This title would perhaps invite a lot more attention than anything like "2012: Scientifically Debunked" or "Lies of 2012". And why wouldn't it? Didn't the good guys get away on a cool made-in-china boat? I shall leave the tirade for another time, but Mr. Emmerich had done a bad, bad thing with the script.
Below is a list of all so called 'scientific explanations' to the 'fact' that there would be no Christmas '12. First up, 'spontaneous geomagnetic reversal'.
This is perhaps the most popular and ridiculous claim, I believe. It abuses the principle that earth's magnetic field may well be 'reversed', to say, the north magnetic poles would become south and the vice versa. Put in another way, the compasses would show the south, north and the north, south. This, coupled with a strong solar outburst (which is, in a way, the sun in a bad mood, spewing out streams of charged particles on earth. When it's not doomsday, the earth's magnetic field deflects these particles to make us at home, but the geomagnetic reversal may weaken the magnetic field, leaving us to the wrath of charged particles from the sun) would cause a terrible catastrophe which would spell doom for life on planet earth.
There seems to be a strong evidence of a due geomagnetic reversal. According to Wikipedia, the last time this happened was 780,000 years back, and it has to happen sometime soon, probably for the 26th time. This is the general consensus, given these reversals are assumed to be random.
Moreover, the solar maximum (which is an element in sun's periodic activity cycle when solar activity is considered maximum) of 2013 (and not 2012) will be fairly weak (weaker than average, in fact), as forecasted by National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. And there had been no scientific links between geomagnetic reversals and solar activity cycle, the latter being an 11 year cycle, and the former being, as mentioned afore, random.
But that hardly is a part of the whole story. The reversal takes a colossal amount of time to complete, and it's pretty much impossible to score when it begins. The timescales involved are of the order of 5000 years. Had it already begun, we had eons to figure things out (which we would have indeed done had it been something to worry about). If it is just to begin on 21st of December 2012, we still have an eon to figure it out. More up, it won't be much of a problem if earth's geomagnetic field is reversed. It happened several times in the past, and we still seem to live.
Geomagnetic reversals are relatively less understood, but it doesn't buy 2012 'prophecies' a scientific basis.
Planet X, Niburu is yet another idea of the big day, according to which a mystical and invisible planet is on a collision course with planet earth which would of course spell the last doom for everyone alive. Ludicrous as it sounds, Niburu is perhaps not interested in planets like Jupiter and Saturn (with far more beefy gravitational influence) but instead, the fourth of the smallest planets of the solar system. Moreover, the orbital trajectory must exactly be synchronized with that of earth, and it must successfully dodge all obstacles which include the asteroid belt and 8 whole planets, in turn implying planets like Jupiter, Saturn, Neptune and Uranus should exert no gravitational influence whatsoever. Had he been alive, Newton would have committed suicide.
Next up, the galactic alignment. The earth goes around the sun, the sun goes around the center of our galaxy, or the galactic center. According to John Major Jenkins, 2012 will have the sun aligned with the galactic center, where a colossal black hole is presumed to exist. This would cause 'havoc on earth', in some mysterious way.
As the matter of fact, such an alignment occurred back in 1998. And if it happens on 21st of December 2012, the sun would be quite above the galactic plane (which can be envisaged as the 'blade' of our Milky Way galaxy. An alignment with the galactic plane 'appears' to be disastrous, given it would invite a larger flux of comets from the still hypothetical Oort Cloud, crashing down on earth. But such alignments take tens of millions of years to occur, and the last time it happened was 3 million years ago, according to evidence. The sun is, in fact, moving above, or away from the galactic plane). Let's ignore all this for a while, and assume the sun is exactly aligned with the black hole, exactly on the galactic plane. How hard would the black hole pull? According to very basic calculations, the black hole must be at least 9,461,000,000,000,000 kilometers from the sun before we begin to realize something's wrong. Right now, it's at 283,800,000,000,000,000 kilometers.
A galactic alignment is hence the last thing one should worry about.
Speaking of prophecies, there are atleast a total of 200 past doomsdays as predicted: let's just add one to the list. And, ironically, the end of Mayan long count calendar (which is one of the proposed basis) is an event of celebration. There's absolutely no scientific evidence for doomsday 2012.
Thank you for reading, this is Nasim.
Recommended links and references:
http://www.starrynighteducation.com/sntimes/2008/06/#art1
http://curious.astro.cornell.edu/question.php?number=511
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_phenomenon
http://www.universetoday.com/guide-to-space/galaxies/galactic-plane/
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v316/n6030/pdf/316706a0.pdf (PDF file)
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