Happy "End of the World"!

As a graduate student answering questions for the Cornell University Astronomy Department "Ask an Astronomer" site I innocently picked up a question "What's going to happen on December 21st 2012?" to look into. A small Google search later and I entered a strange world of apocalyspe, misrepresented science and lots and lots of nonesense about what the Mayans may have believed.

Anyway I answered the question to the best of my ability at the time, and didn't think much of it.

To date, almost 2 million people have read that answer, and it's led to numerous other questions about 21st December 2012, including a radio appearance on Montel Across America on the topic.

I did what I assume will be my last interview on the topic earlier this week, now appearing in the Southport High School Journal for 21st December 2012.

Here's my final answers (note aimed to be read by a US High School audience)! I am a bit surprised to have no real plans to celebrate the (lack of) end of the world, but it is true that I will get to enjoy a day at home with my young son.

1.  Why will the world not end?  Why do some think it will?

The world definitely will end one day - just not in 10 days from now. The reason some people think it's going to end on 21st December 2012 is tied to the Mayan calendar and some other vaguely science related things people have linked into it. Some people think the Mayan calendar long count ends on 21st December (ie. today) and that the Mayans had special knowledge which allowed them to line this up with the end of the world. Mayan scholars actually disagree on the exact alignment of the Mayan calendar and our calendar, so the date itself is a bit debatable, and in any case the Mayans had names for times longer than the long count so it doesn't seem like they thought it would be the end of the world. And even if they did why would they know? The "end of their world" (or civilization) kind of came several hundred years ago!

 I think people have latched onto 21st December because it is the solstice (for us in the Northern hemisphere the shortest day), so a special day for the world - but one that happens every year.

2.  Have there been any signs?

 No.

3.  Why has the Mayan December 2012 theory been so widely spread, while others have not?

 Unclear. Actually you can find in cache versions of the internet discussion of the end of the world in both 2000 and 2003 (neither of which happened). There's a quote you can find online which says "People who have survived the end of the world of 2000 (or 2003) are 95% more likely than others to survive the end of the world in December 2012. (These figures are not official)". I've been debunking the 2012 myth since around 2000. It died off a bit in the last couple of years, but I suppose I shouldn't be surprised people are getting more worried about it again this month.

4.  What do you think will happen Dec. 21?  What will you be doing that day?

I think it'll be just like any other day. I mentioned it is the solstice (shortest day) and here in the UK that will mean sunrise close to 8am and it getting dark again around 3.30pm. I'll be wrapping up warm because it's getting cold, and preparing for Christmas. It's my daughters last day of school before Christmas, but my son's nursery will be closed so I'll have a day off work with him before we head off for our Christmas plans to visit my parents on 22nd December. 

 A famous scientist in the UK is hosting an "End of the World" comedy science event (he's been famous for debunking the 2012 nonesense too - check it out here). I kind of wish I could go to, but unfortunately can't. 

5.  What do you think of those who believe it will end?

Anyone who is making money off it by selling "apocalypse survival kits", or books spreading this nonsense I feel very angry with for upsetting gullible people. I'm a bit sad to be honest for anyone who is really worried about it and getting themselves upset. They really need not be concerned. I guess they'll feel a bit stupid on 22nd December (but presumably relieved!). I'll be curious to see what he next apocalypse they all start worrying about will be. It seems the lack of 2000 or 2003 apocalypses didn't stop people going on about this one, so I'm sure there will be a new one.

6.  What does the Mayan calendar actually mean, if it doesn't mean the world will end?

It's just a calendar. Our calendar has long cycles too (like millennia - ie. the switch from 1999 to 2000, or in the future 2999 to 3000, or on shorter timescales, centuries). This doesn't mean we think the world's going to end when the next cycle happens!

7.  Do you know of any statistics or interesting facts regarding this topic? (I.e., how many believe it will happen?  Mayan facts?)

There's an internet meme - "Keep Calm the Mayans were simply Counting Down to the Hobbit Movie" which I think is quite cute. I wrote a blog post about a talk I gave on this topic in a high school with more details and some little bits. 

8.  Any other feelings or last words regarding this topic, or things you think we should know?

 Well as I said at the beginning, the world really will end one day, and I find it interesting to think about that a bit. For example in about 1 billion years the Sun will have aged to the point where it is slightly larger, and slightly brighter so that the average temperature on Earth will be too high for any liquid water - that's likely to end any remaining life on Earth. About 3-4 billion years after that the Sun will expand dramatically and probably swallow the Earth. On shorter timescale we do genuinely need to worry about large comets and asteroids. It's important that NASA and other organizations continue to track any which might potentially hit Earth. The probability of this happening soon (ie. in our lifetimes) is very small, even though in the next million or billion years it almost certainly will happen. What's probably more concerning for us is the stuff humans are doing to the planet. Climate change seems to already be making real impacts on severe weather, and may well accelerate during our lifetimes. There are concerns about the melting of the polar ice and rising sea levels. I don't mean to alarm anyone, my point is that instead of worrying about vague apocalypses "predicted" by ancient civilizations lets worry about what the current civilizations are doing to the planet and work to look after it a bit better.

School visit: The End of the World in 2012?

For the second part of my school visit a couple of weeks ago I spoke with the Springfield School Junior Cafe Scientifique group (an after school club) about "End of the World" myths surrounding 21st December 2012. I've previously written about my involvement with debunking 2012 myths online (2012 tag on this blog).

Image from the Movie 2012 which imagines what would happen if the myths were true. 

I started by showing a clip of the 2012 movie trailer.



Then I talked through the myths, the science behind them. This allowed me to cover basic things like the motion of the Sun across the sky, the solstices, precession, what the Milky Way looks like, but also talk about the life cycle of the Sun and other stars, the solar activity cycle, what the other planets look like in the sky (ie. if there were a massive planet about to hit Earth you'd be able to see it) and of course comets. You can use this theme to get a lot of astronomy in!

I used a couple more movies in my talk - one of the excellent clips made by Andrew Pontzen for BBC Stargazing LIVE which illustrates what our Galaxy looks like:




and this beautiful timelapse of the Milky Way over ALMA.



I also had fun with a "Keep Calm and Do Science" theme (aiming this at 14 year olds after all!).

(you can actually buy that T-shirt - nothing to do with me, and I haven't got one!).

So I was interested to notice the recent web meme for "Keep Calm, the Mayans were simply counting down to the Hobbit Movie!" (noticed it just yesterday so too late to include in the talk!).

I ended with what I throught was a great quote from this website which makes fun of all the end of the world myths

"People who have survived the end of the world of 2000 (or 2003) are 95% more likely than others to survive the end of the world in December 2012. (These figures are not  official)"

It turned out that the students coming to Cafe Sci weren't really at all worried, but hopefully I've now given them some ammunition to help explain it to others if necessary. Less good I think I worried them a bit about comet impacts. I talked about the NASA list of potentially hazardous objects - mentioning Apophis, which is the closest approach known about through 2178. It will pass at about the distance of the Moon (which I demoed with a scale model) in 2029. Now it turns out there is a computer game based on the idea that Apophis will actually hit (according to Wikipedia this is "Rage") so one of the kids knew a lot about Apophis. And following that they didn't seem very reassured by the vast distance to the Moon and the argument that it's very unlikely to hit us! I think if I did this again I might talk more about probability and how unlikely such things are. Problem is of course that a big comet will hit the Earth at some point - although clearly not in 2012.... , and probably not for hundreds if thousands of years.... but still.

Anyway if you want you can download the (ppt) slides I used from Dropbox.

End of the World in 2012? An Infographic

Stumbled across the below infographic from InformationisBeautiful today (with the help of @astrojenny on Twitter). A nice visual summary of the points made by so-called "Mayan Doomsday" prophets clearly set against the actual facts. Looks like a useful resource for astronomers in the next 18 months.

As I have previously stumbled into 2012 debunking (see Karen and 2012, also you can listen to me debate it on The Montel Williams show last year) a lot of this was familiar, but this is a wonderfully clear way to lay it all out.

Curious? Ask an Astronomer: a proto-blog?

Way back in 2001 (10 years ago!) when blogging was not a household term, I was a member of a group of astronomy graduate students at Cornell University who answered questions sent to curious@astro.cornell.edu. We decided a revamp of the website was needed, and set it up as a searchable MySQL database accessed by php. I was reminded of an old post of mine today, and realised that we in fact set up a proto-blog. If we were doing this today it could just be a blog with a series of posts answering common astronomical questions.

Anyway you can read some of the answers I wrote as a graduate student/young postdoc which are posted at Curious? Ask an Astronomer.  This link goes to all 154 questions answered by me which I posted on the website!

Turns out I have 3 of the 10 most read questions on the site. They are

What's going to happen on December 21st 2012? (viewed 577263 times)
What is the largest star? (viewed 191353 times)
What is a white hole? (viewed 184946 times)

 More than half a million people have read that top one. Yikes! That's some impact, and no wonder Google searches for my name return lots of hits. I also make the 2012 people really angry.......