Forget Planet X, a rogue comet, geomagnetic reversal and killer solar flares… this could be what the Mayans were talking about:
OK, I’ll stop with the humour now. Time to get on with some serious science stuff…
Update: Isn’t that a bit disrespectful of Palin to be signing her name against McCain’s head? Lol.
I really am getting back to the science now…
Source: Bad Astronomy
After chatting with Walter Wagner (the guy who filed the LHC “Doomsday Suit” in an Hawaiian court… only for it to be thrown out last month) on Paranormal Radio in July, I was left a little unsatisfied.
By the July 28th radio show, I’d only written about the LHC lawsuit a couple of times and had little time to prepare for the discussion. However, after only a few minutes of digging for some background information Wagner I’d unearthed a couple of things. For one he had previously attempted to sue the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) at Brookhaven National Laboratory in 2000. This attempt had failed on the basis that Wagner’s “evidence” that the RHIC could create strangelets (that will spawn the end of the world) and black holes (spawning… well… the end of the world) was too flimsy to warrant any serious investigation. Then I uncovered something a little unsettling: Wagner had a rather unhealthy scrape with the law. At the time I didn’t want to follow this up, as I was going on air in 30 minutes, the RHIC lawsuit was enough for the time being.
Today, another piece has been added to the puzzle of what drives Walter Wagner. Over at the hilariously named “The Physics Anti-Crackpot Blog” there’s a link to an article chronicling Wagner’s Geiger counter crusade against radioactive tiles (oh yes!). I’ll leave it for you to read, it is both entertaining and unsettling.
Wagner believes he is a public safety crusader, and I doubt we’ll hear the last of him (besides superheroes love the attention, whether it is good or bad).
Why does Mr. Wagner hate the LHC? Well, the short and simple answer — ironically, this is the short and simple answer — is that Mr. Wagner and a lot of other people who like physics but don’t really understand it as well as they think they do have latched onto the notion that the LHC will spontaneously generate black holes, which will destroy the Earth. – Excerpt from Return of the Radiation Man (Standing on the Shoulders of Giant Midgets)
Source: The Physics Anti-Crackpot Blog
In a follow-up to our October 3rd discussion, Captain Jack and myself will be discussing my recent Astroengine article “Bubbles, Reflections and Space Walks… Did China Really Fake It?” On first seeing the video I was intrigued by what I saw, and the mysterious moving objects in shot needed to be addressed. Although I do not believe the Chinese staged the event, it does pose some interesting questions…
Paranormal Radio has started now, so check out the website to listen in…
China successfully launched three taikonauts into Earth orbit and, on September 27th, the first Chinese national (41 year old fighter pilot Zhai Zhigang) walked in space. The space walk lasted a total of 15 minutes, enough time to retrieve some solid lubricant from the outer hull of the Shenzhou-7 module and to give the brand new “Feitian” space suit a trial run. The launch, orbital insertion, space walk, re-entry and landing were all executed perfectly, securing China as only the third nation to successfully carry out an extra-vehicular activity (EVA).
It can therefore be expected, as with space flight achievements by the US and Russia before, there will be some conspiracy theories out there…
Continue reading “Bubbles, Reflections and Space Walks… Did China Really Fake It?”
Just a quick bit of news: my “2012: No Geomagnetic Reversal” article over at the Universe Today was posted on Slashdot.org today! This is fantastic news, as on Saturday it became “popular” on Digg.com and hit the front page. Internet traffic has therefore been a little busy for Fraser’s server of late…
Thank you to everyone who is supporting my work, these 2012 doomsday scenarios are finally being exposed for what they really are. Although some may have a dash of scientific reasoning, most are born from scaremongering and greed, so it is very good to know that the scope of this article’s readership has expanded exponentially 🙂
I am working on my next couple of articles now, so expect the completed text soon…
Cheers!
Universe Today: 2012: No Geomagnetic Reversal
After a long four-month break, I’ve finally written my next in the “No Doomsday in 2012” series of articles. This time we tackle the prediction that the world will end on December 21st, 2012 after being subject to a massive internal disturbance, effectively weakening the Earth’s magnetic field and flipping the magnetic dipole on its head (i.e. the north magnetic pole will be shifted to the geographical South Pole and vice versa). While this makes for a cool plot for a disaster movie, the doomsayers theory is only half-baked. Yes, geomagnetic reversal has happened in the past, and it will happen again. However, any geomagnetic shift in the future will not happen in four years, it probably won’t happen for a few thousand years. It appears to be a rather chaotic system, and all the (scientific) indications suggest our strong magnetic field wont be doing anything dramatic any time soon…
The series so far:
With a special thanks, once again, to Manuel Herman, my most recent 2012 article has been translated into Spanish. Thank you Manuel for all your hard work!
Here’s the series (so far) in Spanish:
Oh no! It’s all over. The US Large Hadron Collider lawsuit filed by Walter Wagner and Luis Sancho has failed. On Friday, Hawaiian Federal Judge Helen Gillmor officially declared that the American judicial system has no jurisdiction over the largest experiment ever devised by mankind. Although Wagner and Sancho were suing the US partners in CERN, it would seem this convoluted and inaccurate attempt at proving the LHC will destroy the Earth was a bridge too far for the Honolulu court to entertain.
This decision ends the seven month battle for Wagner, following quickly behind Otto Rossler’s eleventh-hour failed attempt at the European Court of Human Rights last month to convince lawmakers that the LHC was going to turn the Earth into a dot.
So in the eyes of the law (and every other sane person on the planet), the LHC is safe and the claims about the production of micro-black holes, strangelets, monopoles, bosenovas etc. etc. are totally unfounded.
But hold on, why do I feel a little sad about all this…?
Continue reading “LHC “Doomsday Lawsuit” Scrapped by Sensible Hawaiian Judge”
With special thanks to Manuel Herman at Ciencia Kanija (Puny Science), four of my Universe Today 2012 No Doomsday articles have been translated into Spanish. Today, as many as 322 to 400 million people speak Spanish world-wide, making it the second most-spoken native language in the world (second only to Mandarin Chinese), so I am overjoyed that my 2012 articles will extend to this huge population of Spanish speakers!
Previously, the popular “No Doomsday in 2012” article was kindly translated into Portuguese by Nisia Chaves at Chá de Camomila, so to have the complete series translated into Spanish is a massive bonus. I didn’t think that these 2012 articles would be so popular, but it would seem their scope extends far beyond the English-speaking world. So thank you to Manuel for his tireless efforts in translating my work!
Here’s the series (so far) in Spanish:
» No habrá juicio final en 2012 (No Doomsday in 2012)
» No, tampoco habrá Planeta X en 2012 (2012: No Planet X)
» 2012: El Planeta X no es Nibiru (2012: Planet X is not Nibiru)
» 2012: No habrá llamarada solar asesina (2012: No Killer Solar Flare)
This has motivated me to continue writing my 2012 articles. Next up is an investigation into geomagnetic reversal and then the mother of all doomsday theories: galactic alignment. The next two could be the biggest articles yet, so be sure to keep an eye on the Universe Today and Astroengine.com for announcements…
The Mayan long-count calendar ends on December 21st 2012. For many reasons, this is a very important event, religiously and spiritually. However, there are a huge number of doomsday scenarios that are being pinned on this day too. Why? Well your guess is as good as mine. This is a very strange phenomenon. We’ve heard “end of the world” theories for millennia; from Nostrodamus, the Bible to the Y2K Bug, but as yet (as far as I can tell) the Earth has not been destroyed. Many historic prophecies have been made deliberately vague to make a future event more likely to match the future prediction by the prophet. That’s fine, I have no problem with a mystical historic figure telling us the world is going to fry at an undetermined date by an undetermined harbinger of doom. But I have a huge problem with modern-day authors publishing scientific inaccuracies for personal gain.
I am writing this article after a number of emails were sent to me concerned about yet another 2012 Doomsday scenario, so I decided to investigate. This is what I found…
Continue reading “2012 Doomsday Fabrication: Abusing Science and Making Money”
So the new X-Files movie has been released (awesome), there’s been a surge in alien stories (on YouTube, the most reputable scientific resource), NASA astronauts are citing that UFOs are actually extraterrestrials visiting Earth (of course), and now we have beings with big heads having a stroll on the Martian surface. It must be the season for it…
Continue reading “Rolling Rock or Walking Martian?”
astroengine.com 