Things I noticed about 2012

Me and the older two kids were hanging out with my exhusband this weekend. While sitting around having some good dysfunctional family fun, we came across 2012. The kids and I had seen it but the exhub hadn't so we decided to rewatch it since it was an amusing flick and really, who doesn't enjoy some good John Cusack family time?

The first time I watched it, I was busy being enraptured by a. John... Helllooooo! and b. the graphics fest that a good apocalyptic flick entails.

This time around, I was able to look at it more objectivly and see some things that amused me enough to not just gaze gratuitiously at my long time love, John.

Firstly- We really are in a period of solar activity leading into 2012. As a matter of fact, we just had an X class flare on Valentine's Day of this year (now fondly named the Valentine's Day Flare of 2011 in the astronomy/aerospace community... because nicknaming solar eruptions is just fun) which sent aurora as far south as Ireland on 2-18-2011. So this wasn't made up just for the plot. We knew the solar storm was coming and we honestly don't know what to expect from it. With earth in the crosshairs of the newest sunstorm/sunspots, we expect things like electronic disruption and possibly satellite issues. Stretching that to heating the earths core... not nearly that far fetched.

Secondly- The poles really are shifting. Actually, they have moved 45miles already and the north pole, which many of us think of being on top of the world... you know... Santa's house? It's actually now located in Northern Canada. This is great if you are Santa and you always did want to retire to a nice Southern home. What effects does this shifting of the poles have on us? Well, it is messing with GPS. Other than that? We don't know... Dum Dum Daaaahhmmm...

Thirdly- Earth Crust Displacement Theory is introduced as the cause for the biggest and most catacalsmic events in the film. There actually IS an Earth Crust Displacement Theory. Presented in 1958 and it was presented by Charles H. Hapgood. Hapgood was not a geologist but a history teacher who came across his idea because old maps suggested a land mass that we no longer have. Hapgood theorized that the mass was Antartica, pre ice cap, and that it had moved to it's present location during the last ice age. Einstein supported this theory, stating in a forward to Hapgood's book that, "In a polar region there is continual deposition of ice, which is not symmetrically distributed about the pole. The earth’s rotation acts on these unsymmetrically deposited masses, and produces centrifugal momentum that is transmitted to the rigid crust of the earth. The constantly increasing centrifugal momentum produced in this way will, when it has reached a certain point, produce a movement of the earth’s crust over the rest of the earth’s body... "

Although most of the actual theory that Hapgood presented can be disproved by modern geology (The mantle doesn't harden... This doesn't explain things like Yellowstone and the ring of fire... etc) we have never come up with a replacement paradigm to explain the questions that he presented when coming up with crust displacement...
So does the crust move and does that explain the rivers on Antartica...
Or is it pole shift or a change in the tilt of Earth on it's axis??

Which brings us back to polar shifting...
http://www.nasa.gov/vision/earth/lookingatearth/29dec_magneticfield.html
Has a great article on this actual scientific theory. In the article, it doesn't sound scary at all... but what effect will a changing magnetic poles have geologically? What will it do to, say the ring of fire, an already unstable geologic mess? And why the sudden increase in high magnitude earthquakes and volcanic activity? And Yellowstone...

Fourth-
There really is a caldera under Yellowstone and it has been veeeeery active lately. Parts of the park have risen as much as ten feet in recent events and earthquake hotspots have popped up around the park. These little cluster storms of quakes and rising is explained away prettily by geologists as the natural cycle of a caldera but since we don't know what the natural cycle is... Are they lying to us to keep the country calm?

Fifth- The government would never lie to us just to stop chaos and a martial law state!!
Okay. I am giggling just writing that. The government (and perhaps this is my paranoid side speaking) will tell us what we need to know/what they feel they have to tell us and if there was an event of catacalysmic proportion...
Yeah. Good luck with that.

So the point of that rant? I love the way the writer of that story took scientific fact and twined it somewhat dramatically with scientific possibility and paranoia and came up with a somewhat viable and visually stunning piece.

Do I think that the world is due to end with the Mayan Calander and save me from Christmas shopping next year?

No.

Do I think that there are things out there that we don't understand and that the government does that they are hiding from us that would freak us out...

Yeah. I really do.

Do I think John Cusack is simply hot simply all the time...

Well, I will let you come up with your own theory there.