This whole 2012 thing is driving me insane. Ive known about it for a year and its affecting my daily life. It seems that what started off as an Internet rumor has turned into a world-wide phenomenon. So many YouTube videos, websites, broadcasts on Fox News and the history channel have regarded 2012 as a doomsday year. It's scaring me and I don't know who to believe.
How can so many things possibly be wrong?

Mayan Calender
Planet x/Nibiru
Nostradamas
I Ching
Book of Revelations
Bible
Pole shift
Black hole
Asteroid
Merlin
Many Oracles

And why are people who believe in Nibiru all saying that it will be visible by 2010 to the naked eye?????????
im so freaked out about this!

You shouldn't be. There is no objective, scientifically solid reason to believe anything bad will happen in 2012 compared to any other year.

If it can help you: many of the people who are now claiming to be oh so sure we'll all die in 2012, used to claim they were oh so sure we'd all die in 2003. We're still alive.

There have been people claiming "the end is near" for thousands of years. The only difference is that the internet seems to be an excellent amplifier for these statements. But that doesn't make them any more true.

Don't worry.

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To the regular visitor of internet bulletin boards it is clear that it's an excellent idea your parents get to choose your real name.

Planet X was also supposed to destroy the world in 2003. Consider how many doomsday predictions have been wrong in the past.

Also some of the sources you mentioned, like the Bible and Nostradamus, are very open to interpretation and can be used to "prove" just about anything. I'll leave it at that since I don't want to get into a religious discussion here.

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"One does not require alien ruins in order to absorb a profound sense of wonder and mystery from the moon. That our civilization had actually visited it is miracle enough." Jason Roberts

Consider none have been right in the past.

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To the regular visitor of internet bulletin boards it is clear that it's an excellent idea your parents get to choose your real name.

Ask yourself how much you actually know, firsthand, about those things you listed. Should you really be worrying about second-hand hearsay?

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"A witty saying proves nothing" Voltaire.
"All your bias are belong to us" Ara Pacis.

Please read this...

http://www.universetoday.com/2008/12/21/2012-no-comet/

and enjoy the rest of your day.

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We'll have to outwit the fiend with our superior intelligence.
Yukon Cornelius

As far as I know, the only one of those things that has a specific connection to 2012 is the Mayan calander. By one interpretation of it (it is the most widely accepted by archaeologists, but it is just an interpretation), their calendar turns over the equivalent of a new millenium in 2012. But it has no more astronomical significance than the new millenium in 2000, and remember, the world didn't end then.

The Mayans were a very interesting stone age civilization, but had no more knowledge of astronomy than the average person could develop as long as they could count, watch the sky, and keep records of what they saw. They knew nothing of black holes, the galactic center, or even what a galaxy was.

Tens of thousands of professional and amateur astronomers watch the sky constantly, including many on this forum. There are no hidden objects coming for a visit in 4 years.

If you have any specific questions BenqGeilMiraldo, please ask.

And, by the way, welcome to BAUT!

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One Earth, One Sky - IYA 2009
All moderation in purple

Let's take a look at each of those shall we?

Mayan Calendar
it rolls over at 2012, and according to this:

And that's ASSUMING that the Mayans had any "special knowledge" of the future (something which I certainly disagree with, and something Ms Milbrath IS NOT claiming in any way either)

Planet X/Niburu, Pole Shift

It was supposed to be here in 2003, which will cause mayhem and destruction, causing the earth to stop rotation and so on.

Well, first of all it, was supposed to be here in 2003.
Second, nothing like that has EVER been detected in any possible way (not even the gravitational effects of something that big running all over the solar system).
So, IMHO it's just BUNK

Nostradamus

All the "predictions" based on his writings are basically attempts to interpret obscure passages, riddled with mis-translations which in the best of cases MIGHT be commenting on political events of his own time. Some of the more overt "predictions" are simply hoaxes.

See This for further reference.

I Ching

I-Ching is simply a method of "divination" used in China that became fashionable amongst some people here in the west after the late 19th century. Like all "methods of divination" is complete and absolute BUNK.

Bible: Book of Revelations

Speculative interpretation on rather obscure writings. Nothing concrete.

Black hole

The latest fad, the Large Hadron Collider is going to make a small black hole that's going to destroy the earth. Well This is what the CERN has to say about that.

In summary: NO, no chance that a black hole will suddenly materialize and destroy the earth

Asteroid

This one has at least SOME basis for truth, the impact of a large asteroid would definitely be a major disaster, however it is quite a remote possibility right now.

Merlin
Many Oracles

Sorry, but this require belief in the supernatural, something that has been proven over and over to be BUNK.

So, in short: Based on what I have just said, I consider that none of the items you listed have any basis on reality and can be ignored safely.

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Sic Transit Gloria Mundi

You know, Brittney started off as a blonde everygirl, and is now also on every tv station, countless you-tube videos, and is the subject of many a website (both pro and con). That doesn't mean she has any substance either.

...come to think of it, now I'm scared too. Moreso by the fact that no one can assure me that she'll go away by 2012.

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I'm like one of those idiot savants...well, except for the savant part.
"In order to increase awareness of the homeless, security have been given binoculars."

Thank you everyone for your replies, everyone here seems to agree that 2012 is a joke.
I feel better already.

The 2012 people seem to believe that science is involved in this. They say that NASA are behind it and a pole shift may occur in the next 4 years.

So my question is, honestly, is there any scientific evidence to back this up?

No.

Fred

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"For shame, gentlemen, pack your evidence a little better against another time."
-- John Dryden, "The Vindication of The Duke of Guise" 1684

There isn't really even any archaeological evidence to back it up. The whole "the ancient Mayans said this would happen" thing is quite a stretch, considering that there are also inscriptions that predict things that are supposed to happen long after 2012.

About the only thing that is true is that the calendar will roll over in 2012 (or at least that the standard number of digits used when writing mesoamerican long count dates isn't enough to count past 2012). Kind of like how a lot of legacy software had calendars that rolled over on Jan 1, 2000, and a lot of current computers have calendars that are scheduled to roll over in 2038. Contrary to what a lot of sites say, we can't even be sure of the specific day of the Gregorian calendar when this is supposed to happen. Nobody's been able to definitively show how to precisely match long count dates to dates in other calendars, so any day-specific translation should be regarded as an approximation.

I really don't see why it is that folks are making such a big deal about the rather obvious and pedestrian mathematical fact that you can only represent a finite number of discrete elements (days, in the case of the Mayan calendar) with a finite number of digits. I wonder if they also think the world would end if someone were to run a car's odometer up past 999,999.9 miles.

The magnetic poles move around constantly and have flipped polarity many times in the history of the Earth. Here is a nice website from the Canadian Department of Natural Resources with information about the movement of the poles and links to even more information.

From one of the linked pages there is some interesting information about pole shifts
Several important points here: reversals take a long time, we may or may not be starting one, and even during a reversal, the magnetic field of the Earth does not disappear.

There is zero evidence that anything significant will happen along these lines in 2012.

Now some of the weirder 2012 people seem to be talking about a flipping of the rotational poles of the Earth, not the magnetic poles (they never really clarify what they mean by a "pole shift"). Such a flip is just not possible and there is no known force that could do such a thing without completely destroying the planet (and there is not the slightest evidence of any such thing).

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At night the stars put on a show for free (Carole King)

One Earth, One Sky - IYA 2009
All moderation in purple

No, there's no evidence to support the 2012 nonsense. NASA couldn't hide a planet that was going to pass within the inner solar system in the next four years, and there's no support for any apocalyptic pole shifts. I don't know what your education level is, but I'd suggest trying to learn some basic astronomy, take an introductory astronomy class if you can, join a local amateur astronomy group and do a bit of star (and planet) gazing. As you learn more about this, you can better decide for yourself what is reasonable and what is unreasonable.

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My diagnosis is that you're giving this approximately 99.999%... no, make that 100% more credence than it deserves.

My advice to you, to help keep you sane, to get your daily life back, is to take any and all printouts, magazine clippings, newspaper articles, whatever, that you have on the 2012 issue and use them to start, if not build, a fire.

Then, do the same thing with any content you may have in electronic format while that fire is raging.

Once you're finished, I want you to breath, as you have your life back.

To prevent falling off the wagon, it's up to you to avoid any further involvement in 2012 phenomena. When 2013 rolls around, you'll be glad you did, and that you haven't wasted the previous 4 years of your life in knuckle-biting angst and worry.

Breath. It's not real. Delete content. Hug the spouse and kids/pets.

Just breath...

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If I set the budget, we'd have Ares and more. Unfortunately, I don't set the budget, and Ares is just too expensive and too far out for us to accomplish our goals within the budget we were given.

If we halt the ISS, all versions of Ares, and transport Orion and Altair aboard DIRECTv3's Jupiter family of Shuttle-Derived Launch Vehicles, we just might make it back to the Moon by 2020.