New Interview of Me on “Point of Inquiry” Podcast

Quick post to let you know that Karen Stollznow interviewed me for the December 26th episode – last of 2011 – of Point of Inquiry podcast. The subject matter was a summary of the 2012 phenomenon and associated phenomena, and it was appropriately titled, “The End of the World as We Know It.” It’s very, very roughly a 42.62-minute podcast, about the length of my own (so less detail on each subject). Enjoy!

And for reference, I figure it’s time to update my list of 2012 posts so far:

• Planet X and 2012: The Real and Historical Story of Planet X
• Planet X and 2012: Primer on the Mayan Calendar
• Planet X and 2012: The PseudoAstronomy (or Just Plain Wrong Astronomy) About a Galactic Alignment
• Planet X and 2012: The Pole Shift (Magnetic) Explained and Debunked
• Planet X and 2012: Proof Earth Is Not Experiencing a Pole Shift
• Planet X and 2012: The Pole Shift (Geographic / Spin Axis) Explained and Debunked
• Planet X and 2012: Why Planet X Is NOT Coming in 2012
• Planet X and 2012: What The Sky Looks Like On December 21, 2012
• Planet X and 2012: Why a 3600-Year Planet X (Nibiru) Doesn’t Exist
• Planet X and 2012: Could Planet X Be a Planet Around a Binary Star to Our Own – a “Dark Star?”
• Planet X and 2012: The “Institute for Human Continuity” Is NOT REAL
• Planet X and 2012: “Even the Maya Are Getting Sick of 2012 Hype”
• Planet X and 2012: Why Gilbert Eriksen’s “Wormwood” Won’t Be Showing Up
• Planet X and 2012 and Astrology: Exploring the Claims of Astrologer Terry Nazon on 2012, Part 1
• Planet X and 2012 and Astrology: Exploring the Claims of Astrologer Terry Nazon on 2012, Part 2
• Planet X and 2012 and Astrology: Exploring the Claims of Astrologer Terry Nazon on 2012, Part 3
• Planet X and 2012: When Is “2012,” Anyway?
• Planet X & 2012: The Myth of the Southern Approach

I have also written a few posts that are tangentially related to the 2012 subject:

• Planet X and 2012: Young-Earth Creationists Actually Can Do Real Science Reporting
• What Happens When All the Planets Line Up Against Us?
• The Sun’s Binary Companion, Nemesis – Fact or Fiction?
• Astrologers Take Note – We Are Nowhere NEAR the “Dawning of the Age of Aquarius”
• Planet X and 2012: Sun Returns to Greenland … Two Days Early!? And a Major Fail by Time Magazine
• The New-Age Conspiratorial World of Gregg Braden
• Mike Bara’s New-Agey Anti-Science Beliefs, from Bad Geometry to Astrology to Exploding Planets

And my podcast episodes so far on 2012:

• Episode 13: The True Story of Planet X
• Episode 14: The Mayan Calendar and What the Mayans Think of 2012
• Episode 15: Galactic Alignments, Part 1
• Episode 16: What the Sky Looks Like on December 21, 2012, Part 2

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Another “The Conspiracy Skeptic” Interview – Update on T Pyx and Apophis (Concerning Billy Meier and Michael Horn)

Introduction

Following my appearance on The Conspiracy Skeptic podcast on January 12, 2010, two events occurred that caused me to go running back to Karl Mamer (the host/producer/creator) and asking if he would deign to allow me back on to do a “quick” follow-up interview about what we had discussed. The first event was that two days later, Michael Horn (the Swiss alleged UFO-contactee Billy Meier’s American shill) was interviewed on the late-night 4-hour radio show Coast to Coast AM by George Noory, about asteroid Apophis. The second event was The Skeptics’ Guide to the Universe podcast episode #235 where they also discussed T Pyx and that the astronomers got the numbers wrong … despite NO news source reporting on it other than what I could later find in Phil Plait’s Bad Astronomy blog.

The Corrections/Updates

First, I encourage everyone to actually listen to the full episode (bottom of the page, or subscribe through iTunes).

But, if you don’t have time … here’s a quick summary:

(1) No, even if T Pyx is 1 kpc (~3200 light-years) away instead of 3.5 kpc away, if/when it goes supernova it will not kill us all. The astronomers used the incorrect energy values for how much energy is released in a Type 1a supernova, instead using the values for a gamma ray burst with the burst aimed right at us. Unfortunately, NO major media outlet has updated their story (Scientific American, Space.com, MSNBC, to name a few). Rather, I heard about it through the SGU episode and got the information from Phil Plait’s blog. I consider this a failure on my own part, too for not actually trying to run the numbers before appearing on Karl’s podcast — that’ll teach me to trust the news [said partially tongue-in-cheek].

(2) Apparently vampires don’t live forever and when their head is ripped off in the heat death of the universe, then they’ll die. My bad.

(3) Apophis still isn’t going to hit us. Unless you for some unfathomable reason believe in Billy Meier’s “prophecies” and what’s said by Michael Horn. This came wholly unexpected in that I hadn’t planned to ever address Meier and Horn until I heard Horn on the Coast to Coast AM show and then did my original post here. Based on everything I’d heard about Horn, I gave it about a 70% chance that he would find my blog and post a comment. I had decided before I even completed the post that if that happened, I would reply once to him, and that was it. Which I have maintained, despite the numerous (literally dozens) of comments on that particular post (I invite you to peruse them if you have time to kill). I then did a follow-up post that addresses not the language of the alleged contact predictions, but the actual content and shows that, no, Billy Meier did not predict Apophis and that it is going to hit.

Since that post, my blog has been picked up and re-posted by the Independent Investigations Group of the Center for Inquiry – Los Angeles as part of their exposé on Billy Meier and Michael Horn. It’s listed under “The Prophecies Of Billy Meier” as “Asteroid Apophis Deconstruction.” I encourage you to go through some of the links there to really understand the scope of the Meier alleged “contacts” as well as the disinformation and deceit by Michael Horn … if it wasn’t apparent already from the comments he has posted to my own blog. I’ve since offered my continued services to them in anything astronomy-related, but we’ll see what happens there.

Final Thoughts

That’s about it. The episode lasts about 55 minutes, which is shorter than my others on the show, but it’s one of the shortest episodes of the podcast in it’s new “Unplugged” format.