2012: Six End-of-the-World Myths Debunked Myth 2

2012 MYTH 2

Breakaway Continents Will Destroy Civilization

In some 2012 doomsday prophecies, the Earth becomes a deathtrap as it undergoes a "pole shift."

The planet's band and crimson will al of a sudden shift, spinning about Earth's liquid-iron alien amount like an orange's bark spinning about its ample fruit. (See what Einstein had to say about pole shifts.)

2012, the movie, envisions a Maya-predicted pole shift, triggered by an acute gravitational cull on the planet—courtesy of a attenuate "galactic alignment"—and by massive solar radiation destabilizing the close Earth by heating it.

Breakaway oceans and continents dump cities into the sea, advance approach copse to the poles, and spawn earthquakes, tsunamis, agitable eruptions, and added disasters. (Interactive: pole about-face theories illustrated.)

Scientists abolish such desperate scenarios, but some advisers accept speculated that a subtler about-face could occur—for example, if the administration of accumulation on or central the planet afflicted radically, due to, say, the melting of ice caps.

Princeton University geologist Adam Maloof has abundantly advised pole shifts, and tackles this 2012 allegory in 2012: Countdown to Armageddon, a National Geographic Channel documentary airing Sunday, November 8. (The National Geographic Society owns National Geographic News and part-owns the National Geographic Channel.)

Maloof says alluring affirmation in rocks affirm that continents accept undergone such desperate rearrangement, but the action took millions of years—slow abundant that altruism wouldn't accept acquainted the motion (quick adviser to bowl tectonics).