Is There A Giant Planet Hidden in the Outer Region of the Solar System?
Seems like even the Solar System has been an unstable place lately: we had Pluto losing its planet status in 2006 and now this. This is really cool even though, some believe the chance for another planet is not very likely. But this will surely give those 2012-crackpots more fuel for their crazy “Nemesis” idea. Paul Rodgers writes in the Independent:
If you grew up thinking there were nine planets and were shocked when Pluto was demoted five years ago, get ready for another surprise. There may be nine after all, and Jupiter may not be the largest.
The hunt is on for a gas giant up to four times the mass of Jupiter thought to be lurking in the outer Oort Cloud, the most remote region of the solar system. The orbit of Tyche (pronounced ty-kee), would be 15,000 times farther from the Sun than the Earth’s, and 375 times farther than…
Warning! Massive Solar Flare About To Impact Earth
Was Larry Joseph right all along? Many people discounted the author of Apocalypse 2012: An Investigation into Civilization’s End and his fears that a massive Coronal Mass Ejection will hit Earth with disastrous consequences in 2012, but now it appears that just such an event might be about to happen for real. Michael Sheridan reports for the Daily News:
A massive solar flare could make for a beautiful night for people in the northern United States – provided it doesn’t knock the lights out.
The blast of charged particles unleashed from the sun earlier this week has been peppering the Earth over the last few days, but it’s biggest punch is expected to hit the Earth’s atmosphere on Thursday.
Monday’s eruption, considered an X-class flare, is the biggest solar flare in four years. It is already being blamed for disrupting radio communication in China, and could potentially affect power grids and satellite communication around…
New York Publishes Official Apocalypse Survival Plan
Do the civil servants who run New York State’s legal and public health bureaucracy know something the rest of us don’t? Just in time for the next popular end times date in 2012, the state has published a doomsday book of sorts. William Glaberson analyzes its contents for the New York Times:
Major disasters like terrorist attacks and mass epidemics raise confounding issues for rescuers, doctors and government officials. They also pose bewildering legal questions, including some that may be painful to consider, like how the courts would decide who gets life-saving medicine if there are more victims than supplies.
But courts, like fire departments and homicide detectives, exist in part for gruesome what-ifs. So this month, an official state legal manual was published in New York to serve as a guide for judges and lawyers who could face grim questions in another terrorist attack, a major radiological or chemical contamination or a…
Aleister Crowley Running For President In 2012?!?
When I was growing up in the UK we had some wonderful political parties competing in our national elections, including Screaming Lord Sutch and the Monster Raving Loony party. In comparison the choices in the U.S. are decidedly dull (although New York’s 2010 gubernatorial race did feature the fantastic Jimmy McMillan’s Rent Is Too Damn High party).
It’s a relief, then, to find that some nuttiness is in store for the presidential elections in 2012: as well as the Sarah Palin freak-show, it appears that the Great Beast 666, Aleister Crowley, is in the running (I know, he’s been dead a long time and he’s not American…). Here are his campaign’s top ten reasons to vote for the Beast in 2012:
10. If you are fed up with the election process, for whatever reason, Aleister Crowley provides a more meaningful choice than Mickey Mouse, Cthulhu, or Jackie Broyles. 9. You can get a photo posted here — of…
Earth May Get Second Sun in 2012?
Man, I always thought this would happen to Jupiter in 2010. Claire Connelly had a different sci-fi film in mind, as she writes on News.com.au:
It’s the ultimate experience for Star Wars fans — staring forlornly off into the distance as twin suns sink into the horizon.
Yet it’s not just a figment of George Lucas’s imagination — twin suns are real. And here’s the big news – they could be coming to Earth.
Yes, any day now we see a second sun light up the sky, if only for a matter of weeks.
The infamous red super-giant star in Orion’s nebula — Betelgeuse — is predicted to go gangbusters and the impending super-nova may reach Earth before 2012, and when it does, all of our wildest Star Wars dreams will come true.
The second biggest star in the Orion constellation is losing mass, a typical indication that a gravitation collapse is occurring. When that happens,…
George Lucas Believes World Ends In 2012
George Lucas. Photo: Nicolas Genin (CC)
Having produced a feature-length documentary film and edited a book on the topic, I thought I’d interviewed or researched most of the important public figures who have something interesting or informative to say about everyone’s current favorite end-times date, December 21, 2012.
Unfortunately I didn’t know that George Lucas is one of the many people who think the end of the current 5,125-year cycle of the ancient Mayan Long Count calendar on that date will mark an apocalyptic event. The Toronto Sun is reporting that Lucas revealed his fears to Seth Rogen of all people:
Funnyman Seth Rogen was left stunned by a recent encounter with his moviemaking hero George Lucas — because the Star Wars director spent 20 minutes telling him the world would end in 2012.
Rogen was left speechless when Lucas and Steven Spielberg joined a movie meeting he was a part of – but the encounter has left…
2012: Science or Superstition
NASA has named 2012 the ‘most absurd science fiction film of all time,’ but what would you expect from the Hollywood director known as “the master of disaster”? For a ‘definitive guide to the doomsday phenomenon,’ Disinformation’s 2012: Science or Superstition, by Alexandra Bruce, presents a connection between religious, cultural and scientific research which explains the end result of how these ideas create the apocalyptic theory of 2012. An excerpt of Alexandra Bruce’s book on the correlation to Mayan myth and scientific reasoning:
The Last Apocalypse: Correlating Myth With Earth Science
“Among the Maya groups that left behind written testimonies … we find different accounts that revolve around the existence of a flood that wiped out the previous world and allowed for the creation of a new cosmological order.”
Given these Maya accounts, it is only natural to suspect that the early days of the current 13-b ’ak ’tun cycle might recall an actual, historical period of…
NASA Names ‘2012′ As The Most Absurd Science Fiction Film of All Time
I have faith that Hollywood can produce an even more ridiculous film in our new decade. (And remember kids, movies are a great way to learn about science : ) Reports Metro UK:
Roland Emmerich’s disaster movie proved to be a smash hit, taking more than £490 million [~$760 million] at the box office — but it was less popular at the US space agency. A panel of NASA experts concluded 2012 was the most scientifically flawed blockbuster ever made.
The film, which stars John Cusack, Danny Glover, Thandie Newton and Chiwetel Ejiofor, includes scenes in which a physicist claims to have discovered that neutrino particles carried to earth on solar flares had caused a series of catastrophic natural disasters.
Many film fans were so worried about what they saw that NASA was inundated with questions about whether the world could end in the way suggested in the movie, prompting the organisation to put…
Solar Maximum Starts in 2011
The fearmongers wishing for something, anything, to happen in 2012 have seized on the next peak in the cyclical activity experienced by our sun. AFP reports that an upswing starts next year, but the climax will probably not be until 2013, rather than December 21, 2012:
The coming year will be an important one for space weather as the Sun pulls out of a trough of low activity and heads into a long-awaited and possibly destructive period of turbulence.
Many people may be surprised to learn that the Sun, rather than burn with faultless consistency, goes through moments of calm and tempest.
But two centuries of observing sunspots — dark, relatively cool marks on the solar face linked to mighty magnetic forces — have revealed that our star follows a roughly 11-year cycle of behaviour.
The latest cycle began in 1996 and for reasons which are unclear has taken longer than expected to end.
Now, though,…
Russian 2012 Doomsday Capsule (Video)
Proving that it’s not just western nutcases who like to wear tin foil hats, this Russian man has designed an $80,000 tin foil house capsule to survive 2012…
French Town Overrun By 2012 Apocalypse Cult
Having produced the film 2012: Science or Superstition, I’m often asked where I plan to be on December 21, 2012, which as almost all disinformation readers surely know, marks the end of the current cycle of the Mayan Long Count Calendar. Truth be told I have no special plans, but perhaps Bugarach in southwest France is as good a choice as any, and it’s only a few minutes from Henry Lincoln and Rennes-le-Château, whom I’ve been wanting to visit ever since we released Exploring the Da Vinci Code: Henry Lincoln’s Guide to Rennes-le-Château. MyFoxNY/Newscore reports:
Armageddon-fearing pilgrims were flocking to a village deep in the southern French hills after a countdown was started to the end of the world, which stood Thursday at a mere 729 days to go.
Bugarach, population 189, in the Aude region, southwestern France. Photo: ArnoLagrange (CC)
Followers of the Mayan calendar believe the mountain in the Corbieres hills overlooking the…
Dec. 21, 2010: Total Lunar Eclipse, Winter Solstice, Two Years Until ‘End’ Of Mayan Calendar
This coming Tuesday could be quite interesting: in addition to the many winter solstice festivals carried out throughout the northern hemisphere, this year’s solstice also coincides with a total lunar eclipse for the first time in 456 years. The eclipse will be the first in three years and should be visible throughout North America and some of Europe. Look for the moon to appear pink — that is if you don’t have cloud cover and heavy snow.
This diagram shows how the moon appears reddish orange during a lunar eclipse. Source: Raycluster (CC)
For those taking note, December 21, 2010 also marks two years remaining in the countdown to the end of the 5,125 year Mayan Long Count Calendar, which famously ends on the winter solstice of 2012.
Entire Hemisphere of the Sun Erupts
Whoa – this is really starting to sound like some of the apocalyptic predictions about the end of the world in 2012! Just announced by NASA:
On August 1, 2010, an entire hemisphere of the sun erupted. Filaments of magnetism snapped and exploded, shock waves raced across the stellar surface, billion-ton clouds of hot gas billowed into space. Astronomers knew they had witnessed something big.
Locations of key events are labeled in this extreme ultraviolet image of the sun, obtained by the Solar Dynamics Observatory during the Great Eruption of August 1st. White lines trace the sun’s magnetic field. Credit:NASA / K Schrijver & A. Title.
It was so big, it may have shattered old ideas about solar activity.
“The August 1st event really opened our eyes,” says Karel Schrijver of Lockheed Martin’s Solar and Astrophysics Lab in Palo Alto, CA. “We see that solar storms can be global events, playing out on scales…
Early Warning System For Asteroid Attack
One of the more credible of the various 2012 “end is nigh” scares is the prospect of a massive “Near Earth Object” (NEO), most likely a meteor or asteroid, smashing through the Earth’s atmosphere, causing damage locally on impact and potentially causing such great meteorological disruption that our way of life is changed forever, possibly to an extinction level. Frighteningly there is usually hardly any warning that they are coming. MIT’s Technology Review reports on an astronomer’s plans for a network of telescopes that could give up to three weeks’ warning of a city-destroying impact, on its Physics arXiv Blog:
At about 3am on 8 October last year, an asteroid the size of a small house smashed into the Earth’s atmosphere over an isolated part of Indonesia. The asteroid disintegrated in the atmosphere causing a 50 kiloton explosion, about four times the size of the atomic bomb used to destroy Hiroshima. The…
Aleister Crowley for President 2012 – Red State Update
There’s a new front-runner in the 2012 presidential elections, dead Victorian occultist Aleister Crowley. This ad makes a good case for why you should write in for Uncle Al.
If you want to learn more about this strange figure, check out our film Aleister Crowley: In Search of The Great Beast 666, available instantly through iTunes and Amazon On-Demand.
End of the Earth Postponed
Or maybe it’s already happened. LiveScience reports:
It’s a good news/bad news situation for believers in the 2012 Mayan apocalypse. The good news is that the Mayan “Long Count” calendar may not end on Dec. 21, 2012 (and, by extension, the world may not end along with it). The bad news for prophecy believers? If the calendar doesn’t end in December 2012, no one knows when it actually will — or if it has already.
A new critique, published as a chapter in the new textbook “Calendars and Years II: Astronomy and Time in the Ancient and Medieval World” (Oxbow Books, 2010), argues that the accepted conversions of dates from Mayan to the modern calendar may be off by as much as 50 or 100 years. That would throw the supposed and overhyped 2012 apocalypse off by decades and cast into doubt the dates of historical Mayan events. (The doomsday worries are based on…
When Asteroids Collide
One of the most likely ‘Earth Apocalypse’ scenarios among the many bandied about by 2012 alarmists is that a “Near Earth Object” — as asteroids, meteors and other space junk that might collide with us are known in the trade — might smash through our atmosphere and impact with our planet. The Hubble Telescope has recorded a taste of what that might mean, reported in the Register:
The Hubble Space Telescope has captured the aftermath of just what happens when two asteroids collide at 11,000 mph (17,702 km/h), prompting an explosion “as powerful as the detonation of a small atomic bomb”.
P/2010 A2. Photo: NASA
The result is a “peculiar” object – dubbed P/2010 A2 – which boasts a comet-like debris trail behind a mysterious X-shaped formation.
The asteroid belt pile-up happened in early 2009, according to NASA, but it wasn’t until January this year that the Lincoln Near-Earth Research (LINEAR) Program Sky Survey…
2012: Time For Change – In Theaters Now!
2012: Time for Change presents an optimistic alternative to apocalyptic doom and gloom. Directed by Emmy Award nominee João Amorim, the film follows my quest for a new paradigm that integrates the archaic wisdom of tribal cultures with the scientific method. As conscious agents of evolution, we can redesign post-industrial society on ecological principles to make a world that works for all. Rather than breakdown and barbarism, 2012 heralds the birth of a regenerative planetary culture where collaboration replaces competition, where exploration of psyche and spirit becomes the new cutting edge, replacing the sterile materialism that has pushed our world to the brink. The film features Sting, Ellen Page, David Lynch, Gilberto Gil, and many other artists and visionaries.
The film opens in New York this weekend. Apologies if you don’t live in the area – we will soon offer video on demand and DVDs for sale. You can also work with us to organize a screening where you live…
Daniel Pinchbeck Returns with ‘Notes from the Edge Times’
I am delighted to announce the upcoming publication of Notes from the Edge Times. My new book collects essays written in the three-and-a-half years since the release of 2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl, my last work. The book covers a wide range of subjects, some of them familiar to readers of my earlier works, and some of them ventures into strange new territories. In essence, however seemingly diverse, all of the chapters revolve around a single subject: How do we confront the current mega-crises of species extinction, global financial collapse, and resource depletion and initiate a new planetary culture that integrates the physical and psychic aspects of our being, while meshing harmonically with our planet’s fragile ecology?
If you enjoyed my other work, I hope you will take the plunge and pre-order this new book before its official release on October 14. Apparently, in today’s anxious publishing climate, pre-orders from Amazon and other sites determine how much attention the publisher’s sales and marketing departments…
Massive Solar Flare To Paralyze Earth In 2013
So was Lawrence Joseph right when he warned of a potentially catastrophic solar flare in the disinformation film 2012: Science or Superstition? This story from the Daily Mail lends his theory some credence, albeit a year later than he predicted:
A massive solar flare could cause global chaos in 2013, causing blackouts and wrecking satellite communications, a conference heard yesterday.
On August 1, 2010, almost the entire Earth-facing side of the sun erupted in a tumult of activity. There was a C3-class solar flare, a solar tsunami, multiple filaments of magnetism lifting off the stellar surface, large-scale shaking of the solar corona, radio bursts, a coronal mass ejection and more. These images taken by the STEREO Ahead satellite from 3:47 to 15:47 UT on August 2nd show the movement of the CME cloud, on the right of the disc, as it expands toward Earth. Credit: NASA/STEREO
Nasa has warned that a peak in…
