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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
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
They wouldn't deny it unless it were true!
<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..
Smart people know things that dumb people don't?
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! --
...... 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."
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.
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
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.
Yes, I've seen Idiocracy. In fact, I keep the intro on my iPad. :)
But I rather expect that when you can specify you want a smart child, you're going to want to, and then you're going to get one with critical thinking abilities, a decent grasp on reality, and superstition will die out within a few generations.
I think the way it'll most likely go is that if you don't see to it that your child is well gifted intellectually, society will treat you (and probably your kid) as a pariah.
Just as those who don't see to it that their kids get decent nutrition are looked down upon today. Only more so -- because the competitive advantage for everything from mates to jobs will be enormous.
It's just speculation, of course, but I'm pretty comfortable with it.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
...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.
That's just the sort of thing a Capricorn would say!
Recycle PCs and build a wireless community network www.hillsborough.org.nz
On NPR a while back there was an interview with a NASA scientist about the doomsday predictions. He runs the Q/A column "Ask an Astrobiologist" responsible for answering questions posed to NASA, which as of late have mostly centered around Dec 21st. He was incredulous that anyone would believe these stories, but as the same time took it very seriously; he mentioned that many of the people writing to him were of the younger generations (i.e. schoolkids) genuinely concerned about whether the world was going to end. This was the demographic that concerned him. One such excerpt -- "Though some of the questions may seem frivolous and outlandish, Morrison receives queries from people who are legitimately concerned and contemplating suicide. "Another extreme one ... I got was quite touching. It was: My only friend is my little dog. When should I put her to sleep so she won't suffer in the cataclysm?"
It's easy to dismiss the doomsday people as loons (and most are), but some of them are just kids so we should focus more on taking them seriously and helping educate them to understand that it's a myth rather than dismissing the entire thing offhand. This can be a very good opportunity to show the community that science > superstition.
Interview is at http://www.npr.org/2012/11/26/165928588/as-dec-21-draws-nigh-the-facts-about-doomsday
I hate you arrogant liberals.
You are welcome on my lawn.
...you can't fix stupid.
At least, not yet.
Unforgettably, NASA is wasting our tax dollars trying. If 6 to 12 years of public school education couldn't give them enough reasoning power, why would they believe anything NASA had to say? We've spent enough money on these idiots.
Personally I have no problem with the incredibly gullible running for the hills, committing suicide, or what ever it is that one does in preparation for the end of the world. As long as they do it to themselves. I see no upside of trying to convince them of their folly.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
"But I rather expect that when you can specify you want a smart child"
Since this is almost entirely dictated by the result of experience and self programming rather than nature I doubt there ever will be such a button. Not that we are anywhere near far enough along in our understanding of genetics to screen embryos. The result is essentially genocide and we don't know what other things could be affected by the removal of "unwanted" genes.
If people are going to call Dec 21 the "Mayan Apocalypse," I'm going to start calling Dec 31 the "Gregorian Apocalypse" ... every year.
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
. . . the world will end . . . for someone.
What you won't hear:
Given that significantly more than half that list is 20th century or later dates and the lead time to impending apocalypse seems to be getting shorter it is certain that it will rapidly grow. 2222 will eventually be on it. As will 2221 and 2223 and every year.