Introduction
One of the many “theories” behind the 2012 doomsday scenario – but one of the few that does not involve the “Planet X” (at least in sum and substance) is the idea that on December 21, 2012 (sound familiar?), the sun and/or solar system will come into alignment with the galactic plane or center of our galaxy and cause bad stuff to happen. There are several different proponents of this, including John Major Jenkins and Brent Miller, the latter also linking it with a Planet X (discussed in future posts).
Note that most of the numbers/values in this post come from the book, Galaxies in the Universe (an undergrad/grad text) by Linda Sparke and John Gallagher, © 2000.
All posts in this series:
A Crash Course in the Sun’s Orbit
We are on Earth. Earth orbits the sun (a star). The sun orbits the Milky Way, our galaxy. Just as Earth orbits within the solar system but still orbits the solar system’s center of mass, the sun orbits the Milky Way’s center of mass but is still inside the Milky Way (that’s a complicated way of saying that we are neither at the center of our galaxy nor at the edge).
As Monty Python’s song states, “The sun and you and me, plus all the stars that we can see, are moving at a million miles a day, … the galaxy we call the Milky Way. Our galaxy itself contains a hundred billion stars, … we go ’round every 200 million years.” The numbers are reasonably accurate, though our orbital period is more recently calculated to be approximately 250 million years to make one complete ellipse around the center. Notice that I said “ellipse” for the orbit. This is correct, but to very good approximation, the stars out by us are mostly on nearly circular orbits.
Besides just orbiting in a single plane (as in like a flat piece of paper), stars also oscillate through the general gravitational plane of the galaxy. They generally stay within the “thin disk” that contains 95% of the stars, but this thin disk is on the order of about 1000 light-years thick (though, compared with the diameter of the galaxy being 100,000 light-years, this is still pretty thin). Our sun is one of those stars that does oscillate through the gravitational central plane of our galaxy.
The Sun’s Current Position and Velocity
Today, yesterday, and tomorrow, the sun does not lie in the galactic midplane, but it is about 35-70 light-years “above” it (since there’s no “up” in space, you could also say it lies below it). It is also currently still traveling “upwards” in the direction of the North Galactic Pole at a rate of 7-8 km/sec.
It is also not on a perfectly circular orbit relative to the plane of the galaxy, moving presently inward at a rate of 10-11 km/sec. Its rotational velocity around the center of the galaxy is about 200 km/sec.
I should also note that the center of our galaxy, the supergiant black hole known as Sag A* (pronounced “Sag A-star” or “Sagittarius A-star”), is the celestial coordinates 17 h 45m 40s RA, -29° 00′ 28.00″ DEC. What those actually mean is unimportant at the moment, just keep it in mind.
First of Two Ideas of the Galactic Center/Plane and its Relation to 2012
There are really two main premises of what will happen in or around 2012 in regards to the plane of the Milky Way. The first was popularized by John Major Jenkins back in 1998, and it deals with an apparent alignment, as viewed from Earth. To quote him:
Amazingly, the center of this cosmic cross, that is, right where the ecliptic crosses over the Milky Way, is exactly where the December solstice sun will be in A.D 2012. This alignment occurs only once every 25,800 years. [page XXXIX, italics are his]
The bottom line of my theory is that the ancient Maya chose the 2012 end-date because this is the date on which occurs a rare alignment of the solstice sun with the Galactic Center. [page XLI, italics are his]
The Long Count calendar is a galactic calendar because it pinpoints a rare alignment with our Milky Way Galaxy, due to occur in A.D. 2012 – a date written as 13.0.0.0.0 in the Long Count. [page 105]
However, he gets the dates wrong, and corrects it in a later book published in 2002:
Early on in my research, I recognised that the solstice-galaxy alignment would occur around 1998 or 1999. This was based on precise astronomical concepts (e.g. galactic equator and solstice colure) and a rough estimate I made with EZCosmos astronomy software, confirmed by the calculations of European astronomer Jean Meeus and the US Naval Observatory. I’ll have more to say about this precise timing in chapter 21, but suffice it to say two things here. First, the fourteen-year error between 1998 and 2012 amounts to less than one-fifth of a degree – a tiny sliver of the width of the full moon and thus negligible, considering it is a forward calculation in precession of at least 2,000 years. Second, the sun itself is one-half a degree wide, so an alignment zone between 1980 and 2016 must be allowed, thus embracing the 2012 end-date. [page 12]
His math is a little wrong – 0.2° is actually 40% of the width of the full moon, not a tiny sliver, but I’ll forgive that for the sake of just presenting his argument.
Journalist Lawrence Joseph expanded upon this in his own book, Apocalypse 2012: A Scientific Investigation Into Civilization’s End. In a statement to USA Today, he said:
Part of the 2012 mystique stems from the stars. On the winter solstice in 2012, the sun will be aligned with the center of the Milky Way for the first time in about 26,000 years. This means that “whatever energy typically streams to Earth from the center of the Milky Way will indeed be disrupted on 12/21/12 at 11:11 p.m. Universal Time,” Joseph writes.
Why This Is Wrong
Jenkins’ premise is actually somewhat correct in the sense that, yes, the sun will be somewhat near the plane of the galaxy as seen from Earth around the winter solstice in 2012. But not anywhere near Sag A*. And there’s nothing mystical about the plane of the galaxy … in fact, the sun passes “through” it as seen from Earth once a year. It just so happens that for the last ~300 years through the next ~300 years, this will happen to coincide with mid-December – winter solstice in the Northern hemisphere and summer in the Southern. There is really NOTHING special about this other than New-Age woo and mysticism.
The Second of Two Ideas of the Galactic Center/Plane and its Relation to 2012
The second idea is that our solar system will actually pass through the plane of the galaxy on December 21, 2012 — instead of an apparent alignment, this version of the claim is that it is a physical alignment. I’m sure others believe it, but the person I have heard this from is Brent Miller of the Horizon Project. Now, just from a practical standpoint, I want to make this point: Brent and the folks at the Horizon Project claim to have incontrovertible proof that Earth will suffer considerably in 2012 due to various things. However, they don’t provide that information on their website (thehorizonproject.com). Rather, they want you to order their DVD for “only $24.95 each!” Now, capitalism is great and all that, but you would think that if they really want to help people survive this thing when they literally claim that up to half the world’s population will die within a day, then they’d be putting out as much free information as possible.
Note that the material and quotes in this section of the post come from Miller’s interview by George Noory on Coast-to-Coast AM from November 10, 2008.
Anyway … their idea is based on a few major false premises. Their scenario is that our galaxy has a central, massive black hole (this is true). Stars oscillate up and down through the plane of the galaxy (this is also true, as I explained in the beginning of this post). This black hole sends out gravity waves (this is predicted by Einstein, but has never been proven). These gravity waves radiate along the plane of the galaxy, creating a “dark rift” zone that is filled with asteroid-sized dust material (this is where it starts to get … incorrect would be the most polite term, or perhaps unproven and unlikely). In addition to being populated by this potentially dangerous material, it has “a very very large intense gravitational field to it, and it takes about 20 years for our planet and the solar system to pass through it.”
Miller makes many claims as to the effects that crossing through this “dark rift” would have on Earth, the bulk of which is called a “pole shift” that I will address in a future blog posting in this series on Planet X and 2012. For the purpose of this post, I am solely going to address his mechanism for doomsday, which is us passing through this “dark rift.”
Why This Is Wrong
First off, keep in mind that this is the entire mechanism for all of Miller’s doomsday predictions (that will be addressed in a future post, as the “pole shift” topic is quite extensive and has its own branch of pseudoscience surrounding it). Consequently, if I can show that his entire mechanism is flawed, then it should cast serious doubt upon his predictions.
And, I can do that fairly easily by referring to the data in the second section of this post: The sun right now is above the midplane of the galaxy by 35-70 light-years, and it’s still moving away from it. It is NOT, as Miller claims, currently in the middle of a 20-year process of moving through this midplane. It is far from it. And, if he has actual data (as in real science) to back up his claim of the sun’s position in the galaxy, then why doesn’t he publish it in the scientific literature? If nothing else, this should make someone seriously question his mechanism, and hence his claims. And ask for actual evidence that can be independently tested.
There’s another reason why this is wrong. The galactic midplane is not this abrupt region of increased gravity. This is a common misconception in astronomy, that galaxies are “solid” objects. All the midplane is is a non-pysical, mathematical 2-D plane where if you add all the gravity from the material below it and above it, then you get the largest possible value. Go a little above it, and there is more mass below you that will pull you back down (eventually). Go a little below it, and the reverse happens.
It is true that, simply by a “settling” of material over time, there is a greater density of stars and gas and dust the closer to this plane that you get. And there’s less as you get farther away.
A reasonable way to think of this is like a valley, or a gently sloped, shallow bowl. If you’re near the top of the valley or the rim of the bowl, then you are going to get pulled down towards the center. And then your momentum will carry you past the center, and you’ll climb back up the other side. And when your momentum runs out, you’ll fall back down towards the center, and this cycle will repeat.
What Miller wants to throw in there is effectively a brick wall … or perhaps a wall of molasses. In his scenario, when you get to the center, you hit that wall and will be affected by something that only exists in the center of the bowl (or valley). What I am saying is that the galaxy is not built that way, there’s no wall, no “dark rift” no “very very large intense gravitational field” to the central few hundred billion kilometers that’s filled with Planet Xs and asteroids and other dangers that will cause doomsday to happen in the neighborhood of 2012.
Final Thoughts
After reading over this post, I realize that some of the ideas are not laid out quite as extensively as I usually do. This is because I’ve only just touched the tip of the iceberg on these galactic crossing scenarios, doing case studies on two specific peoples’ claims, and explaining superficially why they are wrong while trying not to get into other aspects that I will cover on other posts (like the “pole shift”). In addition, these claims are just so incorrect – according to everything that we can observe – that it is somewhat difficult to figure out where exactly to start with the debunking.
If you feel that I have not explained myself clearly, would like more information, or care to argue the point, please leave a comment so I know what to address.
Exposing PseudoAstronomy 