Michio Kaku on ‘2012’ film: ‘Don’t quit your day job’
Friday, November 13, 2009 at 10:47AM Popular physicist Dr. Michio Kaku appeared on Fox and Friends Friday morning to comment on fears spurred by the latest disaster film, ‘2012.’ Kaku told Fox he’d give the movie an ‘A’ for special effects and and ‘F’ on science. “This is the mother of all ‘shake and bake’ movies,” he said. [Article continues after photo.]
NASA calls the phenomenon in this image 'An Eraser Mark on Eros.' NEAR Shoemaker captured this amazing picture of adjacent regions in different states of surface degradation on January 7, 2001, from an orbital altitude of 35 kilometers (22 miles). The upper half and lower right parts of the image show surfaces with "typical" rounded craters and large boulders. However, the abruptly edged swath extending from lower left to middle right is remarkably more smooth, subdued, and lacking in small-scale detail of any type -- almost as if Eros had been altered by a giant eraser. The whole scene is about 1.4 kilometers (0.9 miles) across. (Image 0154251925) [Image from NASA]
The film '2012' stars John Cusack, whose earnestness about serious matters is beginning to wear thin, and we might just say it is a climate change bonanza. Glaciers disintegrate, there’s the requisite monk scurrying to a mountaintop sanctuary and cities topple like structures made by kids with toy building blocks.
Prophecies about 2012 stem from those who believe the end date of the Mayan Long Count calendar spells doom for humanity. Kaku has a different take on that. He explained to Fox that apocalyptic endings are “embedded in our Western culture.” Eastern cultures see events in terms of cycles. Thus 2012, while it will end one cycle, will begin another.
New Age types who want to save the world believe 2012 will bring some sort of spiritual renewal or transformation.
Various creatives see Doomsday potential in phenomena like the planetary alignment known as the Jupiter Effect and solar flares.
But groups like the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration have actually revised predictions for solar flares, projecting weaker flares that peak in 2013 rather than 2012. And Kaku reminded us the Jupiter Effect happens every century or so.
Still others focus on potential harm from near-Earth asteroids like EROS. The official NEAR team is keeping tabs on that by using the NEAR Shoemaker spacecraft. A statement on the NEAR website said EROS is of interest, “Basically, because it's big and close. Asteroid 433 Eros is one of the largest near-Earth asteroids, with a mass thousands of times greater than similar asteroids. Its orbit provided a launch opportunity at the right time and it allowed use of a medium-class launch vehicle instead of a much larger and more expensive rocket. (The number 433, by the way, means Eros was the 433rd asteroid to have its orbit calculated.)” It took the spacecraft about 4 years to get to EROS.
Curiously, EROS has clusters of boulders, craters, and grainy-looking boundaries that look almost symmetrical.
For a list of projected events for 2012, check out Wikipedia. Among the curiosities: the Beatles' debut album will "fall out of copyright."
One of the cleverest headlines we've seen is a film review at The Examiner. Film critic Sally Kline wrote, "The world doesn't end soon enough in '2012.'" She rated the film 2 out of 5 stars.
Kaku offered some sound advice for believers in the catastrophic scenario painted by the film. “Don’t quit your day job,” he said with a smile.
Kay B. Day, Editor
Our earlier article on Dr. Kaku is one of the most popular articles at The US Report.
Reader Comments (1)
The timing of its release has been impeccable, with only a few weeks left before the Climate Conference in Copenhagen convenes.
As the NYT put it: "It is kind of depressing if you were looking forward to taking a vacation from mortgage payments to finance one last blowout," or as James Lovelock mused on the "Eighth Event": "Don't forget that in the Earth's history, while humans have been on the planet — that's about a million years — there have been seven major climate events of this kind. And I think the geneticists say that at one of those events, we were reduced to a mere two thousand individuals; a genetic bottleneck. If that is true, then they are very violent events indeed. And the one up ahead looks every bit as violent, if not more so than the ones that have happened in the past..."
All very well, but I don't think Mr Cusack will be ready as yet to participate in it.