George Oilwell

This article is scaring the hell out of some folks at 'rapture ready' while others are glad to be 'raptured' so soon.
I'm sure that someone here who's into astronomy could debunk this in no time at all, I'm not so I can't, and besides I'm too lazy anyway.

http://www.bushcountry.org/news/may_..._end_world.htm

and the RR thread.

http://www.rr-bb.com/showthread.php?t=146005

Rhaedas

While I think impacts are a long term danger that we should be planning for, I'm not convinced by the long ramblings there. Especially when I saw the link to Hoagland's Enterprise Mission site. Another thing that made me question the validity was the constant implications that someone knows exact locations of impacts (except for the mysterious third object...a prophet writer has to keep his options open). I question whether all the scientists working on the problem could give a bullseye so far in advance. But it makes for good doomsdaying...

I must have missing any links or references on the dust problem to help verify it.

If there is something coming at us, and it's being covered up, it's simply because a week or so is far too little time to do anything even with a small rock...so the officials would avoid panic, and plan for afterwards. It'll be interesting if there's any activity on the various links tht are stirred up, after the June deadline passes.

My concern is that it's just a hoax, and will damage good science being done on minor budgets and threaten future funding for a truly serious problem to our posterity.

SEF

Has anyone kept a list (online and properly quoted) of such doomsday predictions to demonstrate how repetitively wrong they are, ie for the benefit of those more gullible people with selective memories. I remember someone saying that the Jehovah's Witnesses used to make regular (false) predictions in their WatchTower magazine/leaflet and kept re-writing it in new issues, pretending that they had never made all the decades of wrong ones. That's the sort of thing which requires a determined debunker to keep an archive of them, in their own words since websites can be changed (or the original physical publications), to demonstrate what con-men these people are.

Dragar

From the first link:

This rather gives him away as someone who has read one too many science fiction novels.

Telescopes that can see through dust have been in existance for quite a while. They use the infra-red frequences, which is less scattered by dust in space. And we need them because space is full of dust, and it makes it quite tricky to see stuff. It has nothing to do with trying to see comets or asteroids that are approaching Earth.

I'll let someone else pick up the other points.

Poor folks on RR - seems they'll believe anything.

Dragar

skepticalbip

SEF,
I do remember stumbling onto a website that listed predictions of the end of the world going back to the apostiles who were sure it would happen during their lifetime and extending through the "heavens gate" nuts. Sorry though, I don't remember the URL. Maybe you can find it with a google search. It was a fun read but I can only handle a limited amount of such lunacy.

Hatchet

Damn,

I am in the middle of studying for an astrophysics exam and thought this would be a useful little distraction! I only read the excerpts from the bushcountry.org website and sheesh appart from spouting the usual conspiracy garbage, this guy doesn't supply any actual details of anything so it's pretty hard to comment.

If you look at the SOHO web pages http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov/data/...ackground.html it explains that the dark spots are obstructions. I'm not sure what comets he is refering to in the image? The large bright spots are far too large to be comets. I'm not exactly sure, but I think they are reflections of the sun itself from hydrogen clouds.

If he actually made a some sort of testible claim, then perhaps I could comment, but unless I missed it, I couldn't find any such claim. He won't even reveal the co-ordinates(*) of the supposed comets! I guess the only thing I can comment on is that if this "dust cloud" was dark enough to dim a close comet, then it would be close enough to dim starlight as well.

To my knowledge nobody has reported such a dimming, which would be BIG BIG news in astronomy circles!

ttfn,

Hatchet

(*) Whenever a new discovery is reported astronomers calculate what is called an ephemeris which is essentially some data that can be used to calculate the orbit of an asteroid / comet. This allows them to predict the future position of the object in the sky and allow follow up observations to be performed.

MonCapitan2002

I think it's a load of bullshit. I bet anything this guy is laughing his ass off as he sends people into a panic.

Pheadrus

After readin a Tenth of the page I can see many holes in his story.

Asha'man

You are being kind in your understatement. He is a paranoid raving loony!

I wasn't able to read even a tenth of his ranting, but it's all bull. While a planetary impact would be devastating, and we have no way of preventing one at the moment, we also know of no impending impacts.

I've listened to professional astronomers discuss how to better search for asteroids with earth-crossing orbits, I've listened to sophisticated amateurs discuss robotic-telescope arrays that search for comets and supernovas. I've listened to a gentleman from the International Astronomical Union (IAU), talking about the flaws of the Torino scale for impact risk.

If you will look at the Torino scale, it rates all asteroid risks in terms of damage and probability on a 0-10 scale. A probable hit from a small object gets a lower rating than a possible hit from a large object. Most objects get a rating of 0. A rating of 1 is ‘merits careful monitoring,’ and really means nothing more than "object needs more observations."

However, a few years ago, someone spotted a rock that might have an earth-crossing orbit. Astronomers gave this object a rating of 1, indicating that they needed more data to refine the orbit. The world press went wild, publishing numerous headlines about the end of the world. This was for a level 1 object, and a refined orbit calculation dropped it to a 0 within 24 hours!

Because professional astronomers rely heavily on amateurs for additional observational data, there is no practical way for this type of information to be kept secret. The most reliable way to refine an orbit is to get multiple observations over a long stretch of time, and that means asking everybody to look at old photos. You can’t do that without drawing attention, and astronomers have no concept of secrecy.

A massive conspiracy to conceal such events is impossible. Everybody can look up in the sky, and amateur telescopes outnumber professional ones by a thousand to one, at least. While an amateur telescope might be smaller, a 20 minutes CCD exposure can capture an amazing amount of light, dwarfing the capability of large professional telescopes with film from only a few years ago.

However, I see no reason to tell the people at RR about this. Let them stew in their own delusions, maybe being alive at the end of the year will give at least a few of them a clue.

Pheadrus

Nah. He's definately not a loony. I see 2 possibilities. He is for want of a better word Deluded, or he is making it up. As I said his story bears all the hallmarks of a conspiracy theory type story. He is aggressive in his assertions, and his story is made up of a lot of readilly available facts. Thats what a conspiracy theory is. Theres never any doubt. They always lay it all in front of you.

Im going to go over there and test this guy.

EDIT: Wait he doesnt post at RR? Damnit. I gonna track this Mother down.
I got nothing better to do.