CJ wrote:

NeedAnswers wrote:

FACT-MAN-2 wrote:
Only dopes think the world's gonna end any time soon, and dopes count for exactly nothing in the great arc of human history. Avoid the slobbering fools so you don't catch their disease.

What makes you say that? Impending economic collapse, the rise in highly destructive natural disasters, and the combined efforts of several groups of humans to make life incredibly difficult for the rest of humanity open up a little room for people to suggest that the world is coming to an end as we know it without seeming to be unreasonable.

Oh cobblers! That's a classic example of the problem Fact-Man pointed out. Human arrogance. The world has existed for 4 1/2 billion years and could well exist for another 4 1/2 billion years and humanity will just be an episode in its existance. And what's this 'rise in natural disasters' crap? I'll give you an example the Siberian Traps. That was a world changing event, nothing humanity has ever witnessed comes anywhere near those eruptions. There is evidence of pre-historic tsunami waves hitting the west coast of America that went 200 miles inland! To use an old Yorkshire saying 'You don't know you're born lad!', thinking we are seeing anything significant is complete and utter bullshit. Here's another one, Cretaceous–Tertiary extinction event with the Chicxulub event verses the Tunguska event. The Tanguska object didn't even make a crater FFS!

What you appear to be suffering from is paying too much attention to media pundits and lunatics.

Human arrogance was so prominent a thouand years ago people living then thought they were the very center of the Universe and that their time was the most significant that had ever occurred. Since that time we have learned some truth about the situation, we are not the center of the Universe, the earth orbits the sun, and our solar system is but a speck in a Universe that's so vast we can't hardly comprehend it. In fact, our Galaxy, as big s it is, is but a very minor player in this vast expanse. We have been greatly humbled by this knowledge and these facts, and though our lives remain rightly important to us as individual humans, our place in the Universe casts us as so much meaningless dust, biological life on a moldy insignificant rock.

Doesn't mean we can't enjoy our lives and our times, doesn't mean we can't have compassion for those who are less fortunate, doesn't mean we can't dream great dreams and do good work, but it does mean we have to keep perspective on our existence and not become too carried away with what might happen as time rolls on.

There's a fairly good bayesian argument that it's fairly likely to be among the last humans, the doomsday argument.
http://www.scottaaronson.com/democritus/lec17.html

laklak wrote:When I were lad we Tanguska objects for breakfast and were glad to have them.

I bet they left a helluva crater when they came out t'other end.

CJ wrote:

NeedAnswers wrote:

FACT-MAN-2 wrote:
Only dopes think the world's gonna end any time soon, and dopes count for exactly nothing in the great arc of human history. Avoid the slobbering fools so you don't catch their disease.

What makes you say that? Impending economic collapse, the rise in highly destructive natural disasters, and the combined efforts of several groups of humans to make life incredibly difficult for the rest of humanity open up a little room for people to suggest that the world is coming to an end as we know it without seeming to be unreasonable.

Oh cobblers! That's a classic example of the problem Fact-Man pointed out. Human arrogance. The world has existed for 4 1/2 billion years and could well exist for another 4 1/2 billion years and humanity will just be an episode in its existance. And what's this 'rise in natural disasters' crap? I'll give you an example the Siberian Traps. That was a world changing event, nothing humanity has ever witnessed comes anywhere near those eruptions. There is evidence of pre-historic tsunami waves hitting the west coast of America that went 200 miles inland! To use an old Yorkshire saying 'You don't know you're born lad!', thinking we are seeing anything significant is complete and utter bullshit. Here's another one, Cretaceous–Tertiary extinction event with the Chicxulub event verses the Tunguska event. The Tanguska object didn't even make a crater FFS!

What you appear to be suffering from is paying too much attention to media pundits and lunatics.

I'm not suffering from anything, thanks. That's just a poor observation, so I'm not offended but I will help you understand my point.

At various points in history, life could have or did completely change entire civilizations for better or worse. For example, during the Black Plague in Europe, would it have been a reasonable statement for someone to say "life as we know it is ending!" I think so, given the circumstances. 10,000 people died in a week at a time when our population was millions and not billions.

Now, let me clarify my statements so you don't think I'm suffering from something. Maybe there isn't an increase in catastrophic weather or geological events in relation to the planet itself, but I never said the world was ending. I said "as we know it", meaning society and human civilization. The water levels around the globe are rising, along with temperatures. We have had several debilitating tsunamis, hurricanes, and earthquakes in the past century that combined have killed hundreds of thousands of people and the effects of these catastrophe's have affected millions. We are in a global recession economically, with the "world superpower" owing more money than probably any other nation in the world and not doing much to help itself.

So you think that someone declaring that we are on the verge of a major civilization changing event is lunacy? Aren't we due for a major earthquake or volcanic eruption or something like that, maybe a comet or meteor coming in too close, wouldn't losing tens of millions or hundreds of millions of people be at least a moderately civilization changing event?

If not, you can continue to call me doodles, but in that case I think your own opinion is what is a bit doodles.

NeedAnswers wrote:So you think that someone declaring that we are on the verge of a major civilization changing event is lunacy? Aren't we due for a major earthquake or volcanic eruption or something like that, maybe a comet or meteor coming in too close, wouldn't losing tens of millions or hundreds of millions of people be at least a moderately civilization changing event?

NeedAnswers, what do you mean by 'due' for one of these events? The next week? The next decade? And which part of the world? The Japanese are living with the consequences of an earthquake right now. Was that 'major' enough for you?

Unless you can define what, where, when etc with a little more accuracy, you're open to the Texas sharpshooter fallacy, painting bullseyes around bullet holes as they magically appear.

NeedAnswers wrote:

CJ wrote:

NeedAnswers wrote:

What makes you say that? Impending economic collapse, the rise in highly destructive natural disasters, and the combined efforts of several groups of humans to make life incredibly difficult for the rest of humanity open up a little room for people to suggest that the world is coming to an end as we know it without seeming to be unreasonable.

Oh cobblers! That's a classic example of the problem Fact-Man pointed out. Human arrogance. The world has existed for 4 1/2 billion years and could well exist for another 4 1/2 billion years and humanity will just be an episode in its existance. And what's this 'rise in natural disasters' crap? I'll give you an example the Siberian Traps. That was a world changing event, nothing humanity has ever witnessed comes anywhere near those eruptions. There is evidence of pre-historic tsunami waves hitting the west coast of America that went 200 miles inland! To use an old Yorkshire saying 'You don't know you're born lad!', thinking we are seeing anything significant is complete and utter bullshit. Here's another one, Cretaceous–Tertiary extinction event with the Chicxulub event verses the Tunguska event. The Tanguska object didn't even make a crater FFS!

What you appear to be suffering from is paying too much attention to media pundits and lunatics.

I'm not suffering from anything, thanks. That's just a poor observation, so I'm not offended but I will help you understand my point.

At various points in history, life could have or did completely change entire civilizations for better or worse. For example, during the Black Plague in Europe, would it have been a reasonable statement for someone to say "life as we know it is ending!" I think so, given the circumstances. 10,000 people died in a week at a time when our population was millions and not billions.

Now, let me clarify my statements so you don't think I'm suffering from something. Maybe there isn't an increase in catastrophic weather or geological events in relation to the planet itself, but I never said the world was ending. I said "as we know it", meaning society and human civilization. The water levels around the globe are rising, along with temperatures. We have had several debilitating tsunamis, hurricanes, and earthquakes in the past century that combined have killed hundreds of thousands of people and the effects of these catastrophe's have affected millions. We are in a global recession economically, with the "world superpower" owing more money than probably any other nation in the world and not doing much to help itself.

So you think that someone declaring that we are on the verge of a major civilization changing event is lunacy? Aren't we due for a major earthquake or volcanic eruption or something like that, maybe a comet or meteor coming in too close, wouldn't losing tens of millions or hundreds of millions of people be at least a moderately civilization changing event?

If not, you can continue to call me doodles, but in that case I think your own opinion is what is a bit doodles.

It was your comment about 2012 that set off the alarm bells ringing for me. I have never considered you to be a conspiracy theorist or the like. Thanks for the clarification.

Consider however that 'life as we now it' is a misnomer there really never has been or will be a 'life as we know it' in terms of a stable datum. There is always change. Materially in my life time it's generally been improving, but that's just luck based on when and where I was born. Civilisations rise and fall and we may well be approaching a fall because humanity is generally reproducing itself without regard for the consequence.

One trait humans do exhibit is adaptability so even after a catastrophe they do survive. So I personally feel that because of our intelligence, adaptability, the fact that we are an omnivore and our ability to manipulate the environment there will always be humans around. But as you say possibly not of a society that we would recognise.

I'm not sure why you appear to be conflating a natural phenomena, the crack in the Earth, with a mythical idea of the end of times in 2012 and the potential collapse of the capitalist economic model? Or am I reading too much into your post.

Oh and I have hung the straight jacket back up in the closet

Aren't we due for a major earthquake or volcanic eruption or something like that, maybe a comet or meteor coming in too close, wouldn't losing tens of millions or hundreds of millions of people be at least a moderately civilization changing event?

Epic fail of understanding here....

Natural Disasters like earthquakes/volcanos are likely distributed in a poisson distribution which means that the earth doesn't keep a memory of when the next one is due.....

Earthquakes and volcanos are due to natural processes in the earths mantle and crust nothing mankind does has any impact on them whatsoever.

The probablity of an impact from space that would cause major damage in your lifetime is very small.
But do look at this site its great fun.
http://impact.ese.ic.ac.uk/ImpactEffects/

Festeringbob wrote:the world cant end until the sun enters the next stage of its life cycle

That was "common knowledge" around the time when Carl Sagan's "Cosmos" ran. Refined models of the Sun and the Earth indicate that it will get too warm for comfort somewhat earlier: Stars slowly get more luminous while still on the main sequence, and the atmosphere is less robust against this than was thought.

I think part of the problem is we get professors on TV saying things like 'a big comet hits the Earth on average every 100,000 years and the last one hit us 200,000 years age.' It's not unreasonable to think we are behind schedule and due for another one any minute. The problem is the naive understanding of average as a measure of central tendency and thus predictive value. If one has two values, one and ninety nine the average is fifty (100/2) which bears no relationship to or has any predictive quality for the next value. If on the other hand we had 1,000 measurements and the curve was very pointy around the average we could start considering the standard deviation of the data set to assign probabilities related to the value being measured. If we could determine a mechanism that underpinned a process we may have another model that has predictive value.

CJ wrote:It was your comment about 2012 that set off the alarm bells ringing for me. I have never considered you to be a conspiracy theorist or the like. Thanks for the clarification.

The original article that I pulled this thread from spoke on 2012 and end times and all that. Me personally, I find the whole 2012 thing interesting but I don't subscribe to any particular theory of what's going to happen. I just want to be there so I can see what happens, and hopefully 2013 will roll around and we will need to find a new catastrophic event to wax poetic about. Please forgive any rudeness on my part, this forum makes a person quite defensive.

I am a conspiracy theorist though!

CarlPierce wrote:

Aren't we due for a major earthquake or volcanic eruption or something like that, maybe a comet or meteor coming in too close, wouldn't losing tens of millions or hundreds of millions of people be at least a moderately civilization changing event?

Epic fail of understanding here....

Natural Disasters like earthquakes/volcanos are likely distributed in a poisson distribution which means that the earth doesn't keep a memory of when the next one is due.....

Earthquakes and volcanos are due to natural processes in the earths mantle and crust nothing mankind does has any impact on them whatsoever.

The probablity of an impact from space that would cause major damage in your lifetime is very small.
But do look at this site its great fun.
http://impact.ese.ic.ac.uk/ImpactEffects/

I really wish that people would read, think, and then type instead of just coming out and prescribing their favorite medicine for those who they claim to be sick, suffering, or ailing.

~Partial Sarcasm Alert, please turn on your Sarcasmometer as sarcasm is undetectable on the internet~

It's definitely not at all predictable when an earthquake will happen, that's for sure. To make things worse, we can't look back over the geological timeline and see about how often a major earthquake or ice age happens on Earth. I mean it would be ludicrous if we had any idea about how many years it takes for significant pressure to build up in the plates of the Earth, and speculate on when that pressure will be released.

http://www.extremescience.com/zoom/inde ... ra-volcano

Scientists estimate that approximately 2.1 million years ago the first large caldera-forming eruption occurred in the Yellowstone area. From the evidence they have gathered it appears there have been three such cataclysmic eruptions in the Yellowstone area in the last 2.1 million years, each occurring at intervals of 600,00 to 800,00 years apart. The most recent eruption in the Yellowstone Caldera occurred 640,000 years ago.

I'll go back to hunting for lint.

Oh um also,

CarlPierce wrote:The probablity of an impact from space that would cause major damage in your lifetime is very small.

How did you come to that conclusion? I sure hope I'm still alive 26 years from now. Take a look at this link, stuff gets close quite often.

http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/

Just keep throwing those curve balls universe, you'll strike 'em out like you did to Jupiter!

Happily, we have Jupiter as a big gravitational vaccuum cleaner to suck up many of the stray rocks and snowballs. And it's been doing it for a few billion years now, too.

Made of Stars wrote:Happily, we have Jupiter as a big gravitational vaccuum cleaner to suck up many of the stray rocks and snowballs. And it's been doing it for a few billion years now, too.

Yes, I think that Jupiter has been stated by some astronomers to be one of our saving graces. Without a large enough gas planet to absorb some of the heat that the solar system is pitchin, life may not have had enough time to develop on Earth before it was smashed to bits or just too hot for life to handle.

NeedAnswers wrote:http://thewatchers.adorraeli.com/2011/03/07/scientists-are-sounding-the-alarm-the-mysterious-cracks-appear-across-the-planet/

Scientists do not know what to think about: South America is bursting at the seams. In southern Peru, suddenly appeared a huge crack length of 3 km and a width of about 100 meters.

Anomaly occurred in the district Huakullani Chukuito province near the famous Lake Titicaca. A crack has appeared almost immediately: the earth like a burst at the site of a large tension, the far scattered huge chunks of soil.

Interestingly, the crack did not appear in the earthquake. In general, there was no catastrophe, the earth simply gone. The crack occurred on level ground and is not associated with any disasters. Scientists are confused with this fact. Cracks also appear in neighboring Bolivia. And not so long ago, the crack happened in Africa – Ethiopia. Maybe these phenomena is common nature: the continents literally split in front of mankind. (BetaNovosti)

This isn't the first one, or the only one. If you click the link there are several forming all over the world (check the bottom of the article). I didn't bother to follow every single link, but what do you all make of them?

Earth expansion ?

Brain man wrote:

NeedAnswers wrote:http://thewatchers.adorraeli.com/2011/03/07/scientists-are-sounding-the-alarm-the-mysterious-cracks-appear-across-the-planet/

Scientists do not know what to think about: South America is bursting at the seams. In southern Peru, suddenly appeared a huge crack length of 3 km and a width of about 100 meters.

Anomaly occurred in the district Huakullani Chukuito province near the famous Lake Titicaca. A crack has appeared almost immediately: the earth like a burst at the site of a large tension, the far scattered huge chunks of soil.

Interestingly, the crack did not appear in the earthquake. In general, there was no catastrophe, the earth simply gone. The crack occurred on level ground and is not associated with any disasters. Scientists are confused with this fact. Cracks also appear in neighboring Bolivia. And not so long ago, the crack happened in Africa – Ethiopia. Maybe these phenomena is common nature: the continents literally split in front of mankind. (BetaNovosti)

This isn't the first one, or the only one. If you click the link there are several forming all over the world (check the bottom of the article). I didn't bother to follow every single link, but what do you all make of them?

Earth expansion ?

Unlikely.

The earth is encircled by major fault zones where tectonic plates are in collision or subducting one under another. This is epitomized by the so-called "ring of fire" that's completely around the Pacific ocean, along all of its edges. But it also exists along the Atlantic's mid-ocean ridge, as in Iceland, These great rifts spew magma on a routine basis and plates are in constant motion in one direction or another. This gives rise to lots of volcanic actvity along these rifts. Volcanoes in Mexico reflect the jumbled nature of large fault zone created by the Nasca plate, the Pacific plate, and the South American plate in collision or subducting.

Based on this it's not surprising to see "cracks" opening up in the earth "all around the world," which are almost surely associated with these great rifts. And I'd not be too surprised to see them opening up without an earthquake in atttendance, at least a very big one. I'm sure that a series of quakes with a magnitude of less than three could create cracks that run up to the surface.

The earth is never absolutely still for any length of time, anyway; something's almost always shifting around down there in the lower regions of the lithosphere, which rides above a veritable sea of molten mantle, all of it seeking to rise or break through to the surface. It's a very energetic milieu and energy means motion, or movement, will be practically constant, as in fact we have observed it to be.

The rift valley in East Africa, also home to vulcanism, extends North into Ethiopia so no big surprise to see cracks there, and South America's West coastal region is a known fault line between the Pacific plate, which is diving under the South American plate all along that entire reach. Thus volcanoes and cracks in the earth come as no surprise in Southern Peru or in adjacent Bolivia.

In this model it would be unthinkable that a single source or cause was acting globally to produce these cracks in the earth "everywhere" at the same time.

FACT-MAN-2 wrote:

Brain man wrote:

NeedAnswers wrote:http://thewatchers.adorraeli.com/2011/03/07/scientists-are-sounding-the-alarm-the-mysterious-cracks-appear-across-the-planet/


This isn't the first one, or the only one. If you click the link there are several forming all over the world (check the bottom of the article). I didn't bother to follow every single link, but what do you all make of them?

Earth expansion ?

Unlikely.

The earth is encircled by major fault zones where tectonic plates are in collision or subducting one under another. This is epitomized by the so-called "ring of fire" that's completely around the Pacific ocean, along all of its edges. But it also exists along the Atlantic's mid-ocean ridge, as in Iceland, These great rifts spew magma on a routine basis and plates are in constant motion in one direction or another. This gives rise to lots of volcanic actvity along these rifts. Volcanoes in Mexico reflect the jumbled nature of large fault zone created by the Nasca plate, the Pacific plate, and the South American plate in collision or subducting.

Based on this it's not surprising to see "cracks" opening up in the earth "all around the world," which are almost surely associated with these great rifts. And I'd not be too surprised to see them opening up without an earthquake in atttendance, at least a very big one. I'm sure that a series of quakes with a magnitude of less than three could create cracks that run up to the surface.

The earth is never absolutely still for any length of time, anyway; something's almost always shifting around down there in the lower regions of the lithosphere, which rides above a veritable sea of molten mantle, all of it seeking to rise or break through to the surface. It's a very energetic milieu and energy means motion, or movement, will be practically constant, as in fact we have observed it to be.

The rift valley in East Africa, also home to vulcanism, extends North into Ethiopia so no big surprise to see cracks there, and South America's West coastal region is a known fault line between the Pacific plate, which is diving under the South American plate all along that entire reach. Thus volcanoes and cracks in the earth come as no surprise in Southern Peru or in adjacent Bolivia.

In this model it would be unthinkable that a single source or cause was acting globally to produce these cracks in the earth "everywhere" at the same time.

I am familiar with plate tectonics, but expansion theory as handed by Cary to Maxlow is now a tectonics theory. Just that tectonic subduction has a different mechanism and does not happen over large areas of a plate.

Do you have a better link on this topic ? i couldnt find a proper reference for these cracks discussed here in any science press.

That's a fault or joint, probably associated with the stress from convergence of the nazca w/ the south american, the same stress that has produced the Andes. They are not uncommon in areas of high tectonic activity.