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NASA: The world is not ending on Dec. 21
by NASA
Posted on November 14, 2012 at 7:29 AM
Dec. 21, 2012, won't be the end of the world as we know, however, it will be another winter solstice.
Contrary to some of the common beliefs out there, the claims behind the end of the world quickly unravel when pinned down to the 2012 timeline.
Below, NASA Scientists answer several questions that are frequently asked regarding 2012.
Question (Q): Are there any threats to the Earth in 2012? Many Internet websites say the world will end in December 2012.
Answer (A):The world will not end in 2012. Our planet has been getting along just fine for more than 4 billion years, and credible scientists worldwide know of no threat associated with 2012.
Q: What is the origin of the prediction that the world will end in 2012?
A: The story started with claims that Nibiru, a supposed planet discovered by the Sumerians, is headed toward Earth. This catastrophe was initially predicted for May 2003, but when nothing happened the doomsday date was moved forward to December 2012 and linked to the end of one of the cycles in the ancient Mayan calendar at the winter solstice in 2012 -- hence the predicted doomsday date of December 21, 2012.
Q: Does the Mayan calendar end in December 2012?
A: Just as the calendar you have on your kitchen wall does not cease to exist after December 31, the Mayan calendar does not cease to exist on December 21, 2012. This date is the end of the Mayan long-count period but then -- just as your calendar begins again on January 1 -- another long-count period begins for the Mayan calendar.
Q: Could planets align in a way that impacts Earth?
A: There are no planetary alignments in the next few decades and even if these alignments were to occur, their effects on the Earth would be negligible. One major alignment occurred in 1962, for example, and two others happened during 1982 and 2000. Each December the Earth and sun align with the approximate center of the Milky Way Galaxy but that is an annual event of no consequence.
Q: Is there a planet or brown dwarf called Nibiru or Planet X or Eris that is approaching the Earth and threatening our planet with widespread destruction?
A: Nibiru and other stories about wayward planets are an Internet hoax. There is no factual basis for these claims. If Nibiru or Planet X were real and headed for an encounter with the Earth in 2012, astronomers would have been tracking it for at least the past decade, and it would be visible by now to the naked eye. Obviously, it does not exist. Eris is real, but it is a dwarf planet similar to Pluto that will remain in the outer solar system; the closest it can come to Earth is about 4 billion miles.
Q: What is the polar shift theory? Is it true that the Earth's crust does a 180-degree rotation around the core in a matter of days if not hours?
A: A reversal in the rotation of Earth is impossible. There are slow movements of the continents (for example Antarctica was near the equator hundreds of millions of years ago), but that is irrelevant to claims of reversal of the rotational poles. However, many of the disaster websites pull a bait-and-switch to fool people. They claim a relationship between the rotation and the magnetic polarity of Earth, which does change irregularly, with a magnetic reversal taking place every 400,000 years on average. As far as we know, such a magnetic reversal doesn’t cause any harm to life on Earth. Scientists believe a magnetic reversal is very unlikely to happen in the next few millennia.
Q: Is the Earth in danger of being hit by a meteor in 2012?
A: The Earth has always been subject to impacts by comets and asteroids, although big hits are very rare. The last big impact was 65 million years ago, and that led to the extinction of the dinosaurs. Today NASA astronomers are carrying out a survey called the Spaceguard Survey to find any large near-Earth asteroids long before they hit. We have already determined that there are no threatening asteroids as large as the one that killed the dinosaurs. All this work is done openly with the discoveries posted every day on the NASA Near-Earth Object Program Office website, so you can see for yourself that nothing is predicted to hit in 2012.
Q: How do NASA scientists feel about claims of the world ending in 2012?
A: For any claims of disaster or dramatic changes in 2012, where is the science? Where is the evidence? There is none, and for all the fictional assertions, whether they are made in books, movies, documentaries or over the Internet, we cannot change that simple fact. There is no credible evidence for any of the assertions made in support of unusual events taking place in December 2012.
Q: Is there a danger from giant solar storms predicted for 2012?
A: Solar activity has a regular cycle, with peaks approximately every 11 years. Near these activity peaks, solar flares can cause some interruption of satellite communications, although engineers are learning how to build electronics that are protected against most solar storms. But there is no special risk associated with 2012. The next solar maximum will occur in the 2012-2014 time frame and is predicted to be an average solar cycle, no different than previous cycles throughout history.
Sunday
What's the story on Lilith, Adam's "first wife"?
straightdope.com
Dear Straight Dope:
What's this I hear every so often about Lillith, Adam's (as in adam and Eve) first wife?
— Jack-E in killeen
We dunno what you've heard. You could have heard Lilith is a model for
Oppressed Womanhood. You could have heard she's a succubus who gives
men wet dreams. You could have heard that she's a demoness who murders
babies. You could have heard that she's a goddess, the wife of Death.
On the one hand there are all these (and likely other) interpretations.
On the other hand there are the legends themselves, which are also
quite varied, from Jewish folklore. Let's start with a paraphrase of the
most familiar legend, which dates to medieval times, from the
controversial work known as the Alphabet of Ben Sirah, including a few of our own interjections:
When God created Adam, he was lonely, so God created Lilith from the
same dust from which Adam was molded. But they quarrelled; Adam [the
proverbial domineering male] wished to rule over Lilith. But Lilith [a
militant feminist] was also proud and willful, claiming equality with
Adam because she was created from the same dust. She left Adam and fled
the Garden. God sent three angels in pursuit of Lilith. They caught
her and ordered her to return to Adam. She refused, and said that she
would henceforth weaken and kill little children, infants and babes. The
angels overpowered her, and she promised that if the mother hung an
amulet over the baby bearing the names of the three angels, she would
stay away from that home. So they let her go, and God created Eve to be
Adam's mate [created from Adam's rib, so that she couldn't claim
equality]. And ever since, Lilith
flies around the world, howling her hatred of mankind through the
night, and vowing vengeance because of the shabby treatment she had
received from Adam. She is also called "The Howling One." You can see how this legend could lead to various interpretations,
depending on whether you think she is noble (in rebelling against male
domination) or evil (in vowing vengeance against innocent babies.)
But where does this legend come from? The author of Ben Sirah basically wove together three separate threads from centuries earlier works, because Lilith is a very ancient legend.
Let's start with the Bible as primary source material. Genesis of
course mentions Adam and Eve, but -- please note -- doesn't mention
Lilith. The idea of Lilith as a "prior first woman" before Eve arises
much later. The only reference to Lilith in the Bible (Old or New
Testaments) is Isaiah 34:14, probably written around 540 BC; it's a
description of desolation, jackals and ravens among nettles and briers,
etc.: "Goat demons shall greet each other; there
too the lilith will repose." Most of the other creatures referenced in
this poetry cannot be positively identified. The KJV, following the
Vulgate, translates "the lilith" as "the night demon," confusing the
lili- with the Hebrew word for night. But presumably Isaiah meant some
sort of demon.
The notion of a lilith as a demon is probably Assyrian (say around 700
BC), incorporated into Isaiah by way of the ancient Israelite contacts
with the mythologies of Babylonia and Chaldea. The Assyrians had three
female demons, Lilit, Lilu,and Ardat Lilit. There's little doubt that
the Hebrew lilith-demon mentioned in Isaiah was a folkloric adaptation
of the Assyrian demons.
Several hundred years after Isaiah, we find Talmudic writings that
describe Lilith (now as a named demon, rather than a broad category) as
an irresistibly seductive she-demon with long hair (presumably worn
loose, a sure sign of wantonness) and wings. Terey wants us to be sure
to say that she's a succubus. She seduces unwary men, then savagely
kills the children she bears for them.
From this, she becomes the demon responsible for the death of babies.
In ancient times, one needed to protect against such demons; today, we
blame other factors for the death of infants. To guard against Lilith,
superstitious Jews would hang four amulets, one on the wall of each room
of a newborn babe, with the inscription "Lilith - abi!" ["Lilith -
begone!"] which some think is the origin, much later, of the English
word "lullaby." OK, that's legend one: a she-demon who kills babies.
Legend two: early rabbinic writings about Adam and Eve. There are
rabbinic midrashim, stories filling in the gaps in the text, that tell
of Adam and Eve after they leave the garden. Adam is angry with Eve for
causing so much trouble, so he leaves her, and is beset by demons
(called "lilith"; the name is still a generic category of demon). A
particular lilith called Penzai seduces Adam and becomes pregnant. Got
it? So that legend associates a lilith
with Adam. Legend three: an early midrash that puzzles about why Eve is created
from a rib of Adam, why not created equally with him? The midrash
suggests the creation of a prior "first woman" (unnamed) who doesn't
work out as a fitting companion for Adam. OK, so around a thousand years later (give or take a few centuries), the Alphabet of Ben Sira
creates the story we started with, tying together all three legends,
merging (1) Lilith the child-slaying night-demon story with (2) Penzai
the lilith who seduces Adam with (3) the "prior first woman" story. This mingling of legends provided a good Jewish context for the ancient
custom of making the Lilith amulets (thus exonerating the custom from
the taint of superstition or witchcraft.) That's why the legend of
Lilith as Adam's first wife doesn't emerge until medieval times,
although the strands of the story are much earlier. The Zohar, the great book of Jewish mysticism from the 12th Century,
adds yet another dimension. The Zohar generally doesn't mention Lilith
by name, but refers to her as the wife of Samael, the Angel of Death ...
and sometimes as the wife of Satan. She sleeps with men, causing wet
dreams, and she collects semen from the marriage bed. (Flowing semen is
a symbol of life, the white fluid, contrasted with flowing blood as a
symbol of death, the red fluid,
so the demoness who kills children collecting semen is symbolically
very neat.)
So that's the legend(s) and their origin(s). A little confusing, but demonology is not an exact science.
Now, a brief footnote in Modern Times. You can imagine that modern
feminists would latch on to the rabbinic story of punishment for
resisting male domination, and use Lilith as a symbol. It's a two-edged
symbol, of course, since Lilith as a demon who destroys newborns
pre-dates the medieval explanation of Lilith as a rebellious wife.
However, the modern use of Lilith as a symbol of oppressed womanhood remains
quite strong and with every modern interpretation of ancient history, a new legend is born.
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