2012 Blog » NASA

NASA Expert: No 2012 Supervolcano

Robert Bast — Thu, 17 Nov 2011 06:31:38 +0000

This is weak, weak, weak. The headline is quite definite:

Supervolcanoes: Not a Threat For 2012

But if you read the article, NASA expert Adam Voiland (not an expert really, see his resume) points out:

Volcanologists have many unanswered questions about supervolcanoes, including what triggers their eruptions, and how can we predict when the next supervolcano will erupt?
The most recent supereruption occurred in New Zealand about 26,000 years ago.
Scientists have no way of predicting with perfect accuracy whether a supervolcano will occur in a given century, decade, or year – and that includes 2012.
The odds if a supervolcano erupting in any given year is close to a million-to-one.
There’s no sign of a supereruption looming anytime soon.

On that last point, given that scientists have never witnessed such an eruption, and they don’t know what triggers them, how do they know what to look for?

For those of us that believe there were advanced ancient civilizations that could do things like, say, build pyramids – 26,000 years ago is recent enough that the Taupo eruption might have been intelligently observed, and notes passed on. And 13 months is plenty of time for a supervolcano to kick-start itself.

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It looks like next in the series will be either Nibiru or pole shifts. I bet they either ignore magnetic pole shifts, or tell us they cannot happen suddenly (despite recent evidence to the contrary).

NASA Expert: No 2012 Supervolcano is a post from: 2012 Blog

NASA Expert: Solar Flares Harmless

Robert Bast — Wed, 16 Nov 2011 00:11:36 +0000

You just know I’m going to be critical of this news item…

Dr Alex Young, a heliophysicist at Nasa’s Goddard Space Flight Center, said we don’t need to worry about the sun for another few billion years – and certainly not in 2012.

He said: ‘We understand the sun well enough, with all the technology and all the science – and all of the many spacecraft we have that are monitoring it 24 hours a day, seven days a week – to know that this super storm that is going to wipe out the earth simply isn’t going to happen.’

Yep, once more an expert has decided to ignore the concepts of global cataclysms, and TEOTWAWKI, and just address the complete destruction of planet Earth. Any 2012 survivalist obviously don’t expect that to happen… because nobody would survive.

He said that, apart from a nasty skin burn on a hot summer’s day, there was very little to fear from our ‘active star’. There simply isn’t enough energy in the sun to send a killer fireball 93 million miles to destroy Earth.

Well, show me where someone is suggesting a fireball is going to wipe us out? How come experts get away with not showing examples and providing references, yet laymen get criticized for the very same?

But Dr Young said that coronal mass ejections, or CME as they are known, do little more than cause a dazzling light show in the sky.

‘If we have a really big one you can have a very strong aurora, but then it can effect satellites and power grids, and so these are the kind of things that people who run these systems know about.”

So, because these are known, there’s nothing to worry about then. Who needs satellites and electricity? I wonder if he knows that 90% of GPS receivers use the satellites for timing, not location. If those satellites go, then ATMs stop functioning, the stock market stops functioning, and much more. And without electricity, Europe and the USA would be totally screwed, with many millions dying.

This is standard spin. Discount an extreme scenario that nobody is suggesting, and fail to address the real concerns.

NASA Expert: Solar Flares Harmless is a post from: 2012 Blog

Satellite Crash Alert

Robert Bast — Mon, 19 Sep 2011 06:08:15 +0000

On September 23 2011, give or take a day, a 6.5 ton satellite will come crashing to Earth. This is fact, and the information is from NASA. The prediction is that at least 26 large pieces will survive the journey through our atmosphere. They aren’t sure exactly where they will hit, but have calculated the odds of a human being struck at 1 in 3,200.

Read about the The Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite (UARS) at Wikipedia.

Over at Space.com there is a video showing the predicted zone of impact possibilities:
http://www.space.com/12982-dead-nasa-satellite-falling-earth-sept-24.html

From viewing the video, it seems that Australia and northern Europe are safe, while parts of Africa, Asia and the Americas are at risk. The greatest likelihood is that it will crash in the Pacific Ocean, so hopefully that will be the result and not something worse (like hitting a nuclear power plant).

This reminds me of SkyLab which crashed (safely) into Australia in 1979. The odds of a human getting hit that time were calculated to be 152-to-1.

Satellite Crash Alert is a post from: 2012 Blog

Nothing Skeptical About 2012

Robert Bast — Fri, 10 Jun 2011 03:05:24 +0000

One of the world’s leading skeptics is Michael Shermer. Not only is he the founder of the Skeptics Society, and head honcho and primary contributor for Skeptic Magazine, he has also penned an opinion piece for New Scientist this week: The End is Always Nigh in the Human Mind.

When I finished reading it I thought, WAIT A SECOND! Mr Shermer covered world wars, Karl Marx, Ayn Rand, Stephen Hawking, Noah and Y2K. And Harold Camping. No mention of the biggest end of the world story in modern history: the 2012 meme.

So I checked out the Skeptic website and the only real mention of 2012 looked quite promising…

Unfortunately 2012 is only addressed in a single article. It is written by David Morrison, who is employed by NASA to dismiss 2012. He is not a skeptic but a government spin doctor. The same article can be found at NASA.

So, it seems the world’s #1 skeptic has no opinion on 2012, yet is skeptical about hundreds of other topics.

Nothing Skeptical About 2012 is a post from: 2012 Blog

Meteoroid Tracking / New 2012 Drink / Missing Sunspots

Robert Bast — Sat, 05 Mar 2011 11:41:12 +0000

NASA is installing a network of smart cameras across the USA to track fireballs and meteoroids. Soon there will be 15, and then they plan to expand nationwide. These cameras are automated and linked together so that they can triangulate paths and orbits. If NASA was expecting an influx of fireballs (and alternative media outlets are suggesting this is already happening), such data could prove to be important. But it could just be that NASA’s Meteoroid Environment Office is wanting to he more helpful when they get phone calls from the public. More info at PhysOrg, and the official NASA site has live and historical images from the cameras.

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According to the website of Australia’s antidote to “energy drinks”, esc, if you are concerned about 2012, their drink will let you Escape into a zen state of mind!

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The latest in a long line of solar cycle theories has just been published in Nature. NASA have summarised the findings. While it seems to account for the last minimum, I figure it will take accurate predictions for the next few cycles to be proven – and they don’t seem to have even made any predictions about the next maximum.

Meteoroid Tracking / New 2012 Drink / Missing Sunspots is a post from: 2012 Blog

Space Storm Alert

Robert Bast — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 05:37:00 +0000

It is midnight on 22 September 2012 and the skies above Manhattan are filled with a flickering curtain of colourful light. Few New Yorkers have seen the aurora this far south but their fascination is short-lived. Within a few seconds, electric bulbs dim and flicker, then become unusually bright for a fleeting moment. Then all the lights in the state go out. Within 90 seconds, the entire eastern half of the US is without power.

A year later and millions of Americans are dead and the nation’s infrastructure lies in tatters. The World Bank declares America a developing nation. Europe, Scandinavia, China and Japan are also struggling to recover from the same fateful event – a violent storm, 150 million kilometres away on the surface of the sun.

Rather catastrophic stuff for a New Scientist article! However the reason they are reporting it is because the threat is very real indeed. They are referring to the same NASA report I mentioned in early March, that highlights the current scenario – overloaded, out-dated power grids, and a sun that from time to time sends storms our way. Put the two together, and add in our extreme dependence on electricity, and you have a recipe for disaster.

Although it could happen at any time, the peak of the solar cycle offers up more opportunity, hence the 2012 date in the scenario quoted above.

Fortunately on a personal level, this is one disaster that you can survive by having a backup power supply, and plenty of food and water available. Folks in the countryside will have it easier, if they are prepared.

To me it is extraordinary that the USA isn’t doing everything in their power to upgrade their power grid today. Could they get caught out, due to lack of sensible preparation and precaution, like with Katrina??

Space Storm Alert is a post from: 2012 Blog

NASA: Impact of Solar Flare

Robert Bast — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 07:20:00 +0000

NASA’s 132-page report, entitled Severe Space Weather Events — Understanding Societal and Economic Impacts, paints a pretty grim picture of the damage that could occur in the USA (and presumably elsewhere in the world) due to severe space weather:

According to the report, power grids may be more vulnerable than ever. The problem is interconnectedness. In recent years, utilities have joined grids together to allow long-distance transmission of low-cost power to areas of sudden demand. On a hot summer day in California, for instance, people in Los Angeles might be running their air conditioners on power routed from Oregon. It makes economic sense—but not necessarily geomagnetic sense. Interconnectedness makes the system susceptible to wide-ranging “cascade failures.”

…He found more than 350 transformers at risk of permanent damage and 130 million people without power. The loss of electricity would ripple across the social infrastructure with “water distribution affected within several hours; perishable foods and medications lost in 12-24 hours; loss of heating/air conditioning, sewage disposal, phone service, fuel re-supply and so on.”

The solution is a more sturdy electric infrastructure. Who knows if or when that will occur. Meanwhile the severe space weather could happen at any time, even tomorrow.

NASA: Impact of Solar Flare is a post from: 2012 Blog

NASA: Solar Cycle 24 may have begun

Robert Bast — Sun, 16 Dec 2007 01:55:00 +0000

It could be starting now.

“New solar cycles always begin with a high-latitude, reversed polarity sunspot,” explains Hathaway. “Reversed polarity ” means a sunspot with opposite magnetic polarity compared to sunspots from the previous solar cycle. “High-latitude” refers to the sun’s grid of latitude and longitude. Old cycle spots congregate near the sun’s equator. New cycle spots appear higher, around 25 or 30 degrees latitude.

The region that appeared on Dec. 11th fits both these criteria. It is high latitude (24 degrees N) and magnetically reversed. Just one problem: There is no sunspot. So far the region is just a bright knot of magnetic fields. If, however, these fields coalesce into a dark sunspot, scientists are ready to announce that Solar Cycle 24 has officially begun.

NASA: Solar Cycle 24 may have begun is a post from: 2012 Blog

NASA: Earth Not Worth Saving

Robert Bast — Thu, 22 Nov 2007 14:18:00 +0000

Actually, “odds are so low we can’t be bothered”.

NASA seemingly acknowledges that a space nasty could wipe us out, but seeing as it probably won’t happen anytime soon, they’ll just ignore it.

[this is the same stance taken by New Orleans powers-that-be. Rather than bolstering their defences at great expense, they decided it wouldn't happen during their term...]

Scott Pace, head of program analysis and evaluation at NASA, said the agency could not do more to detect NEOs “given the constrained resources and the strategic objectives NASA already has been tasked with.”

NASA: Earth Not Worth Saving is a post from: 2012 Blog