I have come across another claim from the Survive 2012 website. This one is from a contributer who makes the followinfg claim:
"the earth will be enveloped in a gassy soup come 2012,that has been wandering the galaxy.The earth briefly touched it about 10 years ago,as the "soup" ebbs and flows in an odd manner.As the earth and the "soup" touch each other again in 2012,it will be interesting. Destruction of the earth?doubt it,but it will be somewhat dangeous to human life.Mother nature will correct the attack on plant life.Either way,,it will definately wake up the world,and our existance will be forever in question"
Anyone hear of any dangerous gassy clouds that threaten us or has this guy been smoking something strange????

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"One of the most untruthful things possible, you know, is a collection of facts, because they can be made to appear so many different ways." -Karl A. Menninger

That looks like a mangled version of a faux story from the Weekly World News. It includes this quote:

"The good news is that this finding confirms several cutting- edge ideas in theoretical physics," announced Dr. Albert Sherwinski, a Cambridge based astrophysicist with close ties to NASA.

"The bad news is that the total annihilation of our solar system is imminent."

For those who don't know, WWN is a joke tabloid that specializes in outrageous stories. It was one of Douglas Adams' favorite periodicals.
My favorite WWN story (with pictures) was the 2003 wedding between Osama Bin Laden & Saddam Hussein (Saddam was the bride, and wore a white gown). Attendees included Muammar Qadaffi, Kim Jong Il and Jacques Chirac.

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"Transport of the mails, transport of the human voice, transport of flickering pictures - in this century, as in others, our highest accomplishments still have the single aim of bringing men together." St. Exupery

Wow, thanks for the link. That probably is where the idea came from. The WWN usually is full of it, though the story on the surface looks "scientific".
Well, as long as it's not true, I guess we can scratch that one off our list!

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"One of the most untruthful things possible, you know, is a collection of facts, because they can be made to appear so many different ways." -Karl A. Menninger

What's scary is that there are people who take the WWN at it's word, assume it's correct. Despite claims of such things as the British cloning Hitler from his moustache, and I'm sure I read one of their articles about how aliens landed and gave humanity a new diet plan.

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Yes. Its called flatulence.

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Anything may be possible, but not everything actually is. Some things are true and some things are not. Wisdom is knowing the difference.

Well, those little grey dudes are pretty thin!

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An open mind is like an open window...without a good screen you'll get all sorts of weird bugs!

The sad thing is that WWN DOES include an occasional small tidbit that is at least semi-true (the little short articles that take up about 10% of a page are sometimes semi-true or at least I've seen some of those same stories elsewhere before).

Some are more believable than others, obviously....

Tonar: http://movies.yahoo.com/mv/news/wwn/...610520022.html

so does this dr. albert sherwinski exist? and is there any data from chandra that shows an large asteroid being destroyed by the cloud? can we even see asteroids that far away?

Dude, the article was a joke. Y'know, a joke? Something to be laughed at and not taken seriously? It's one of those.

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"Transport of the mails, transport of the human voice, transport of flickering pictures - in this century, as in others, our highest accomplishments still have the single aim of bringing men together." St. Exupery

WWN doesn't care if the story winds up being true, just as long as it is entertaining to read.

My alltime favorite story arc in the WWN was one week the cover story was "Woman gives birth to baby sheep" and explained it was a big mix uo at the sperm bank. Fair enough.

The very next week the story was "Sheep gives birth to human baby." Yes, you guessed it, big mix up at the sperm bank.

To their credit, neither story mentioned the other, leaving it to us to make the connection.

I don't see WNN as a put on or joke. Obviously the stories are baloney, but it is presented straight. That is, it is no more - nor less - a joke than the Art Bell show. Or Pro Wrestling. Maybe I am being overly picky, but a joke is never intended to be believed by anyone.

when I was in high school, the fluff section of the LA Times published an article about the WWN, including interviewers with staff. they freely admitted to making it up. (two of my favorite cover stories: "Hitler's nose cloned--and it's growing a moustache!" and "woman killed by fur coat!" the exclamation points are absolutely mandatory for WWN headlines.)

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Gillian

"Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.'"

"You can't erase icing."

"I can't believe it doesn't work! I found it on the internet, man!"

So Michael Jackson's alien parents really aren't taking him back to the home planet?

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Now while I might be amused by Cthulhians, I don't necessarily distrust them to carry out the functions of government. -- JayUtah

What's it like being a skeptic in the Middle East? Check out my blog.

Sounds much like the plot of an upcoming made-for-tv movie on SciFi.

http://www.scifi.com/pathofdestruction/

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Never attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by ignorance or stupidity.
Isaac Asimov

I wonder if WWN stands for Woo-Woo Network?

Hmmm...

I put the WWN in the same category as The Onion, The Watley Review and other satirical periodicals. Each seeks to imitate a different kind of journal, but the overall intent is the same: Make people laugh.

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"Transport of the mails, transport of the human voice, transport of flickering pictures - in this century, as in others, our highest accomplishments still have the single aim of bringing men together." St. Exupery

Well looky here.

I adore the picture in the BAblog!

Didn't the editor of the Weekly World News once say that it's the most relable newspaper in the world? He said you can count on all the stories to have been made up. You gotta love these gals and guys!

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Carl Matherly

Offical Battlestar Galactica Apologist

Named Time Magazine's 2006 "Person of the Year"

My brother mentioned some story about a dust cloud in 2014 hitting us and a 2012 threat. I told him that WWN is a farce and the woohoo talking about 2012 are just that.

If I had a dollar for every time someone predicted the exact year of the end of the world, I'd be a conspiracy author. Or the leader of some quack religion.

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"Facts are stubborn things." --John Adams
Clavius Moon Base

Well, we know the Earth will end then because that's when the Mayan calender 'ends'.

(It doesn't actually end, it rolls over, but very few Woo woos realise this. In a more humorous vein, I've heard the theory that our DNA will be upgraded in 2012 (Which makes no sense to me, rather akin to upgrading your hair, what does that mean?) which will allow us to use more than (wait for it...) 1/1 millionth of our brain, yes, the is person also believes that we currently only use 1/1 000 000 of our brain, thus making us psychic )

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...akin to upgrading your hair

I sure could use a hair upgrade.

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"Facts are stubborn things." --John Adams
Clavius Moon Base

Yahoo news was a very bad idea and they should have known that. I think they did and don't care about actually providing news so much as providing hits. Why else would they include blogs as news? Why not block WWN? They don't care about providing real news, only clicks. Bah.

I'll stick to real news sources. That's surreal enough without the yahoo's spider news.

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You're a coward and a liar and a thOOF - Bart Sibrel

Well, perhaps they're basing that on personal experience.

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"Transport of the mails, transport of the human voice, transport of flickering pictures - in this century, as in others, our highest accomplishments still have the single aim of bringing men together." St. Exupery

Not according to your avatar, you don't!

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"Properly read, the Bible is the most potent force for atheism ever conceived." - Isaac Asimov

Here is what you do. Get some skeptics who are familiar with woo-woo-ism. Have them write the Weekly World News about how the Hurricanes are caused by (INSERT HOAX HERE) and how if we double NASA's budget--they will go away.

At least some good will be had when the blue-hairs who read such malarky (while watching wrestling with other grandmothers) call their representatives actually supporting NASA for a change.

It's obvious to me that the person who wrote this must have sour grapes over London, England getting the 2012 Olympics.

Huh... I suddenly have this image of NASA sending hurricanes at New Orleans and Galveston because the city laundromats "forgot" to pay their protection money...

Image of a WWN cover.

OK, the story in the OP as well as the WWN are a load of malarkey. This begs the question: what's the worst that could happen if a massive cloud of dust, gases, or electrons/positrons entered the solar system? Let's counter pseudoscience with science.

- Maha "clouded minds" Vailo

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When you get down to it, Science answers how. Religion answers why. - hippietrekx

The Warp Point, my new geek culture blog.

Thanks, Wolverine, for the BA link. I wasn't aware that this story was even significant enough to get his attention! But I am grateful for the debunking. WWN is one of those like India Times.Worthless!

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"One of the most untruthful things possible, you know, is a collection of facts, because they can be made to appear so many different ways." -Karl A. Menninger