patterns in motion of celestial bodies), but this is more of a proto-science that was mixed in with religion and other superstition. Looking back on Mayan civilization the only things we actually learn are about what the Mayans knew. This is interesting for anthropological reasons, but they didn't have any scientific knowledge that we don't already have. They didn't know anything about Newtons laws, relativity, Maxwell's equations, Quantum Mechanics, etc. They don't have any of the tools necessary TO predict any kind of astronomical doomsday. We (i.e. modern society + our current scientific knowledge) might not be able to either, but we are orders of magnitude more likely to be correct. Even if by some strange coincidence the world ends in 2012, it will be just that, a coincidence. There are 7 billion people in the world. Every day has no doubt been singled out as a doomsday by one nutjob or another. Picking an entire year increases your odds of being right by 365 times, and it will still be wrong in 13 days. It is not even accepted that the Mayans even predicted the end of the world, much less that they predicted it to happen in 2012. All I am saying is that whatever predictions the Mayans (or anyone else with their level of scientific understanding) may have possibly made about the end of the world, are almost certainly wrong.
Anyone want to freak out some poor grocery store clerk by buying like 40 pounds of kool aid and rat poison? A couple of those simpletons have already mentioned the impending doomsday to me, so I'm sure they'd know what they thought you were up to! Take a video and post it to youtube!
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
I jumped into the trusty time machine and went to December 23rd, 2012. Everything is still here.
Even if there's a giant planet coming down to hit the Earth, we all know that Korben Dallas and Leeloo are going to save us all!
The university I went to put something on this nonsense in one of their mailings to shill for donations. (Something about how one of their archeology professors looked into this and proved it wasn't going to happen.) My reaction? If you've got enough money to blow on this horseshit you obviously don't need a donation from me and would probably blow it on something just as rediculous if I did give it to you. (Yes, this is at a legit university that is normally well respected.)
Did you know 80 to 90% of the moderators on slashdot wouldn't recognize a troll even if one dragged them under a bridge.
Eschatology is simply a matter of your particular brand of religion.
Every Unix user knows the world doesn't end until January 18th or 19th, 2038.
Mac users know the world doesn't end until February 6, 2040, at 6:25:15 a.m.
Windows users know that the world ended at the dawn of the Ballmerzoic Epoch in January 2000.
(I couldn't remember when the Ballmer Epoch began, so I asked Google and somehow got "Did you mean: when did batman take over Microsoft?")
Of course NASA doesn't know that the Vogons will destroy the Earth on 22 December 2012 to make way for an intergalactic bypass. They missed the notification. The Vogons will miss their originally scheduled date of the 21st because, as usual, the construction project is behind schedule. Sorry for the inconvenience.
Cheers,
Dave
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither safety nor liberty.
Ben
"The world isn't going to end because the Mayan Calendar says so."
Science cannot predict world ending/mass extinction asteroid strikes much in advance.
Science cannot predict catastrophic earthquakes or volcanic eruptions.
The world is going to end when the world is going to end. We simply don't have technology to predict when really bad things are going to happen.
"As of the end of 2004, astronomers had discovered more than two thirds of the larger Near Earth Asteroids (diameter greater than 1 km). None of the known asteroids is a threat, but we have no way of predicting the next impact from an unknown object. "
http://impact.arc.nasa.gov/intro_faq.cfm
NASA isn't debunking anything. The world is as likely to end on the 21st as any other day.
Work Safe Porn
The W3C announced a finalized HTML5 Spec. Yep it's the end of the world.
"The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" - Thatcher.
Judging from NASA, you would have to think we are quite doomed.
The fact is NASA is trying WAY too hard for what should be a non-event. If they really believed what they say, they would not produce a long video then release it early, nor would they go through so much effort to keep everyone calm when no-one was really panicking.
At this point they look to be calming the masses while the elite are shipped to secret off-planet doomsday shelters on the moon. Nuts of course but they are making it look that way.
P.S. I apologize for any delays in responding to replies, moncrete is awfully tough on WiFi signals.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Perfectly Logical for them to fake non-extinct of the world - If the world ends in december 12th, why give taxpayer money to NASA?
In scientific and engineering terms, Mayans, despite their pre-existence which predates NASA by far, were more accurate and precise in space observation and exploration, and their publishings beat NASA by at least 1000 years. The only advantages NASA have over Mayans are a few space probes and rockets which are resulted from literally pouring astronomic amount of taxpayer money for more than 50 years, which is already a shame even without mentioning that about half of them had gone self-destruct by design flows/human errors/misplaced colons/etc. If you are a reasonable man who have records of Mayans and NASA both, there is no ground in falsely believing that NASA have enough evidence to disprove what Mayans have claimed.
Is going to break some intergalactic 'no fly' zone. The council will be held and they will be shown grainy black and white pictures of our Weapons of Galactic Destruction manufacturing facilities. We're screwed.
when the world does end. too bad no one will be around to laugh at them.
This may be their last chance to get some, so a panic would ruin their chances for any hope with members of the opposite sex.
According to their list of Mission Directorates
1. Enable a safer, more secure, efficient, and environmentally friendly air transportation system.
2. Operate the International Space Station and prepare for human exploration beyond low Earth orbit.
3. Exploring the Earth-Sun system, our own solar system, and the universe beyond.
They should now add:
4. Protection of Humanity from hysteria due to mythical threats said to originate from space.
NASA will fake it just like they did the moon landings. That's the real secret behind Area 51 - it's a giant sound stage.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
I don't think anyone who firmly believes in the Mayan doomsday is going to be swayed by a little organization like NASA. You'll always have people saying "there's things they can't predict!"
Which one is the 'anykey'?
Because it gets them headlines.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/50165912/ns/technology_and_science-space/
"A newfound asteroid gave Earth a close shave early today, zipping between our planet and the moon just two days after astronomers first spotted it...
Astronomers estimate that 2012 XE54 is about 120 feet (36 meters) wide — big enough to cause substantial damage if it slams into Earth someday."
How good is NASA's ability to detect asteroids or space colonies full of space zombies and facehuggers?
I'm surprised the Fox news isn't reporting 'The End'
Fox only wants to frighten it's viewers if it aligns with their agenda. There is nothing to be gained by Fox if all their viewers think the end is nigh.
Really? Where were you during the Presidential election?
My studio - www.graylands.ca
lol, for all the conspiracy theories thinking "We're not being informed" I just have to ask where are NASA and the select Politicians and "key people" going to go? Lunar Hilton Plaza? Or is it some secret super-space station hidden in the depths of the Earth stockpiled with enough food and fuel to last, what, another 10 years? Are they waiting till Friday to cowboy up for a dramatic exit risking it all on weather, false starts, or maybe the fire and brimstone showing up early?
NASA couldn't hide something falling from the sky that catastrophic this close to doomsday unless it was under the cloak of stupidity. And, if I'm not mistaken, Mayan's were never aware of Julius Caesar's Leap Year implementation in 45 BC which puts us about 15 days ahead of schedule. Even in the likelihood of facilitating the theory of aliens returning to Earth as suggested by several world civilizations, what benefit would anyone have from hiding these events, especially when we're already informed of them. And even the most likely scenario of solar flare catastrophe, you are more likely to sizzle like bacon on the sidewalk than worry about electric devices malfunctioning from a solar flare damaging enough to have an effect longer than a few seconds to a few days, as scientifically predicted for this solar cycle.
So if you're running out this week to get your titanium umbrella, rocket fuel, ice packs, 10-15,000 cans of beans to accurately fulfill your life expectancy, or at the very least, a pair of "men in black" sunglasses.. I suggest instead looking up resources on how not to be an idiot.
The sad thing is that there are so many people out there who do not have the intelligence to resist the shyster doomsayers. They will get all worried and send in all kinds of money to these lowlifes, but on 12/22 where will they be? Off spending these peoples hard earned cash! The question that needs to be asked of these shysters is; If the world is going to end on 12/21, why do you need my money? You won't be here to use it if the world ends!
My karma is bad. Don't get too close!!!
I don't understand what NASA has to do with it.
Unless it is a plot from the LiBeRaLs.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Have y'all seen the French Psychic from 1980 with 85% prediction accuracy confirmed for us we'd have an Alien Invasion before 2013!? He predicted 9/11, war on terror, chernobyl, Obama, and end of the Soviet Union. With over 1 million views (when you add up all the copy cat videos), it must be true! Nobody has been able to credibly debunk this guy... yet, although there's been several debunking theories, all of which have thus far been debunked.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZAIQJmE75vg
PS. Try not to lose too much sleep over this, you can sleep as much as you want after the aliens get you.
No trees were killed in the making of this post; however, many trillions of electrons were horribly inconvenienced.
You're going to die anyways, eventually. Towel?
You can't change the mind of crazy.
It is going to be a rebellion by bipedal cats with opposable thumbs. I give you...Felis Catus Erectus
But I'm taking bets.
My betting it is a button that might get pressed one day very soon
It's primarily US - which, of course, means that half of Canada does it that way as well. It's annoying and confusing. That's why I spell out my months: 21-Dec-2012.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
I plan on staying home on Friday. Not out of fear of the Mayan crud, but the crazy people in the world that just might decide a rampage would be fun that day.
you insensative clod! (21/12/2012)
Seriously you have to get a kickstarter going. For 100 dollars you can be one of the chosen few to survive!
I don't want my money wasted on this. People will figure this out for themselves. Or they won't. I won't care either way. I would think all the intelligent scientists at NASA would realize that curing superstition in four short days is an extremely unlikely proposition.
Secession is the right of all sentient beings.
If people are going to call Dec 21 the "Mayan Apocalypse," I'm going to start calling Dec 31 the "Gregorian Apocalypse" ... every year.
First of all, Nibiru is fun.In a mundane world of stagnation where nothing truly changes, part of me wants Nibiru to shake things up.
Plus all the rants from that guy didn't address the reality that Nibiru (or the Nibiru system) would be coming from the sun itself. It wouldn't really effect the orbits of the planets as it's trajectory is incoming from the south pole. If it's on course for 21 Dec, it's already swung around the sun, and is on a direct course for Earth. In fact it's probably getting to the point where it's own output (relative to the Earth) is exceeding that of the sun. So you wouldn't easily see it by looking at the sun, you'd need spacial lenses to filter it. It's like a zero fighter coming at you from the sun. You can't see it because the suns gaze is too bright. She has already unmistakenly effected the orbit of Mercury, and she's on her way. Here she comes now! wooot!
I'm not taking off my lead helmet until new year!
Kudos to me and my brothers for getting people to forget the New World order and concentrate on whats real - the sky! by indulging in my beliefs that Nibiru is indeed en route as she is, and even if she doesn't show, I will have handed NASA their glory day!
Yep. But yah know, if you listen to the wind you hear the same nonsense every year, often multiple times a year....
Yep!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_dates_predicted_for_apocalyptic_events
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
Because it gets them headlines.
Yes, in a splendidly good way. On 12/22, NASA will be the people who said in public "You pitiful morons are pitiful morons", and some percentage of the pitiful morons will realize they've been acting like pitiful morons.
Brace yourself people. It's sling-shotted around the sun and now the main plane of the solar system has been tilted. Here she comes, and fast!
Nibru system
I've been living in the US for 4 years now. And I still get mixed up from time to time. This convention makes little sense to me. Note that in English "July 4th, 2012" is a valid date, so is "the 4th of july, 2012". In French, there is no equivalent to the first form, only the second one.
What are you talking about? They are going at least 50 miles an hour!
It was supposed to be on 12/12/12, but the Mayans are dyslexic.
Table-ized A.I.
Then the world will not have ended, as it will already be 22 DEC 12 in Australia.
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
. . . the world will end . . . for someone.
Yeah but that's just end time predictions. What about transformative predictions. I predict the earth will low down and stop spinning for a few days, and flip about it's axis, and the resume spinning on a new axis and orbit the sun in a different orbit with a short habitable period of the eccentric orbit and a long uninhabitable unsurvivable period.
I call it the prediction of the random coin flip.
Here's a partial list:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_dates_predicted_for_apocalyptic_events
Of course, nobody could let the following years slip by without a doomsday label attached to them:: 1000, Jan 1 (Pope Sylvester II), 1666 (surprise!), 2000, Jan 1.
And of course, the year 2020 is among those future doomsdays. I'm surprised 2222 is not in the list, but not to worry, some "psychic" or religious nut is bound to take that opportunity and get some followers...
NASA is wasting time with this nonsense. If the history of failed apocalypses teaches us anything, is that a large chunk of the world population will always be irrational.
LOL Heat death of the universe. That shizz is cray-cray.
Seriously you have to get a kickstarter going. For 100 dollars you can be one of the chosen few to survive!
Or, for $955,000 dollars you can survive in your own Atlas-F missile silo:
http://www.missilebases.com/adirondack
It's just not due to asteroids, planetary alignment or similar... it'll be a couple of redneck gun-nuts trying out nuclear ICBMs for hunting... because fully automatic handguns, rifles and machine guns just isn't doing the job efficiently enough...
"For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong." -- H.L. Mencken (1880-1956) --
What you won't hear:
It's good to see scientists at least putting down a predicted end well beyond not only their lifetime, but also beyond the likelihood that anyone will remember them predicting it.
Julia Gillard was looking either solemn or broken, as she read her [spoof] doomsday message - at JJJ's request - recently.
We happened to find it a day or 2 after viewing 2 more helpful video shorts from NASAtelevision channel @ YouTube.com
Julia, what were you thinking, when you agreed to make your silly spoof?!?
I say: If you can't take your job seriously, please find another job.
On December 21st Nyan Cat(aclysm) will stop.
Yeah, but how much is that in kilograms?
Science is all about firing a drunk pig out of a cannon just to see what happens.
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As an Australian, I approve Julia's message. Australia likes to view itself as being approving of larrikin behaviour.
Those who do not learn from commit history are doomed to regress it.
The alien overloards, who kickstarted human intelligence and helped to build the pyramids, are returning on December 21st, as promised, to become our masters once again. As we will refuse to bow down and try to launch nukes at them, they will simply destroy us rather than let these pesky Earthlings talk back to them. As they are currently traveling here faster than the speed of light, NASA can't see them.
NASA's primary mission was to make muslims feel good about their history...
I think nasa shouldn't bother to comment on ideas pertaining to religion.
NASA should have made a conference for the 'day after' in their schedules.
Just the fact of putting a government function on a Saturday is enough to convince anyone.
bash-this-host$ --> cal
December 2012
Su Mo Tu We Th Fr Sa
1
2 3 4 5 6 7 8
9 10 11 12 13 14 15
16 17 18 19 20 21 22
23 24 25 26 27 28 29
30 31
Does that convince you?
At least I took my vacation this week. I guess it's time to break out the end-of-the-world booze. Then I just have to travel to a place where you can actually see the stars at night...
I art more snarky, and terse than thou. I art Slashdot!
Both the "Euro" and the "US" date formats are wrong. The correct format is ISO 8601: YYYY-MM-DD.
I know they're a long way off, but the scientific predictions are way more terrifying.
From Wikipedia, "The heat death of the universe is a suggested ultimate fate of the universe, in which the universe has diminished to a state of no thermodynamic free energy and therefore can no longer sustain motion or life.'
WTF? I don't even.
I am still taking Friday off of work, just in case! =)
This problem solves itself in 5 days. Jesus.
Of course the world will end. But don't worry, we always get it going again.
I have decided instead to take it as a completely solipsistic message. This whole doomsday prophecy business is somehow me telling myself that I have reached the end of the line, that my world is coming to an end.
I'm glad that we've got everything else fixed and have such a budget surplus that we can throw away taxpayer dollars on this bullshit. Everyone must be wealthy now, so I'm sure my check's in the mail.
Dear NASA:
Don't tell the gullible fools the world's NOT coming to an end. Keep your mouth shut and bet against them!! Let them do stupid (#)%@ and let them hand over their cash to you! Sell'em doomsday kits, dehydrated food, survival books, etc. You can't do it AS NASA, of course, but go home and start your own business catering to the doomsday idiots! You can't LOSE! Either you'll be depositing a bunch of checks, or if they're right and the world DOES end--nobody will be around to bitch at you. Of course, you won't be around to be bitched AT, but the effect is the same.
The way I look at it, when a system is so corrupt with adware and malware that it requires/demands more money, of which I gradually have less and less of, the only sane option is to re-format and re-boot. :)
"But of that day and hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels of heaven, but my Father only." Mat 24:36