Ambivalence
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13 Oct 2009, 6:57 am
That will happen on Dec. 21, 2012, when the sun appears to rise in the same spot where the bright center of galaxy sets.
Another spooky coincidence?
"The question I would ask these guys is, so what?" says Phil Plait, an astronomer who runs the "Bad Astronomy" blog. He says the alignment doesn't fall precisely in 2012, and distant stars exert no force that could harm Earth.
Tsk, tsk. A gamma ray burst most certainly could, if we were unlucky enough to get one nearby!
If one did arrive, the best possible case would be for it to come from a direction precisely on the other side of the sun from us (at least, it'd be an impressive gamma ray that got through a million miles of dense burny flameness, right?). It is also perhaps possible that the single most likely direction (assuming our local neighbourhood to be a roughly thousand ly deep plane of arbitrary length and width, with density increasing in the direction of the galactic centre) (though by only a tiny fraction) for a burst to arrive would be from a line between us and the galactic centre so the occasion when the sun is directly in line with galactic centre is quite possibly the single safest possible time for Earth for protection from cosmic death rays.
Wonder if the Mayans knew?
(well, really I suppose it's much more complicated, as the likelihood of a GRB isn't a function only of star density but changes with different environments, but hey)
Please correct me if I messed up!
-9
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13 Oct 2009, 5:58 pm
14 Oct 2009, 10:22 am
richie
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20 Oct 2009, 3:12 pm
NASA Scientist to Distraught Dupes: The World Won't End in 2012
The End Some would have us believe a planetary collision will end life on earth in 2012. NASA, and basic astronomy, tell us otherwise. NASA
Morrison, a planetary astronomer and keeper of NASA's "Ask an Astrobiologist" service, is publishing a rebuttal to many rampant apocalyptic rumors in the journal of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific, partially in response to an increasing number of letters and emails from a public worried that the end is nigh. Morrison specifically addresses the myth that a fictional planet called Nibiru will collide with Earth, but also addresses other persistent rumors that solar activity, alignments with the center of our galaxy and other astrological phenomena will wreak havoc on the blue planet and end life here....
The World is not going to end with a bang but with a whimper....
20 Oct 2009, 11:36 pm
FaithHopeCheese
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21 Oct 2009, 12:55 am
Y'all are hilarious...... but I'm still scared. 
jk
Ambivalence
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21 Oct 2009, 4:12 am
We would of course notice mysterious planets wandering about the solar system on anything like a regular basis, but it's vaguely possible that some random dark chunk of rock (say, a planet that had somehow been ejected from another solar system; it can happen) is swinging in towards us from interstellar space. It wouldn't actually need to hit us, or come anywhere near us, to have horrible consequences, it could mess up orbits in some way.
I'm having fun throwing random objects into this.
Ambivalence
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21 Oct 2009, 6:41 am
...though I should say clearly that I don't believe it's in any way likely that we're about to be hit by a colony drop®, just that while we'd probably notice anything massive, bright or going round the Sun on a regular basis - like all the silly Planet X stories (I just read up on this Nibiru rubbish not just a giant planet of doom, but a giant magnetic planet of doom spinning the Earth down and up again! ) - it is not categorically true to state that the Earth could not have something headed in its general direction from way out in deep space.
21 Oct 2009, 10:09 am
We would of course notice mysterious planets wandering about the solar system on anything like a regular basis, but it's vaguely possible that some random dark chunk of rock (say, a planet that had somehow been ejected from another solar system; it can happen) is swinging in towards us from interstellar space. It wouldn't actually need to hit us, or come anywhere near us, to have horrible consequences, it could mess up orbits in some way.
I'm having fun throwing random objects into this.
All planets wander about the Solar System. The world "planet" is from the Greek "planeton" which means wanderer.
ruveyn
21 Oct 2009, 4:07 pm
Ambivalence
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22 Oct 2009, 4:57 am
Etymology notwithstanding, there are many different arguments over what is and isn't a planet.
sinsboldly
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22 Oct 2009, 7:30 am
Etymology notwithstanding, there are many different arguments over what is and isn't a planet.
Pluto being a case in point. . .
22 Oct 2009, 3:48 pm
23 Oct 2009, 12:01 pm
23 Oct 2009, 1:21 pm
