Expert: Tom Whiting - 5/11/2005

Question
Hello mr W is this true i found on the internet, some guy said this plus many disasters??

1/3 OF THE EARTHS POPULATION WILL BE GONE IN A TWINKLING OF AN EYE.
HOW?
WHEN THIS CELESTIAL BODY PASSES...IT WILL PULL DOWN OUR MAGNETIC FIELD.
THE PLANET WILL SHIFT 28 TO 42 DEGREES
THE POLES WILL MELT IN DAYS GIVING RISE TO MASSIVE CLIMATE CHANGES FROM THE FRESH WATER MIXING WITH SALT WATER.  

Answer
Hi Acshizzle...
Great Handle for an e-mail name!.....

Well, What Body?
Actually, in any case, it doesn't matter....there is no asteroid,
body, comet, or anything, coming within a million miles of us for the next....who knows? at least 40 years....there is one very small asteroid that is scheduled for a "near miss" I believe in 2029....something like about 100,000 miles or 1/3 of the moon's orbit...so not to worry.

Some people just like the attention,  and the obtruse and
bewildering discussion which follows...it's called "metaphysics" and is typically avoided by all real science
majors.  Seems that humans with high "lack of attention"
when they were children....attempt to 'make up for it" when
they are adults.....thus they create and write 'sensational'
websites....simply for the attention....they can be disregarded
and avoided. (Unless you enjoy that past-time too).  Please stick with publications that do not sensationalize astronomy, like Sky & Telescope magazine, Astronomy Magazine....they don't have an axe to grind, so to speak....so they tell it like it is.  In those publications, there is no mention of up-and-
coming disaster in the making....and never has been.

28 degrees?  Strange...now I always thought the Earth's axis was tilted 23.5 degrees to the vertical....when did it change to
28 degrees?  I've been wrong all my life! ;-)

Polar ice will melt in days?  Yeah, and I'm just a Martian
in disguise hitch-hiking a ride to Earth from the energy from
the Mars Rovers! ;-)  I can explain all that, but it would grossly defy "Occam's Razor".....{the simplest explanation for
competing theories, is most likely the correct one- simplest
being the one with the fewest assumptions}...please
look it up on google.

Really Now...a little common sense is in order here...we've been hit in the past....the Tunguska event in Siberia on June 30, 1908 ....the body that formed Meteor (Barringer) crater
out in Arizona couple of millenia ago, and I'm sure there have
been others....odds are 7 in 10 that bodies crashed into
the ocean too.....2 land hits in recent past means there has been over 10 other oceanic (water) hits in that time frame..... AND
we're still here....the Earth is still spinning;
Life forms don't seem to have any trouble due to those
small impacts... our magnetic field is still intact, the ozone
layer still effectively stops most UV radiation, and so on.

Human's have been around for the past 3 million or so years
without any ill effects...surviving numerous Ice ages,
temperate times, impacts, tsunami's (large waves), eruptions
of volcanoes.....and yet life goes on.

I've read that if you place all the world's nuclear weapons
(probably about 10,000 of them),
at one location and explode them all simultaneously,
it would shift the Earth's axis only the distance of
one atom's diameter from its present location, and either
speed up (or slow down) the Earth's rotation by several
micro (millionths) second.....similar to that recent
9.2 earthquake in Indonesia around Christmas time.
We are (the Earth) a spinning 'gyroscope' and it takes
a tremendous amount of energy.....far more than we are
capable of generating.....or far more than a small asteroid
impact can generate....to do anything about our spin or
our magnetic axis.

Please disregard all the sensationalism in astronomy....
I know it is very tempting, but very unreal to the real
astronomy.
Hope all this helps,
Tom Whiting
Erie, PA