[Anti-Skeptic Spray]

http://www.viewzone.com/endtime.html

The link above has some very interestign insight and expolanations of what exactly happens Dec21, 2012, what the gallactic plane shift actully is and some discussion of the center of gravit of the earth vs. sun, sun vs other planets and sun vs other galaxies. I can see a definate potential fo rsolar "quakes" on the sun and think it is feasable that solar flares could erupt like crazy and be the end of us- however I dont believe the Mayans predicted that or predicted the end of the world on that date. It has been argued here before and I am of the opinion of the Mayans simply chose that as a start and ending date for a bakun (sp?) cycle.

They were not predicting the end of the univers no more than a monk was proclaiming the end of the world on Dec 31 of each year. Merely the end of a cycle measured by observations of his environment and the start of the next. I also believe the Mayans were astute and learned observers of the heavenly bodies and astrology and since they didnt have to deal with the modern day inconvienances such as light polution when trying to observe the night sky enjoyed the view more so than we do now days.

One more thing to bear in mind when reading this mans work and therom is that he doesnt seem to take into account the accelaration of the sun in its orbit as it approaches its closest approach to the galactic center and subsequent slow down as it begins moving away from the galactic center. Anyways don't panic.

We will all be here after that moment in time.

The view may be slightly different though...

Excerpt:



For now, let's forget all the small planets and focus on Jupiter. It makes one complete trip around the Sun every 11.861773 years. There's a new theory put forth by Dr. Rollin Gillespie which shows that Jupiter, and to a smaller degree the other less massive planets, may trigger the 11 year cycle of sunspots and solar flares.

Here's how it works.

The barycenter is not a single point in the Sun. Because the Sun is a rotating gaseous sphere, the barycenter forms a vertical, cylindrical "sleeve" that is partially inside and outside the main solar body. All of the planets have such a "sleeve," one inside the other, depending on their relative mass and the location of their barycenters. The particular sleeve representing the mass of Jupiter intersects the solar surface at 35.9 degrees North and South. This is precisely where sunspot and flare activity begin and end during each 11 year cycle.

The new cycle has already begun with the recent observation of a solar spot with reverse polarity. But some surprising activity on March 27, 2008, showed some huge eruptions with M-class radiation at about the equatorial region of the Sun. [ See Solar Map]. These surprising eruptions suggests a barycenter of disturbance from an object even more massive than Jupiter, placing the "sleeve" outside the Sun. Could this be the beginning of the Galaxy's effects (keep reading to learn more about this) on our Sun? Scientists have noted that when Jupiter and Saturn are aligned on the same side of the Sun, the solar maximum (the period when we have the most sunspots and flares) is at its weakest; when they are on opposite sides of the Sun the solar maximum is at its strongest. The positions of these two planets on December 21, 2012 are ideal for extreme solar activity.

[StarLord]

Are we 100% sure it's not a Brown Dwarf hanging around somewhere?

[xDrFirefly]

December 17, 2009: A network of cameras deployed around the Arctic in support of NASA's THEMIS mission has made a startling discovery about the Northern Lights. Sometimes, vast curtains of aurora borealis collide, producing spectacular outbursts of light. Movies of the phenomenon were unveiled at the Fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union today in San Francisco.

"Our jaws dropped when we saw the movies for the first time," says space scientist Larry Lyons of UCLA, a leading member of the team that made the discovery. "These outbursts are telling us something very fundamental about the nature of auroras."



Above: Colliding auroras photographed by THEMIS all-sky imagers (ASIs) on Feb. 29, 2008. Credit: Toshi Nishimura/UCLA. [short movie with labels] [full-length movie]

The collisions occur on such a vast scale, isolated observers on Earth with limited fields of view had never noticed them before. It took a network of sensitive cameras spread across thousands of miles to get the big picture.

NASA and the Canadian Space Agency created such a network for THEMIS, short for "Time History of Events and Macroscale Interactions during Substorms." THEMIS consists of five spacecraft launched in 2006 to solve a long-standing mystery: Why do auroras occasionally erupt in an explosion of light called a substorm? Twenty all-sky imagers (ASIs) were deployed across the Alaskan and Canadian Arctic to photograph auroras from below while the spacecraft sampled charged particles and electromagnetic fields from above. Together, the cameras and spacecraft would see the action from both sides and be able to piece together cause and effect—or so researchers hoped.

It seems to have worked.

The breakthrough came earlier this year when UCLA researcher Toshi Nishimura completed the Herculean task of assembling continent-wide movies from the individual ASI cameras.


Above: Twenty all-sky imagers (ASIs) were deployed by researchers from the University of California Berkeley, the University of Calgary, and the University of Alaska in support of the THEMIS mission. This map shows their locations and field of view. Image Credit: THEMIS/UC Berkeley.

"It can be a little tricky," Nishimura says. "Each camera has its own local weather and lighting conditions, and the auroras are different distances from each camera. I've got to account for these factors for six or more cameras simultaneously to make a coherent, large-scale movie."


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The first movie he showed Lyons was a pair of auroras crashing together in Dec. 2007.
"It was like nothing I had seen before," Lyons recalls. "Over the next several days, we surveyed even more events. Our excitement mounted as we became convinced that the collisions were happening over and over."

The explosions of light, they believe, are a sign of something dramatic happening in the space around Earth—specifically, in Earth's "plasma tail." Millions of kilometers long and pointed away from the sun, the plasma tail is made of charged particles captured mainly from the solar wind. Sometimes called the "plasma sheet," the tail is held together by Earth's magnetic field.

The same magnetic field that holds the tail together also connects it to Earth's polar regions. Because of this connection, watching the dance of Northern Lights can reveal much about what's happening in the plasma tail.



Above: A schematic diagram of Earth's magnetosphere. Earth is the circle near the middle and the plasma tail is denoted in yellow. Credit: Larry Lyons/UCLA [larger image]

By examining many collisions, Lyons and Nishimura have identified a common sequence of events. It begins with two elements: (1) a broad curtain of slow-moving auroras and (2) a smaller knot of fast-moving auroras, initially far apart. The slow curtain is quietly glowing over the Arctic when the speedy knot rushes in from the north. The two auroras collide and an eruption of light ensues.

How does this sequence connect to events in the plasma tail?

"It took some creative thinking to come up with an answer, but I believe this team has done it," says THEMIS project scientist Dave Sibeck of the Goddard Space Flight Center.

Lyons believes that the fast-moving knot is associated with a stream of relatively lightweight plasma jetting through the plasma tail. The stream gets started in the outer regions of the plasma tail and moves rapidly inward toward Earth. The fast knot of auroras moves in synch with this stream.

Meanwhile, the broad curtain of auroras is quietly hanging over the Arctic, gently glowing, more or less minding its own business. This curtain is connected to the stationary inner boundary of the plasma tail and is fueled by plasma instabilities there.


Right: Auroras poised to collide. Click on the image to view a labeled sequence of events. Credit: Toshi Nishimura/UCLA

When the lightweight stream reaches the inner boundary of the plasma tail—bang!--there is an eruption of plasma waves and instabilities. This collision of plasma is mirrored by a collision of auroras over the poles.

National Science Foundation radars located in Alaska and Greenland confirm this basic picture. They have detected echoes from streams of material rushing through Earth's upper atmosphere just before the auroras collide and erupt.

The five THEMIS spacecraft also agree. They have been able to fly through the plasma tail and confirm the existence of lightweight material rushing toward Earth. (For reference, these are the "plasma bullets" reported in a 2008 Science@NASA story "Plasma Bullets Spark Northern Lights.")

"By putting together data from ground-based cameras, ground-based radar, and the THEMIS spacecraft themselves, we now have a nearly complete picture of what causes explosive auroral substorms," says Sibeck.
Nasa Sceince

could this cause a polar shift?

Cheers

Dr FF

[RunsWithCrayons]

NASA's take on 2012

http://www.youtube.c...h?v=YUhEigdFFyI

[Anti-Skeptic Spray]

xDrFirefly, on 17 December 2009 - 11:57 AM, said:

December 17, 2009: A network of cameras deployed around the Arctic in support of NASA's THEMIS mission has made a startling discovery about the Northern Lights. Sometimes, vast curtains of aurora borealis collide, producing spectacular outbursts of light. Movies of the phenomenon were unveiled at the Fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union today in San Francisco.

"Our jaws dropped when we saw the movies for the first time," says space scientist Larry Lyons of UCLA, a leading member of the team that made the discovery. "These outbursts are telling us something very fundamental about the nature of auroras."



Above: Colliding auroras photographed by THEMIS all-sky imagers (ASIs) on Feb. 29, 2008. Credit: Toshi Nishimura/UCLA. [short movie with labels] [full-length movie]

The collisions occur on such a vast scale, isolated observers on Earth with limited fields of view had never noticed them before. It took a network of sensitive cameras spread across thousands of miles to get the big picture.

NASA and the Canadian Space Agency created such a network for THEMIS, short for "Time History of Events and Macroscale Interactions during Substorms." THEMIS consists of five spacecraft launched in 2006 to solve a long-standing mystery: Why do auroras occasionally erupt in an explosion of light called a substorm? Twenty all-sky imagers (ASIs) were deployed across the Alaskan and Canadian Arctic to photograph auroras from below while the spacecraft sampled charged particles and electromagnetic fields from above. Together, the cameras and spacecraft would see the action from both sides and be able to piece together cause and effect—or so researchers hoped.

It seems to have worked.

The breakthrough came earlier this year when UCLA researcher Toshi Nishimura completed the Herculean task of assembling continent-wide movies from the individual ASI cameras.


Above: Twenty all-sky imagers (ASIs) were deployed by researchers from the University of California Berkeley, the University of Calgary, and the University of Alaska in support of the THEMIS mission. This map shows their locations and field of view. Image Credit: THEMIS/UC Berkeley.

"It can be a little tricky," Nishimura says. "Each camera has its own local weather and lighting conditions, and the auroras are different distances from each camera. I've got to account for these factors for six or more cameras simultaneously to make a coherent, large-scale movie."


Sign up for EXPRESS SCIENCE NEWS delivery
The first movie he showed Lyons was a pair of auroras crashing together in Dec. 2007.
"It was like nothing I had seen before," Lyons recalls. "Over the next several days, we surveyed even more events. Our excitement mounted as we became convinced that the collisions were happening over and over."

The explosions of light, they believe, are a sign of something dramatic happening in the space around Earth—specifically, in Earth's "plasma tail." Millions of kilometers long and pointed away from the sun, the plasma tail is made of charged particles captured mainly from the solar wind. Sometimes called the "plasma sheet," the tail is held together by Earth's magnetic field.

The same magnetic field that holds the tail together also connects it to Earth's polar regions. Because of this connection, watching the dance of Northern Lights can reveal much about what's happening in the plasma tail.



Above: A schematic diagram of Earth's magnetosphere. Earth is the circle near the middle and the plasma tail is denoted in yellow. Credit: Larry Lyons/UCLA [larger image]

By examining many collisions, Lyons and Nishimura have identified a common sequence of events. It begins with two elements: (1) a broad curtain of slow-moving auroras and (2) a smaller knot of fast-moving auroras, initially far apart. The slow curtain is quietly glowing over the Arctic when the speedy knot rushes in from the north. The two auroras collide and an eruption of light ensues.

How does this sequence connect to events in the plasma tail?

"It took some creative thinking to come up with an answer, but I believe this team has done it," says THEMIS project scientist Dave Sibeck of the Goddard Space Flight Center.

Lyons believes that the fast-moving knot is associated with a stream of relatively lightweight plasma jetting through the plasma tail. The stream gets started in the outer regions of the plasma tail and moves rapidly inward toward Earth. The fast knot of auroras moves in synch with this stream.

Meanwhile, the broad curtain of auroras is quietly hanging over the Arctic, gently glowing, more or less minding its own business. This curtain is connected to the stationary inner boundary of the plasma tail and is fueled by plasma instabilities there.


Right: Auroras poised to collide. Click on the image to view a labeled sequence of events. Credit: Toshi Nishimura/UCLA

When the lightweight stream reaches the inner boundary of the plasma tail—bang!--there is an eruption of plasma waves and instabilities. This collision of plasma is mirrored by a collision of auroras over the poles.

National Science Foundation radars located in Alaska and Greenland confirm this basic picture. They have detected echoes from streams of material rushing through Earth's upper atmosphere just before the auroras collide and erupt.

The five THEMIS spacecraft also agree. They have been able to fly through the plasma tail and confirm the existence of lightweight material rushing toward Earth. (For reference, these are the "plasma bullets" reported in a 2008 Science@NASA story "Plasma Bullets Spark Northern Lights.")

"By putting together data from ground-based cameras, ground-based radar, and the THEMIS spacecraft themselves, we now have a nearly complete picture of what causes explosive auroral substorms," says Sibeck.
Nasa Sceince

could this cause a polar shift?

Cheers

Dr FF

My guess is polar shift is caused by a sudden change in the gyroscopic direction of the liquid magma under the earthsx crust, or change in one of the layers in the earths scrust. Thinking about our magnetic poles they are really most likely in reality generated much the same way magnetism is generated by a motor. Try to remember the gravity and the magnatism are not related. And as the magnetic material spins beneath the earths crust the iron in the surface scattered all over the earths crust creats an electrical charge of sorts. As this occurs a magnetic field develops around the generating device, which in this case instead of being coils and Magnets is instead Magma which has some magnetic components, vs metal crust, and the spinning polarises the magnetic charge and wall a surrounds the earth. If for some reason a layer of the liquid no longer spins the same direction as it did the polarity could change.

However you would think the change in the fluids physical direction would have a drag effect on the crust and maybe it will...

So perhaps like the atmosphere has many layers of air which can roll past each other in opposite directions etc, perhaps the same thing happens on the liquid level of the Magma. This is an over simplified description but bear with me.

Anyhow if we had multiple layers of pressurized Magma liquid are rolling past each other in multiple directions perhaps one of the layers switches directions withou dragging on the crust layer and despite small eddies of current between the layers the change causes the alignment of the magnetic poles at an atomic level to flip and as such the overall magnetic effect which is amplified by the total volume of magnetic fied to also flip. SOmething has to be related by the magma being liquid and spinning with the earth which also would have a stabalizing effect on the earth. Hence the wimpy magnetic field on mars to go with the smaller magnetic field.

I suspect the liquid magma spins faster than the crust on the surface as well. This goes against the normal observable evidence of something spinning but the outer material is a cooler denser material whereas the interior is a less dense liquid material. You can get some picture of the potential of this by going to the toy store and buying a baseball liquid sized superball with the opaques surface. I have one of my kids in my hand as we speak and it has pretty purple glitter. I can spin the ball super fast and at first the liquid drags as it catches up, but as the interior catches up the inertia of the surface slows and at somke point the interior is pinning faster than the exterior so it is possible. When you throw in the exoticness of the materials of the surface vs the interior you start getting wild behavior.

I doubt the theories that there is a blackhole at the earths interior. If there was the black hole sucks in light it sucks in heat it sucks in all forms of energy fatser than they can escape. But their is some material that is super dense and packed rather tightly and at that heat and temperature things such as hydrogen take on weird properties (for example at a certain point Hydrodgen becomes a metal when under enough pressure and heat).

The reason I bring this up is that it could sipmly be an interaction between the different materials of the magma core- that create our Magnetic poles. SOrt of like the multiple layered sour gum drop the magma has a series of multiple layers. The magma will have different properties in different pressures of the magma so at one layer the magma is so packed it is probably at its simpelest form liquid metal hydrodgen. Its density will allow it to spin at a much higher speed then the higher levels which are a less dense material which could spin at a different speed and a different direction without having much drag on the extremly dense liquid metal hydrodgen. The next layer has the same rules and so on till we get to the crust. Maybe the core itself is the progenitor of the Magnetic field.

Certainly it should be considered when thinking about pole shift or even pole wandering over time.

It also probably has something to do with the tilt of our axis and the wobble of the tilt.

In regards to a brown Dwarf- STarlord- Isnt their evidence aplenty in Jupiter being nearly a Brown dwarf or a weak class of Brown dwarf? I could have sworn I have read a few theories of that idea. I think anything huge in proximity to the solar system is going to either have an interaction of unfathomable proportion with the massive Jupiter, or EVen Jupiter willo have the ability to protect and stabalize the solar system. One thing that supports that statement is the relatively stable and simple orbits of Mercury, venus, earth Mars and the inner asteroids of the Solar system. They are well regulated and mostly circular in their orbit around the sun. Outside of Jupiter the orbits of the outer planets are elliptical and really goofy.

If their is a brown dwarf their has to be a voupls of interaction points between the Brwon dwarf and jupiter (and the suns) combined at their mathmatical lagrange points where crazy shit happens. I could see a combination of lagrange points passing the earth so that it sits in one temporarily and thta wreaking havoc on everything electrical, magnetic, etc. Pressure wise too. Big kabooms might bhappen. Arggghhh

Well Im just musing a few things and will try to put together a more intelligent post. Feel freem to chime in more Starlord and Doc. Or anyone!!!



BTW I think the term is vorticity tension or tensor for a description of the different fluids at different pressures spinning in opposing curents within a sphere

This post has been edited by Anti-Skeptic Spray: 27 December 2009 - 12:33 AM