2012 Movie is a Geological/Tectonic Flop

[Nomad V]

As a geologist I did much gnashing of teeth and groaning when I watched the movie 2012 until I accepted it as pure fantasy. Regardless, the mischaracterizations of tsunami wave action, tectonic shifting, and shear faults throughout the movie were just wrong.
This movie maker obviously never took strength and materials or took a geology class. Crustal displacement, give me a break. If it never happened in the past 500 million years it is a good bet we won't see it in the next 10. Other than that the close escapes got old fast, and the Chinese just ain't that good at building ships. I'd have sent the work to Korea.
Other than that the spectacle was fun to watch.

 

[Robert Maxwell]

Well, now you know how I feel when people do just about anything with computers in movies and TV shows.

Hollywood types couldn't care less about technical accuracy. They want to put butts in seats and eyeballs on screens. If that means totally ignoring the rules of reality, so be it!

 

[SamuraiBlue]

Although I do not know if the theory itself is valid, I believe they based their original hypothesis on this.

Charles Hapgood is now perhaps the best remembered early proponent. In his books The Earth's Shifting Crust (1958) (which includes a foreword by Albert Einstein who was writing before the theory of plate tectonics was developed)[11] and Path of the Pole (1970). Hapgood, building on Adhemar's much earlier model,[citation needed] speculated that the ice mass at one or both poles over-accumulates and destabilizes the Earth's rotational balance, causing slippage of all or much of Earth's outer crust around the Earth's core, which retains its axial orientation.
Based on his own research, Hapgood argued that each shift took approximately 5,000 years, followed by 20,000- to 30,000-year periods with no polar movements. Also, in his calculations, the area of movement never covered more than 40 degrees. Hapgood's examples of recent locations for the North Pole include Hudson Bay (60˚N, 73˚W) , the Atlantic Ocean between Iceland and Norway (72˚N, 10˚E) and Yukon (63˚N, 135˚W).
However, in his subsequent work The Path of the Pole, Hapgood conceded Einstein's point that the weight of the polar ice would be insufficient to bring about a polar shift. Instead, Hapgood argued that the forces that caused the shifts in the crust must be located below the surface. He had no satisfactory explanation for how this could occur.[12]
Hapgood wrote to the Canadian librarian, Rand Flem-Ath, encouraging him in his pursuit of scientific evidence to back Hapgood's claims and in his expansion of the hypothesis. Flem-Ath published the results of this work in 1995 in When the Sky Fell co-written with his wife, Rose.

 

[Nomad V]

I have been planning on looking up Hapgood, but I'm still trying to defend a thesis. I have to drive down to Pittsburgh on Thursday for the defense. I'm on the team developing an ROV to pick up underwater military munitions (UW/MM), and I wrote a thesis on the tech transfer using the system as an example. There is a demonstration and I may have to go to Scotland to get checked out as an ROV operator. The wife just groaned when I told her I might have to go to Edinburg, for training. Regardless, back on subject, I've heard that the magnetic pole is getting close to flipping. The strength of earth's magnetic field has been dropping. I find that very interesting, and wonder how the core's activities could have an effect on the mantle and crust, such as supervolcanoes, etc.

 

[PlixTixiplik]

These types of standard polarity reversals don't involve major perturbations to heat flow at the core-mantle boundary but it is thought that there may be a link between mantle plumes and the onset/ending of geomagnetic superchrons (times when the magnetic field is extremely strong and stable for 30-50 million years, such as the Cretaceous normal superchron or Kiaman reverse superchron). These are different from the normal behavior of the geodynamo and may relate to long-term thermal interaction between the core and mantle (the strength of the geodynamo is regulated by core-mantle boundary heat flow). Forming a mantle plume may provide sufficient perturbation to end a superchron, although there are a lot of uncertainties.

 

[Nomad V]

These types of standard polarity reversals don't involve major perturbations to heat flow at the core-mantle boundary but it is thought that there may be a link between mantle plumes and the onset/ending of geomagnetic superchrons (times when the magnetic field is extremely strong and stable for 30-50 million years, such as the Cretaceous normal superchron or Kiaman reverse superchron). These are different from the normal behavior of the geodynamo and may relate to long-term thermal interaction between the core and mantle (the strength of the geodynamo is regulated by core-mantle boundary heat flow). Forming a mantle plume may provide sufficient perturbation to end a superchron, although there are a lot of uncertainties.

You sound like a geologist.

 

[iguana_tonante]

I'm an astrophysicist. Now ask me how I feel about solar neutrinos heating the Earth's core...

(btw, good luck with your dissertation! I did my oral defence less than two months ago and I'm still sore from that! )

 

[Jadzia]

I'm an astrophysicist. Now ask me how I feel about solar neutrinos heating the Earth's core...

Tell us more of your theory

Is that something along the lines of neutrino kinetic energy * flux density * probability of absorption ?

 

[PlixTixiplik]

These types of standard polarity reversals don't involve major perturbations to heat flow at the core-mantle boundary but it is thought that there may be a link between mantle plumes and the onset/ending of geomagnetic superchrons (times when the magnetic field is extremely strong and stable for 30-50 million years, such as the Cretaceous normal superchron or Kiaman reverse superchron). These are different from the normal behavior of the geodynamo and may relate to long-term thermal interaction between the core and mantle (the strength of the geodynamo is regulated by core-mantle boundary heat flow). Forming a mantle plume may provide sufficient perturbation to end a superchron, although there are a lot of uncertainties.

You sound like a geologist.

Yes, although paleomagnetism really isn't my thing. I can get a cursory understanding from reading the papers, but that's about it.

On the other hand, I love disaster movies with bad geology (or bad science in general). The worse the science, the funnier the movie! I think I'll be disappointed with 2012 though, unless it's up to The Core standards of bad science.

 

[Nomad V]

I'm an astrophysicist. Now ask me how I feel about solar neutrinos heating the Earth's core...

(btw, good luck with your dissertation! I did my oral defence less than two months ago and I'm still sore from that! )

Tell me about it, I'm pulling my hair out trying to get this powerpoint together. I've been working on the project for a year, writing the thesis since January. I put two slides together and take one out. OY.

 

[SamuraiBlue]

I'm an astrophysicist. Now ask me how I feel about solar neutrinos heating the Earth's core...

That part I was face-palming and LOTF at the sametime.
WOW Hollowwood you done it again.
The last time I laughed so hard was when I watched Angels & Demons.

 

[Trekker4747]

This movie maker obviously never took strength and materials or took a geology class. Crustal displacement...

The movie maker never took any kind of class.

In the same move Jackson drives from Wyoming to Los Angeles inside of what seems like a few hours.

Before the caldera erupts we see the ground "ripple" smoothly like a wave and not the mass of dirt and rock that it is.

The ash cloud from the Caldera reaches where the VP is (in Pennsylvania, I think?) before it reaches D.C. and Las Vegas.

I mean, no one in that movie seemed to open something as simple as a grade-school science book.

 

[RobertVA]

This movie maker obviously never took strength and materials or took a geology class. Crustal displacement...

The movie maker never took any kind of class.

In the same move Jackson drives from Wyoming to Los Angeles inside of what seems like a few hours.

Before the caldera erupts we see the ground "ripple" smoothly like a wave and not the mass of dirt and rock that it is.

The ash cloud from the Caldera reaches where the VP is (in Pennsylvania, I think?) before it reaches D.C. and Las Vegas.

I mean, no one in that movie seemed to open something as simple as a grade-school science book.

Wouldn't a cloud blowing from Wyoming to the District of Columbia have to blow across western PA first? I think another portion might reach the Philadelphia area about the same time as DC.

Wind direction would have a lot to do with the time to reach Los Vegas vs DC unless you're talking about material blasted above the atmosphere in a ballistic trajectory. You would also have to consider different wind directions and velocities at different altitudes.

 

[John O.]

I'm an astrophysicist. Now ask me how I feel about solar neutrinos heating the Earth's core...

(btw, good luck with your dissertation! I did my oral defence less than two months ago and I'm still sore from that! )

That was definitely the crux of the entire movie. I think that if we're going to even entertain the idea of whether neutrino emission could ever, in any radically extreme circumstances convect heat, we'd have to look at questions like; what is the typical density of solar neutrino emission per cubic meter, and what does it have to be for us to see interaction with typical crustal/mantle material like iron or silicon nuclei?

Of course "interaction" and "heat" aren't saying the same thing. Is there any conceivable way, just for the sake of speculation, for a neutrino to pass on its energy? I wouldn't think so, since the last we checked we're talking in the area of 5-10 eV for mass of an electron neutrino, right? Even if massively dense neutrino emissions could cause atomic interaction, it wouldn't be electrostatic in nature for obvious reasons, and I can't think of a lighter particle that could possible come out of the interaction such that the energy level of the medium it's interacting with could be raised, even by such an infinitesimal amount.

Ideas?

 

[Trekker4747]

And why does that neutrino heat up the earth's core but not the surface?

 

[John O.]

And why does that neutrino heat up the earth's core but not the surface?

Equally valid question

We're just playing fun make believe physics but I suppose you could say it only interacts with a superheated plasma such as the iron in the Earth's core...

 

[iguana_tonante]

I'm an astrophysicist. Now ask me how I feel about solar neutrinos heating the Earth's core...

Tell us more of your theory

Is that something along the lines of neutrino kinetic energy * flux density * probability of absorption ?

Pretty much. It simply won't work, as a simple calculation about neutrinos' energy would show.

(btw, good luck with your dissertation! I did my oral defence less than two months ago and I'm still sore from that! )

Tell me about it, I'm pulling my hair out trying to get this powerpoint together. I've been working on the project for a year, writing the thesis since January. I put two slides together and take one out. OY.

Well, for me it grew quite naturally from previous seminars I gave about the subject of my thesis. I worked on my PhD for the better part of four years, and in the meanwhile I gave at least half a dozen talks about it, from progress reports before the academic committee to official presentation of results at various workshops and conferences. So it was actually quite easy for me to put the final presentation together.

My few advices would be to break down the outline of your thesis into parts (something like: scientific context, purpose of the work, data sample, procedures and operations, results, rebuttals, conclusions, future works), and then break them in even smaller parts. Be aware that people will usually pay more attention to the starting and final parts, so don't bore them with details about the data or the procedures. Do not crowd your slides with too many information.

And repeat the presentation over and over. And then another time. You have to know it by heart, because usually during the actual presentation your head will be too busy freaking out to think about it.

WOW Hollowwood you done it again.
The last time I laughed so hard was when I watched Angels & Demons.

I've read the book also, and I laughed hard when Langdon boarded the hypersonic plane belonging to the freaking CERN. I was like "wait... what? WHAT?"

That was definitely the crux of the entire movie. I think that if we're going to even entertain the idea of whether neutrino emission could ever, in any radically extreme circumstances convect heat, we'd have to look at questions like; what is the typical density of solar neutrino emission per cubic meter, and what does it have to be for us to see interaction with typical crustal/mantle material like iron or silicon nuclei?

Of course "interaction" and "heat" aren't saying the same thing. Is there any conceivable way, just for the sake of speculation, for a neutrino to pass on its energy? I wouldn't think so, since the last we checked we're talking in the area of 5-10 eV for mass of an electron neutrino, right? Even if massively dense neutrino emissions could cause atomic interaction, it wouldn't be electrostatic in nature for obvious reasons, and I can't think of a lighter particle that could possible come out of the interaction such that the energy level of the medium it's interacting with could be raised, even by such an infinitesimal amount.

Ideas?

Yeah. Stop thinking so hard about it and look at some pretty lesbian porn. It's much, much more rewarding than trying to make sense of that.

 

[JiNX-01]

And why does that neutrino heat up the earth's core but not the surface?

Not to mention the life forms walking around the surface.

 

[bryce]

No see, they explained it in the movie...the neutrinos mutated.


Solar radiation mutated their subatomic DNA structure, and...

 

[iguana_tonante]

Don't... make me... remember... that... brain... exploding...!