Stunner

Discussion continued.... Dr.David answers questions from the public submitted on-line to a NASA website (astrobiology.nasa.gov), and over the past two years the Nibiru-2012 doomsday has become the dominant topic people ask about. Many are curious about things they have seen on the Internet or TV, but many are also angry about supposed government cover-ups.

Dr.David answers questions from the public submitted on-line to a NASA website (astrobiology.nasa.gov), and over the past two years the Nibiru-2012 doomsday has become the dominant topic people ask about. Many are curious about things they have seen on the Internet or TV, but many are also angry about supposed government cover-ups.

IN December 2012 has blossomed into a major new presence on the Internet. This fear has begun to invade cable TV and Hollywood, and it is rapidly spreading internationally. The hoax originally concerned a return of the fictitious planet Nibiru in 2012, but it received a big boost when con- spiracy theory websites began to link it to the end of the Mayan calendar long count at the winter solstice (December 21) of 2012.

David Morrison is an astrobiologist at NASA, and he's been answering hundreds of questions from people who are concerned about what may happen in the year 2012. He joins us from his office in California.

Remember the Y2K scare? It came and went without much of a whimper because of adequate planning and analysis of the situation. Impressive movie special effects aside, Dec. 21, 2012, won't be the end of the world as we know. It will, however, be another winter solstice.

Rather, we animals respond to the invisible electromagnetic stimulation; our retinas and brains conjure the experience of spectral colors. Because SLOOH neither enhances nor fakes M42's colors, it's what astronauts would see if they could travel the 1 ,500 light-years and stare it in the face. William Herschel, discoverer of Uranus, believed that beneath the Sun's supposed luminous clouds lies a protective layer. Strange Neptune motion made scientists search for a massive Planet X for 50 years!

If it is found that some regions of Mars were once hospitable to life, and yet none developed, it leaves open the possibility that the beginning of life requires a very exact set of conditions or a rare sequence of events. Life could therefore be relatively rare in the universe or possibly even unique to Earth.

Here, we found Scott Scribner's chapter to be especially interesting, since he highlights parallels between religion and these experiences, notably in the area of "interactions with supernatural beings, stmggles between good and evil, encounters with overpowering benevolent ('light') forces or malevolent ('dark') forces, conversion and reframing of interpretations (belief templates), the notion of being chosen, visions, testimonial evidence, the occasional channeling of otherworldly beings.

Shermer in his book gives us a quick and, for the most part, accurate description of the Drake Equation, one form of which is: N=Rf^sub p^n^sub e^f^sub l^f^sub i^f^sub c^L Most of the terms are fractions ( f^sub p^ being the fraction of stars with planets, for instance). More important, Shermer is trying to extrapolate human conditions and psychology to extraterrestrials - the infamous problem of the statistics of one data point.

Clinical psychologist Riley (The Defiant Child) tackles a difficult subject with aplomb in this keenly insightful guide for parents. "For children and adolescents, the depressive state makes them feel like astronauts whose tethers have been cut, and they are drifting in space," he writes.