Passion Project Movie

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q1Zs7wwKtZU&feature=youtu.be

Is It Doomsday in 2012? Blog Post #7

Article:
Is It Doomsday in 2012?
Link:
http://find.galegroup.com/gic/retrieve.do?sgHitCountType=None&sort=DateDescend&tabID=T004&prodId=GIC&resultListType=RESULT_LIST&searchId=R2&searchType=&currentPosition=1&qrySerId=Locale%28en%2C%2C%29%3AFQE%3D%28KE%2CNone%2C12%29world+ending%3AAnd%3AFQE%3D%28TX%2CNone%2C6%29nibiru%24&userGroupName=hins30136&inPS=true&docId=CJ212663003&contentSet=IAC-Documents&docId=CJ212663003&docType=IAC

Database:
Global Issues in Context

Notes:

• Apocalypse Theorie #1: "The Earth's crust loses its moorings and begins to weaken and slide around. Los Angeles falls into the ocean; Yellowstone blows up, showering the continent with black ash. Tidal waves wash over the Himalayas, where the governments of the planet have secretly built a fleet of arks in which a select 400,000 people can ride out the storm. But this is only one version of apocalypse out there."
• "Apcalypse Theorie #2: "A planet named Nibiru crashes into us." 
• Apocalypse Theorie #3: "The Earth's magnetic field flips."
• All of these theories are portrayed in movies, stories, and books, but according to astronomers, none of it is true.
• Black holes are science fiction, not fact
• Climate change is the thing to worry and think about, not the world ending
• The potential sunspot will most likely happen in 2013, and it will be mild
• Apocalypse is the best theorie you could have due to the earthqaukes and other natural disasters, but it would happen in millions of years.

Interview

INTERVIEW

Description of Mary A. Voytek

Mary Voytek is a microbiologist who focuses mainly on "environmental controls on microbial transformations of nutrients, xenobiotics, and metals in freshwater and marine systems" (http://astrobiology.nasa.gov/directory/profile/4886/mary/voytek/). Mary has traveled the world studying these things. She has been to Antartica and deep sea-water sites to research her interests. She is in charge of the  NASA’s Astrobiology Program, which is why she is a very reliable source.

3-5 Interview Questions

Source: http://astrobiology.nasa.gov/ask-an-astrobiologist/intro/nibiru-and-doomsday-2012-questions-and-answers

1. What is the origin of the prediction that the world will end in December 2012?

Mary Voytek: The story started with claims that Nibiru, a supposed planet discovered by the Sumerians, is headed toward Earth. Zecharia Sitchin, who wrote fiction about the ancient Mesopotamian civilization of Sumer, claimed in several books (e.g., “The Twelfth Planet”, published in 1976) that he had found and translated Sumerian documents that identify the planet Nibiru, orbiting the Sun every 3600 years. These Sumerian fables include stories of “ancient astronauts” visiting Earth from a civilization of aliens called the Anunnaki http://www.sitchiniswrong.com/. Sitchin suggested a return of Nibiru and the Anunnaki sometime this century. Then Nancy Lieder, a self-declared psychic who claims she is channeling aliens, wrote on her website Zetatalk that the inhabitants of a fictional planet around the star Zeta Reticuli warned her that the Earth was in danger from Planet X or Nibiru http://www.badastronomy.com/bad/misc/planetx/. This catastrophe was initially predicted for May 2003, but when nothing happened the doomsday date was moved forward to December 2012. Then these two fables were linked to the end of the Mayan calendar long-count at the winter solstice in 2012 – hence the predicted doomsday date on December 21, 2012.

2. Why does the Mayan calendar say the world will end in 2012? I have heard that they have been pretty accurate in the past with other planetary predictions. How can you be sure you know more than they did?

Mary Voytek: Calendars exist for keeping track of the passage of time, not for predicting the future. The Mayan astronomers were clever, and they developed a very complex calendar. Ancient calendars are interesting to historians, but they cannot match the ability we have today to keep track of time, or the precision of the calendars currently in use. The main point, however, is that calendars, whether contemporary or ancient, cannot predict the future of our planet or warn of things to happen on a specific date such as 2012. To further complicate matters, scholars do not agree on when the Mayan calendar long-count turns over. There is no agreed-upon synchronization between the Mayan calendar and ours, which was imported much later from Europe. This supposedly key date in the Mayan calendar may have already happened, or it may lie decades in the future.

3. When most of the planets align in 2012 and planet Earth is in the center of the Milky Way, what will the effects of this be on planet Earth? Could it cause a pole shift, and if so what could we expect?

Mary Voytek: There is no planet alignment in 2012 or any other time in the next several years. In fact, in late 2012 the planets are scattered all over the sky! As to the Earth being in the center of the Milky Way, I don’t know what this phrase means. If you are referring to the Milky Way Galaxy, we are rather far toward the edge of this spiral galaxy, some 30,000 light years from the center. We circle the galactic center in a period of 225-250 million years, always keeping approximately the same distance. Concerning a pole shift, I also don’t know what this means. If it means some sudden change in the position of the rotation axis of the Earth, then that is impossible, as noted in the answer to Question 10. What many websites do discuss is the alignment of the Earth and Sun with the center of the Milky Way in the constellation of Sagittarius. This happens every December, with no bad consequences, and there is no reason to expect 2012 to be different from any other year.

4. I have heard that the Earth’s magnetic field will flip in 2012 just when the strongest level of solar storms in history is predicted to take place. Will this kill us or destroy our civilization?

Mary Voytek: Near solar maximum (which happens every 11 years approximately), there are many more sunspots, solar flares and coronal mass ejections than near solar minimum. Flares and mass ejections are no danger for humans or other life on Earth. They could endanger astronauts in deep space or on the Moon, and this is something that NASA must learn to deal with, but it is not a problem for you or me. Large outbursts can interrupt radio transmission, cause bright displays of the aurora (Northern and Southern Lights), and damage the electronics of some satellites in space. Today many satellites are designed to protect against this possibility, for example by switching off some of their more delicate circuits and going into a “safe” mode for a few hours. In extreme cases solar activity can also disrupt electrical transmissions on the ground, possibly leading to electrical blackouts, but this is rare.
The last solar maximum occurred in 2001, but the subsequent solar minimum was unusual, with a period of a couple of years with almost no sunspots or other solar activity. Scientists now guess that the next maximum will in 2013 not 2012. However, the details of the solar cycle remain basically unpredictable.
You are correct that the Earth’s magnetic field protects us by creating a large region in space, called the Earth’s magnetosphere, within which most of the material ejected from the Sun is captured or deflected, but there is no reason to expect a reversal of magnetic polarity any time soon. These magnetic reversals happen only once in 400,000 years on average.

5. All my school friends are telling me that we are all going to die in the year 2012 due to a meteor hitting earth. Is this true?

Mary Voytek: Your friends are wrong. The Earth has always been subject to impacts by comets and asteroids, although big hits are very rare. The last big impact was 65 million years ago, and that led to the extinction of the dinosaurs. Today NASA astronomers are carrying out a survey called the Spaceguard Survey to find any large near-Earth asteroids long before they hit. We have already determined that there are no threatening asteroids as large as the one that killed the dinosaurs. All this work is done openly with the discoveries posted every day on the NASA NEO Program Office website http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov, so you can see for yourself that nothing is predicted to hit in 2012.

ICE AGE

Book
Earth: The Operators' Manual


Author
Richard B. Alley


Chapter
11 and the beginning of 12


7-10 Bullets

• Volcanoes cause a slight change of a few tenths of a degree in a year
• This effect disappears in about a year
• Ice Ages are caused by the "changes in the distribution of sunshine on the planet driven by features of Earth's orbit" (Alley 133)
• CO2 levels are the main cause for growing ice on Antartica (Ice Ages)
• The drifting continents are also a cause for the ice on Antartica
• The peaks of ice ages are seperated out by about 100,000 years
• The small ice ages, "wiggles", are seperated by about 40,000 to 20,000 years
• Drifting continents and tilting orbit caused large climate changes

Summary

 In this book Earth: The Operators' Manual, Richard B. Alley explains in this chapter explains the problems that the world may be having due to ice ages.One example that supports this main idea is him explaining how far appart the large and small ice ages are occuring. Another fact that supports this main idea is that he explains that Milutin Milankovitch predicted the up and comng ice ages by calculating the changes of sunshine on the earth. Finally, the author gives reason that the heat coming from volcanoes is cooling the CO2 levels which helps stop ice ages.to support the main idea. These ideas are similar  to my past learning about how the world could possibly end because ice ages and other possible natural disasters could end the world.

ABC News: Will the World End in 2012?

Article Name:

Will the World End in 2012?

URL: http://abcnews.go.com/International/story?id=5301284&page=1
Reasons for Credibility:

• This online article was published July 3, 2008.
• The source is ABC News. This news source is very credible because it is all factual. The point of news is to inform the people of the world what is happening everywhere and this article relates to everyone around the world.
• "Instead, Geryl, a soft-spoken man who had studied chemistry in his younger years, started preparing for the apocalypse. He founded a "survival group" for likeminded men and women, aimed at living through the catastrophe he knew was coming." this quote from the website shows that the man giving information to the journalist has studied science throughout his lifetime.
• NASA is also a source that is credible that gave information to the article

Notes: (highlighted terms are ones that should be researched further)

• Patrick Geryl is a scientist who has studied science for his life and he believes the world will end and is preparing people for the worst to come.
• He believes this because of the ancient Mayan Calender-supposedly with catastrophic consequences
• Believes this also because of the Egyptians who also saw the world ending in 2012
• NASA predicts a sharp increase of sunspots and sun flares in 2012
• Those will porbably cause electrical failures and satellite disruptions
• Thomas Lehmann, Patrick Geryl, Mark van Stone, and Dennis McClung are people involved in the world ending
• They roam from scientist to Home Depot Manager and they all are reliable people who citizens trust, and they believe that the world is end, or they are atleast preparing for it to end.

Mayan Calendar Article-Blog#3

Database: Enyclopedia Britannica
Title of Article: Calendar
Link to article: http://www.school.eb.com/eb/article-60226
Underlined words: words that might be helpful for future research

• Basic structure of Mayan calendar is common to the civilized part of ancient Middle America
• Ritual cycle of 260 named days but a total of 36 in a year
• 52 years of 365 days called "Calendar Round"
• Name for 260-day cycle for Mayans is unknown
• some authorities call it the Tzolkin or the Divinatory Calendar, the Ritual Calendar, or day cycle
• Mayan calendar has nothing to do with astronomy
• Determinants-"indicate with a remarkable degree of accuracy how far the 365-day year had diverged from the solar year since the beginning of the Long Count,"-the article stated abov

1. When did the Mayan calendar end?
2. How was the Mayan calendar found?
3. When was the Mayan calendar created?

Is the World Going to End in 2012?

1. Why do people believe in conspiracy theories?
2. How did ancient people (ex.Aztecs) measure time?
3. What caused use to believe the world would end?
4. How is the world supposed to end?
5. When can we doto keep the human race alive if the world ends?
6. What will happen leading up to the world ending?
7. Has the world been predicted to end any other time in past/future? If yes, when/why?

What do I already know about my topic?
-Supposedly it is supposed to end in an apocalypse
-It was predicted by the Mayans that it was ending
-Apparently it was supposed to end in 2000 as well.
-Global warming is supposedly helping cause the world ending.

Mythology Eor End of World in 2012

Article Name: Mythology
Link: http://www.school.eb.com/all/comptons/article-205120?query=world%20ending&ct=null

• Mayan Theories-Floods legends was one way about how the Earth was going to end (most of life forms)
• Native American Theories-"End of the world recurred in a cycle, followed by a new creation."
•  Aztec Theories- There had already been 4 seperate destructions of the world and one more was expected
• Each world ending was marked by the ruler disapearing (In all of them it was the Sun)
• Some mythologies blamed "human wickedness" for the end of the world (ex. the story of Noah and the flood)
• All modern religions look forward to the end of the world, for a new fresh creation to occur
• *Cataclysm*
• Judaism-coming of Messiah announces the end of the world and the "restoration of paradise"

Do ALL religions believe in the end of the world?
How was all mythology created?