2012 : is the world ending? and what happens after that?

[xhommex]

^ That movie looks so dumb

 

[Grunged]

If this is going to happen then we shouldn't even think about it until it does. But honestly the world could end at any second. Yeah the sun storms are long overdue so we could have one at any given moment, also, the only thing that gives the date 2012 is the Mayan Calendar which implies that's when the world will end.

 

[Deleted member 49693]

^ Thanks! I feel worse...

 

[Gaultier_Bandit]

I don't get it....the mayan calendar stops at 2012? How does this mean the world will end.? My calendar ends on Dec 31, but that does not automatically mean it will end...it just means we start a new year.

 

[xhommex]

Another 2012 movie but it actually looks good

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5VXa82AuwHU

 

[lesypersound]

live it up before December 2012 then! :]

 

[seanutbutter]

I don't get it....the mayan calendar stops at 2012? How does this mean the world will end.?

Exactly, it doesn't mean the world is going to end - some people just try to find the worst in every situation.

 

[Grunged]

I don't get it....the mayan calendar stops at 2012? How does this mean the world will end.? My calendar ends on Dec 31, but that does not automatically mean it will end...it just means we start a new year.

Well, I think it's taken so seriously and is interpreted that way because the Mayans were good at predicting things astrologically and so forth. I don't think that the Mayans ever stated directly in a text or anywhere that 2012 would mark the end of the world just that it would mark the end of the calendar. And I think that people realized that bringing this up and making documentaries about it could be an easy way to make money and get people panicking since the date is so close. I don't care for conspiracy theories and all of that stuff, although I'll make exceptions but this is definitely blown out of proportion.

 

[Filipe]

BUMP!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KWHDUoea4Cs

The twin STEREO probes that image the sun's activity have caught sight of a burp of ionised gas that blasted into space from our star's surface without warning.

The find confirms suspicions that some solar ejections can occur even though the surface of the sun looks tranquil.

The eruption was a coronal mass ejection (CME) – a bubble of plasma that, if energetic enough and pointed at Earth, could zap satellites, endanger astronauts, and knock out power grids (see Space storm alert: 90 seconds from catastrophe).

Warning signs

The sun ordinarily gives some warning when it is about to let loose a CME. Plasma filaments, flares, dim areas, and bright S-shaped sigmoids are often associated with the events.

However, in the past decade or so, solar physicists have measured a number of mild magnetic storms around Earth that seemed to be associated with "stealth" CME's – eruptions that occur with no clear sign of where they might have originated on the sun.

The most likely explanation was that these eruptions were simply a mild member of the CME family, capable of emerging from the Earth-facing side of the sun without dramatic warning signals.

Obscured view

But that hypothesis could not be confirmed since solar spacecraft orbiting Earth only catch a head-on view of incoming CME's, making it hard to judge the true nature of the emission. It was not entirely clear whether the eruptions were ordinary ones that somehow emerged without fanfare or something more exotic.

The latest observation from STEREO, a pair of solar probes that have moved beyond Earth orbit to image the sun from different perspectives, show that the eruptions are simply stealthy.

The twin spacecraft caught the eruption from two different vantage points as it emerged on 31 May 2008. One probe caught the outburst in profile to reveal an ordinary CME. The other captured a head-on view, finding no clear signal of activity on the sun's surface around the point where it erupted.

Shallow birth

"This proves CMEs exist that have no significant signature on the [solar] disk," says Eva Robbrecht of George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia, who analysed STEREO's images with colleagues.

The team suspects the CME could emerge so stealthily because it did not originate deep within the sun. Instead the shallow emission gathered up material over a larger area, causing less pronounced disturbance at the star's surface.

This particular blast cast out some 3 billion tonnes of solar material, a normal amount for a CME. But the eruption was not particularly energetic, reaching a speed of about 300 kilometres per second.

If the CME had been pointed at Earth it would have created a minor geomagnetic storm by space weather standards – but strong enough to affect migratory animals and cause minor fluctuations on power grids.

Low risk

Chances are we will not have to worry about stealth CME's knocking out power grids, says Ron Moore, a solar physicist at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama.

"All the big dangerous things come from much more powerful explosions, which as far as we know are always strong enough to make some signature on the face of the sun," he says.

Even so, Moore adds, it's nice to put the question of whether stealth CME's exist to rest. "It was in some sense a mystery because we hadn't actually seen it . [Robbrecht's team has] shown that yes, indeed, that's actually what it is."

newscientist.com

 

[Deleted member 49693]

Arghhhhhhhhhhhh!!!! Runnnn!!

 

[Filipe]

^...

 

[Echoes]

"All the big dangerous things come from much more powerful explosions, which as far as we know are always strong enough to make some signature on the face of the sun," he says.


But we all know scientists don't know everything they think they know.

 

[Filipe]

^okay.
...

Worse than Katrina

The most serious space weather event in history happened in 1859. It is known as the Carrington event, after the British amateur astronomer Richard Carrington, who was the first to note its cause: "two patches of intensely bright and white light" emanating from a large group of sunspots. The Carrington event comprised eight days of severe space weather.

There were eyewitness accounts of stunning auroras, even at equatorial latitudes. The world's telegraph networks experienced severe disruptions, and Victorian magnetometers were driven off the scale.

Though a solar outburst could conceivably be more powerful, "we haven't found an example of anything worse than a Carrington event", says James Green, head of NASA's planetary division and an expert on the events of 1859. "From a scientific perspective, that would be the one that we'd want to survive." However, the prognosis from the NAS analysis is that, thanks to our technological prowess, many of us may not.

There are two problems to face. The first is the modern electricity grid, which is designed to operate at ever higher voltages over ever larger areas. Though this provides a more efficient way to run the electricity networks, minimising power losses and wastage through overproduction, it has made them much more vulnerable to space weather. The high-power grids act as particularly efficient antennas, channelling enormous direct currents into the power transformers.

The second problem is the grid's interdependence with the systems that support our lives: water and sewage treatment, supermarket delivery infrastructures, power station controls, financial markets and many others all rely on electricity. Put the two together, and it is clear that a repeat of the Carrington event could produce a catastrophe the likes of which the world has never seen. "It's just the opposite of how we usually think of natural disasters," says John Kappenman, a power industry analyst with the Metatech Corporation of Goleta, California, and an advisor to the NAS committee that produced the report. "Usually the less developed regions of the world are most vulnerable, not the highly sophisticated technological regions."

According to the NAS report, a severe space weather event in the US could induce ground currents that would knock out 300 key transformers within about 90 seconds, cutting off the power for more than 130 million people (see map). From that moment, the clock is ticking for America.

First to go - immediately for some people - is drinkable water. Anyone living in a high-rise apartment, where water has to be pumped to reach them, would be cut off straight away. For the rest, drinking water will still come through the taps for maybe half a day. With no electricity to pump water from reservoirs, there is no more after that.

There is simply no electrically powered transport: no trains, underground or overground. Our just-in-time culture for delivery networks may represent the pinnacle of efficiency, but it means that supermarket shelves would empty very quickly - delivery trucks could only keep running until their tanks ran out of fuel, and there is no electricity to pump any more from the underground tanks at filling stations.

Back-up generators would run at pivotal sites - but only until their fuel ran out. For hospitals, that would mean about 72 hours of running a bare-bones, essential care only, service. After that, no more modern healthcare.

72 hours of healthcare remaining​

The truly shocking finding is that this whole situation would not improve for months, maybe years: melted transformer hubs cannot be repaired, only replaced. "From the surveys I've done, you might have a few spare transformers around, but installing a new one takes a well-trained crew a week or more," says Kappenman. "A major electrical utility might have one suitably trained crew, maybe two."

Within a month, then, the handful of spare transformers would be used up. The rest will have to be built to order, something that can take up to 12 months.

Even when some systems are capable of receiving power again, there is no guarantee there will be any to deliver. Almost all natural gas and fuel pipelines require electricity to operate. Coal-fired power stations usually keep reserves to last 30 days, but with no transport systems running to bring more fuel, there will be no electricity in the second month.

30 days of coal left​

Nuclear power stations wouldn't fare much better. They are programmed to shut down in the event of serious grid problems and are not allowed to restart until the power grid is up and running.

With no power for heating, cooling or refrigeration systems, people could begin to die within days. There is immediate danger for those who rely on medication. Lose power to New Jersey, for instance, and you have lost a major centre of production of pharmaceuticals for the entire US. Perishable medications such as insulin will soon be in short supply. "In the US alone there are a million people with diabetes," Kappenman says. "Shut down production, distribution and storage and you put all those lives at risk in very short order."

Help is not coming any time soon, either. If it is dark from the eastern seaboard to Chicago, some affected areas are hundreds, maybe thousands of miles away from anyone who might help. And those willing to help are likely to be ill-equipped to deal with the sheer scale of the disaster. "If a Carrington event happened now, it would be like a hurricane Katrina, but 10 times worse," says Paul Kintner, a plasma physicist at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York.

In reality, it would be much worse than that. Hurricane Katrina's societal and economic impact has been measured at $81 billion to $125 billion. According to the NAS report, the impact of what it terms a "severe geomagnetic storm scenario" could be as high as $2 trillion. And that's just the first year after the storm. The NAS puts the recovery time at four to 10 years. It is questionable whether the US would ever bounce back.

4-10 years to recover​

"I don't think the NAS report is scaremongering," says Mike Hapgood, who chairs the European Space Agency's space weather team. Green agrees. "Scientists are conservative by nature and this group is really thoughtful," he says. "This is a fair and balanced report."

Such nightmare scenarios are not restricted to North America. High latitude nations such as Sweden and Norway have been aware for a while that, while regular views of the aurora are pretty, they are also reminders of an ever-present threat to their electricity grids. However, the trend towards installing extremely high voltage grids means that lower latitude countries are also at risk. For example, China is on the way to implementing a 1000-kilovolt electrical grid, twice the voltage of the US grid. This would be a superb conduit for space weather-induced disaster because the grid's efficiency to act as an antenna rises as the voltage between the grid and the ground increases. "China is going to discover at some point that they have a problem," Kappenman says.

Neither is Europe sufficiently prepared. Responsibility for dealing with space weather issues is "very fragmented" in Europe, says Hapgood.

Europe's electricity grids, on the other hand, are highly interconnected and extremely vulnerable to cascading failures. In 2006, the routine switch-off of a small part of Germany's grid - to let a ship pass safely under high-voltage cables - caused a cascade power failure across western Europe. In France alone, five million people were left without electricity for two hours. "These systems are so complicated we don't fully understand the effects of twiddling at one place," Hapgood says. "Most of the time it's alright, but occasionally it will get you."

The good news is that, given enough warning, the utility companies can take precautions, such as adjusting voltages and loads, and restricting transfers of energy so that sudden spikes in current don't cause cascade failures. There is still more bad news, however. Our early warning system is becoming more unreliable by the day.

By far the most important indicator of incoming space weather is NASA's Advanced Composition Explorer (ACE). The probe, launched in 1997, has a solar orbit that keeps it directly between the sun and Earth. Its uninterrupted view of the sun means it gives us continuous reports on the direction and velocity of the solar wind and other streams of charged particles that flow past its sensors. ACE can provide between 15 and 45 minutes' warning of any incoming geomagnetic storms. The power companies need about 15 minutes to prepare their systems for a critical event, so that would seem passable.

15 minutes' warning​

However, observations of the sun and magnetometer readings during the Carrington event shows that the coronal mass ejection was travelling so fast it took less than 15 minutes to get from where ACE is positioned to Earth. "It arrived faster than we can do anything," Hapgood says.

There is another problem. ACE is 11 years old, and operating well beyond its planned lifespan. The onboard detectors are not as sensitive as they used to be, and there is no telling when they will finally give up the ghost. Furthermore, its sensors become saturated in the event of a really powerful solar flare. "It was built to look at average conditions rather than extremes," Baker says.

He was part of a space weather commission that three years ago warned about the problems of relying on ACE. "It's been on my mind for a long time," he says. "To not have a spare, or a strategy to replace it if and when it should fail, is rather foolish."

There is no replacement for ACE due any time soon. Other solar observation satellites, such as the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) can provide some warning, but with less detailed information and - crucially - much later. "It's quite hard to assess what the impact of losing ACE will be," Hapgood says. "We will largely lose the early warning capability."

The world will, most probably, yawn at the prospect of a devastating solar storm until it happens. Kintner says his students show a "deep indifference" when he lectures on the impact of space weather. But if policy-makers show a similar indifference in the face of the latest NAS report, it could cost tens of millions of lives, Kappenman reckons. "It could conceivably be the worst natural disaster possible," he says.

The report outlines the worst case scenario for the US. The "perfect storm" is most likely on a spring or autumn night in a year of heightened solar activity - something like 2012. Around the equinoxes, the orientation of the Earth's field to the sun makes us particularly vulnerable to a plasma strike.

What's more, at these times of year, electricity demand is relatively low because no one needs too much heating or air conditioning. With only a handful of the US grid's power stations running, the system relies on computer algorithms shunting large amounts of power around the grid and this leaves the network highly vulnerable to sudden spikes.

If ACE has failed by then, or a plasma ball flies at us too fast for any warning from ACE to reach us, the consequences could be staggering. "A really large storm could be a planetary disaster," Kappenman says.

So what should be done? No one knows yet - the report is meant to spark that conversation. Baker is worried, though, that the odds are stacked against that conversation really getting started. As the NAS report notes, it is terribly difficult to inspire people to prepare for a potential crisis that has never happened before and may not happen for decades to come. "It takes a lot of effort to educate policy-makers, and that is especially true with these low-frequency events," he says.

We should learn the lessons of hurricane Katrina, though, and realise that "unlikely" doesn't mean "won't happen". Especially when the stakes are so high. The fact is, it could come in the next three or four years - and with devastating effects. "The Carrington event happened during a mediocre, ho-hum solar cycle," Kintner says. "It came out of nowhere, so we just don't know when something like that is going to happen again."

newscientist.com

 

[tigerrouge]

There was a time when we managed perfectly well without power showers and iPods, and if the worst happens, there'll be a period of re-adjustment while we rediscover the 'old' ways of getting on with our lives, while engineers will rack up enormous amounts of overtime fixing the problem.

Meanwhile, in parts of the world where they don't have much in the first place, life goes on as it did the day before.

 

[Echoes]

Meanwhile, in parts of the world where they don't have much in the first place, life goes on as it did the day before.

Yeah, just think, parts of Africa, Asia and South America could become popular places to live since they never got suckered into electronics. They already know how to survive without all the silly trinkets. The Third World could suddenly become the First World.

 

[fashionista-ta]

I think the world could end sooner rather than later, but Fox News is the very last place I would expect to be reporting the straight story on how it will actually happen.

In my view, all the signs point to an upshift in consciousness rather than the physical end of the world in 2012.

Whatever's happening to the planet (and I do think we should all make its health a personal priority), what's for sure is we each have a limited time left on it, and should make the most of every moment.

 

[Filipe]

Yeah, just think, parts of Africa, Asia and South America could become popular places to live since they never got suckered into electronics. They already know how to survive without all the silly trinkets. The Third World could suddenly become the First World.

That's very true possibility

I think the world could end sooner rather than later, but Fox News is the very last place I would expect to be reporting the straight story on how it will actually happen.

In my view, all the signs point to an upshift in consciousness rather than the physical end of the world in 2012.

Whatever's happening to the planet (and I do think we should all make its health a personal priority), what's for sure is we each have a limited time left on it, and should make the most of every moment.

Yes, I do agree with you, after reading more about the end of the world predictions, I don't think the world will end at all, I do think it will be a start of new age, a new cicle in the world. I believe the Sun Storm will actually occur in 2012 & that something positive will happen in December 21, 2012.

 

[seanutbutter]

I still have yet to see any concrete evidence that anything, good or bad, will happen in 2012...

 

[fashionista-ta]

^ For concrete evidence, I reckon you have to wait till afterwards

I read a 2012 book last year that was predicting the destruction of the planet by natural disaster by the end of 2008. It sure didn't seem like it was happening to me, but I now have concrete evidence that that author is full of sh!t B)

 

[tigerrouge]

I still have yet to see any concrete evidence that anything, good or bad, will happen in 2012...

Though there's bound to be all sorts of nutters currently planning stuff, because they've been seduced by the idea of mystical calendars or numerology, and they want to become someone important.

But they'll probably get the date wrong - there's probably been some miscalculation or misinterpretation somewhere in history, and the End Of The World is actually due in two months' time.

Also, there are numerous important events in the Mayan worldview that have already happened. An alignment with the Galactic Centre - the Mayan's centre of the universe and 'god of gods' - happens every year around 21st December, so talk of that isn't anything new. And over the past while, there have been numerous planetary events happening around that area, so in terms of astrology, the big stuff happened in 2006-7 when Pluto was active in that area.

For instance, on 19th December 2007, the Sun was conjunct Pluto on the Galactic Centre, an event that happens only once every 26,000 years. But life went on.