Quote from amp88 :

It's actually "Hadron".

Oh well.. it takes 2 letters switched to make it something vulgar

Quote from lamerr :

Its more like 2012 is the end of a 26000 year cycle of the zodiac, and earth will be aligned with the center of the milky way.. I dont believe its the end of anything. We are currently in the piecian age, and this will end 21-12-2012, then we enter the aquarian age.

Yes and what I meant was that in the center of the milky way there is a black whole.
But yes, the collider could make one to.

Quote from lamerr :

earth will be aligned with the center of the milky way

wat


Is it actually possible to be aligned with a point about which you are orbiting?

Quote from Electrik Kar :

What do you mean?

Well, I am quoting from discovery channel on that one. But I have heard some pretty wack stories like they predicted when a white man would come into thier territory, and it did infact happen that a group of white warriors invaded thier land. I am not sure if it is true but still...

Quote from Zay :

Yes and what I meant was that in the center of the milky way there is a black whole.

Not sure what you're trying to say, but there is neither a black hole nor a black whale at the centre of the Milky Way.

There's actually a pretty good argument for there being a *huge* black hole at the centre of spiral galaxies above a certain age.

Ours is a good 30,000 light years away though and regardless of what these notably anonymous 'scientists' from the OP say, it's coming nowhere near us.

Well, if there's fuck all we can do about it, why worry?

Quote from amp88 :

Citations needed.



Citation needed.



How close do we need to get to feel any significant force from this particular black hole we're going to come "very close" to? You seem to be some kind of astronomer or physicist, so please tell us idiots who find it difficult to comprehend some concepts.



The most catastrophic things that will happen on 21/12/2012:

Thousands of people will die worldwide from lack of food, lack of water and preventable diseases.
Thousands of people will be killed or seriously injured in disputes with friends, family, neighbours, burglars, car-jackers etc.
Hundreds of thousands or millions of soldiers will go to sleep fearing for their lives because they are committed to wars that their countries wish they hadn't got into or there are no real reasons for.

i.e. it will be another normal day.

Well, the first two can be answered by my 2 above posts. And also, a black holes gravitational pull is very strong, so we don't have to be very close at all.

oh ya and also, I don't necessarilly belive the world will end in 2012 but after all shows on discovery channel i watched it sorta gave me the kreeps

Quote from Boris Lozac :

What do you mean by 'we will come very close to the black hole'?

bullshit, the mayan calendar said that the earth had stages or cycles, and the end means the start of a new cycle. i.e. the ice age etc

Quote from Zay :

And also, a black holes gravitational pull is very strong, so we don't have to be very close at all.

Physically speaking, not really.

Force exerted by gravity on an object = G [a very small constant] x (Product of Masses)/(Distance between them)^2

So as you double the distance, the force decreases by a factor of 4. Plus, the Earth has a relitavely small mass, therefore the force would be even smaller. Furthermore, the force required would be huge.

/physics lesson

Yes, but there is a debate about a huge black hole in the center of spiral galaxy's, and we, like you said would have to be fairly close, but if you look at the actuall distance in numbers it seems like alot.

Quote from Zay :

Yes, but there is a debate about a huge black hole in the center of spiral galaxy's, and we, like you said would have to be fairly close, but if you look at the actuall distance in numbers it seems like alot.

Just about 40,000 Light years away.

Well in about 2 billions years we will have a bigger one wandering around with a bunch of suns circling around him.
That's gonna be a big mess

Quote from Zay :

Yes, but there is a debate about a huge black hole in the center of spiral galaxy's, and we, like you said would have to be fairly close, but if you look at the actuall distance in numbers it seems like alot.

A lot is it? Let's find out.

The gravitational force between two objects is given by:

F = (G * m * M) / r^2

where G is the gravitational constant, 6.67 * 10^-11, m and M are the masses of the bodies in kg and r is the distance between them in metres.

The mass of the black hole is supposedly 4 million times that of the sun or 8 * 10^36 kg
The distance to the black hole is 30000 light-years or 2.8 * 10^20 m
The mass of, say, a person is around 70kg

Using the formula above, this black hole exerts around 4.76 * 10^-9 Newtons on a human.

To put this in perspective, if you plug in the numbers for the planet (alright, sub-planetary body, for the pedants ) Pluto, you come out with 1.7 * 10^-6

This 'dangerous' black hole exerts a force on us 350 times less than does Pluto. And will continue to do so for billions and billions of years.

Quote from Crashgate3 :

And will continue to do so for billions and billions of years.

~2.5 actually unteil as pointed out by someone else before andromeda will collide with our galaxy changing the nature of both rather a lot

It'll be pretty at least

I was actually surprised at the figure I got for the pull of the black hole. a billionth of a Newton at that incredible distance is HUGE.

Quote from Zay :

Well, the first two can be answered by my 2 above posts.

In what way did your last 2 posts "answer" my asking for citations (e.g. providing information from or links to respected journals of science or history)?

Quote from Zay :

Well, I am quoting from discovery channel on that one. But I have heard some pretty wack stories like they predicted when a white man would come into thier territory, and it did infact happen that a group of white warriors invaded thier land. I am not sure if it is true but still...

"I have heard some pretty wack stories", "they predicted when a wite man would come into thier territory", "I am not sure if it is true but still..."

Honestly, your logic is faultless. You really shouldn't join a debating team if this is the standard you would like to be held to.

Quote from Zay :

And also, a black holes gravitational pull is very strong, so we don't have to be very close at all.

As Crashgate pointed out above, even though many bodies are massive (and I use that term to mean very heavy, not necessarily very big) they are so far away that their gravitational pull on us is so small as to be considered negligible in many cases.

Quote from Zay :

Well, I am quoting from discovery channel on that one. But I have heard some pretty wack stories like they predicted when a white man would come into thier territory, and it did infact happen that a group of white warriors invaded thier land. I am not sure if it is true but still...

I think you're refereing to, and I'm only going by memory- the event that right about the time when the Mayans were expecting a return of one of there Gods- Quetzalcoatl, the Spanish showed up instead.


:inq:

Quote from Shotglass :

~2.5 actually unteil as pointed out by someone else before andromeda will collide with our galaxy changing the nature of both rather a lot

??? That's cool!!

The whole alignment with the center of the galaxy thing is nothing more than a very loose theory, probably with no scientific fact. I do not know if the solar system will truly be aligned, but even if it is, I do not see how anybody, in the past, present or future, could ever predict the impact it would have on us. Probably, there would be none.

Think about it: what does it change for the solar system to be aligned with an object, even if it is the alleged black hole at the center of the galaxy? What forces could be present at this point in space and time that could affect something as remote from the center of the galaxy as us (we're on one of the outer spirals)? Likely nothing at all.

And the black hole is just that; a theory. We're not even sure it's there, or in any spiral galaxy, for that matter. We think they're there based on observation and evidence, but we can't really prove it. Anyway, if it truly is there, for us to be affected in any different way than we already are, we would probably need to be quite close to it, much closer than we are. 35,000 light-years is no sissy step.

also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andromeda-Milky_Way_collision

Like I said, I don't think it will happen, but our civilization will be gone from many causes, the earth is actually more than halfway old, as aomething WILL get us in a billion years or less. Of course, nothing any of us have to worry about in our life times, but here are a few theories:
1. Snowball earth(whole planet will be covered in ice at -40 degrees)
2. Surface to hot as a result of the growing sun
3. Sun starts It's end of lifecycle, as it will grow, then contratct, then grow again, and roast the earth, if this doesnt happen the below will
4. Sun exploding and creating a supernova, therefore positively wiping out all life.

The sun is too small to go supernova, but #3 will definitely happen eventually.

#1 has already happened many times in the past and will happen many times again in the future.

if we go out at 2012, then we wont see LFS S4
S4? yup, you read it right. come to think of it, isnt it time to start another annoying speculation...ahahahahaha!

Quote from Dalibor79 :

if we go out at 2012, then we wont see LFS S4
S4? yup, you read it right. come to think of it, isnt it time to start another annoying speculation...ahahahahaha!

Whaaa? We will be lucky to drive one lap in the Scirocco before that

The End of Time is January 19, 2038 03:14:07 GMT.

Don't worry the world won't end then any more than it will on any of the Jehovah's Witnesses predicted dates - who where around earlier in my village again today, making 8 visits in the last 12 months - apparently it's really serious "can't I sense it? The whole world is going crazy" they told me. I told them I am happy to accept people without applying prejudice, with the single exception of Christians who worship an evil holy book.

See the problem with Jan 19 2038, 03:14:07 is that there just isn't enough bits left in a long int to keep counting the time on stateless computing systems (such as the web), so after that we'll all roll back to 1st January 1970 which meens you lot are going to get mullets and moustaches.

Of course we could fix this issue now, but actually there's no need because we know that there will be opportunities for some cheaky git (hopefully me) to make billions out of selling you solutions for the "Millenium Bug Mk II - Only This Time We Really Meen It", even though the worst that could happen is a crash of a script that happens to be running as the clock rolls over, but works fine again immediately afterwards, and as this effects unix systems which are mostly used in stateless environments it's really not that serious at all.

There will be an OS patch at some point, but you'll still end up with a mullet and a moustache.