2012 ... 2029 ... 2036 ... ???

Question

If we are "all going to die" on December 21, 2012", why is NASA worried about 99942 Apophis possibly impacting the Earth on 2029 or 2036? I think this 2012 stuff is all garbage... what are your opinions?

Answer 1

You are mistaken. NASA is not in the least concerned with Apophis striking the Earth in either of those two years. You may be receiving hype from persons who have not logged onto a science webpage in several months but I can assure you that a 1 in 45,000 impact chance is not worrying any person at NASA nor any other person who understands asteroid orbits.

Yes, the 2012 hoax is fake but it has nothing to do with NASA. Hoaxers will certainly latch onto these new doomsday dates and make some money writing books on how to survive it and how Nostradamus and the bible forcast it. And the same idiots who buy into 2012 will send money to the new scammers. And if anyone can think of a doomsday year in the meantime, that will sell too. Always has, always will.

When they come onto y/a and their question for some ungodly known reason gets kicked into A&S, we will say 'remember 2012?' just like we say 'remember 2000 and all the dates before?' yadda yadda. Homo Sapiens are the craziest of animals.

Answer 2

whole bunch of garbage.  People have been predicting the end of the world for century.  Everybody's go-to guy for predictions, Nostradamus, said 1999.  

Answer 3

My opinion is this, i don't care when humanity all dies off, knowing when the end is going to happen would take the suprise out of the whole event, beside who knows maybe the end will happen like this link shows.

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

Answer 4

NASA has better things to do than read rags called "books", read annoying chain letters, and do anything else pertaining to the world ending in 2012. Seeing as they are real scientists, they don't endorse this stuff at all. As for Apophis, it looks as if that is the new doomsday theory. 2012 seems to be slowly fading away, but sure enough, it is replaced by some other absurd idea. Looks like I will need a copy-paste answer for Apophis too now. And if Apophis was going to crash into Earth, NASA could break it apart to the point where all the remnants will burn up in the atmosphere.

Answer 5

This is a myth based on the irresponsible, (and repeated) airing of a ridiculous pseudo-documentary on the History Channel. That network, and the Discovery Channel and Fox, will air anything they feel will get a bigger audience. Sometimes, their shows are good and worth watching. Other times, they are foolish, sensationalist, tabloid-style hype. It is often difficult to tell which is which, unless you know about a subject. I know about the history of doomsday predictions, pseudoscience, and astronomy.

The Mayan calendar does not predict the end of the world. They did keep an accurate calendar, but contrary to popular opinion, never predicted any world event accurately. They couldn't predict their own demise; why should they be able to predict ours?

The alignment with the galactic center is not going to happen. It comes fairly close to happening EVERY year on Dec 21, and will be exactly the same as it always is, in 2012. Even if some perfect alignment did occur, there is nothing about it that could affect the earth. It's like saying, "When these three parking spaces are occupied by three red cars, the world will come to an end."

Doomsday prophets have always been around and they are always wrong. Every 5 to 10 years, some prediction catches the public's attention and scares a lot of kids...usually thanks to irresponsible media decisions. Dozens of different doomsday scenarios have been piggy-backed on to this date since the show aired. Go to this site to see how many predicted apocalypses we have already missed.

http://www.abhota.info/index.htm

All that Nibiru stuff is bunk, too. No such planet has ever been discovered. The claim that it was discovered some 25 years ago is not true.

But you can be sure that they'll be back for 2029 and 2036, claiming that Nostradamus and some ancient texts or the Bible or the Quran predicted doom for those years.  Maybe the History Channel will run a new documentary.  Never mind that the threat of Apophis has been downgraded to virtually zero chance of collision.

Answer 6

why worry

we're all going to die someday..

ive heard alot about 2012 and the niburu planet thing but meh...

i blame the goverment they only care about themselves and money

Answer 7

The only people "worried" about 2012 are those who have invested a lot in getting their books and videos ready to sell to scared people.  Will they scare enough people in time to sell enough books?

NASA is no longer worried about 2029.

And it is less and less worried about 2036.

NASA is "worried" about Apophis because it (NASA) might miss an opportunity to plant a transmitter on it (Apophis).  If we could put something on Apophis when it does pass very close, the data would teach us a lot about getting very precise orbits for these types of asteroids (as it is, we can only predict for about 40 years ahead of time).

Answer 8

Think about all the other "end of the world" predictions, like the Y2K thing or June 6, 2006 (6/6/06) but guess what, nothing happened!! Here's a link with a bunch of false predictions: http://www.religioustolerance.org/endwrl...

Plus, it's just a bunch of people who think its going to end, but really it's just the Mayan calendar that's ending. They set it to a thousands of years cycle, and 2012 just happens to be when it ends. Plus, no one ever said it means the world is going to end, they just said that something drastic is supposed to happen to the world. It could be good, it could be bad, it couldn't be anything. Go google the topic and learn some more about it.

Personally, I don't believe any of this, but, whatever.